TITLE: “Taste”

AUTHOR: Polly Burns

WEBSITE: http://rednotebook.tripod.com/polly

SUMMARY: Tucker comes home from college, meets up with Warren and Andrew, and, uh, stuff happens.

SPOILER WARNINGS: Absolutely nothin.

RATING: NC-17, for sex (obviously), bad language, possibly disturbing content (bad writing. Heh). If the thought of Andrew doing his brother bothers you, I suggest you get thee gone. Now.

DISCLAIMER: Polly Burns couldn’t have possibly written all of those characters. Joss Whedon musta made up some’a dat shit! Actually, he made it all up, cos, no matter what anyone may tell you, I did not write Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Song lyrics are from X’s The World’s a Mess; It’s in my Kiss. Which I also did not write. Cos I’m not in X. Yeah.

NOTES: First and foremost, I would like to say that I am out of my depth here, and I know it. This is not false modesty (cos I can’t even get it up for REAL modesty), this story is greatly flawed. Over it. This little experiment was inspired by the stuff that Immicolia writes- and she is a better man than me, cos Warren and Tucker have begun to leave a really bad taste in my mouth. I shall now go back to Candyland, where I belong, and write Andrew/ Jonathan.

Taste

There are no angels/ There are devils in many ways.

Out of the periphery of his vision, fingers snapping before his eyes. The sound was painful, like those punkass firecrackers that little kids like, going off in his ear. Then, a sharp voice dulled to a rounded-off needle-end by liquor, “Hey, do you want a taste? Cos I could arrange it.”

“Huh? What? What the hell are you talking about?” Tucker had fallen into some kind of full, cloying daze; his mouth was dry, as if dusted with silt-fine salt. When he turned his head to look at Warren, too quickly, he heard something in his neck make a sound like broken glass being pulverized under somebody’s heel.

“Andrew.” As though asking a question, Warren raised an eyebrow like an arrow’s point.

“Andrew what?” Tucker placed his hands on the bar, felt how they stuck to it without having to move them. His eyes darted to his drink, then back to Warren’s face.

“Andrew. I can let you have him, just for a while, though,” he said, nodding his head toward the bathroom, where Andrew had just gone, “If you want.”

Something told Tucker that he should be sick at that moment, but he was still too confused by whatever the hell Warren was talking about; he put the feeling aside. “You can give me my own brother? What for?” Like he already knew the answer, he clenched his back teeth. The fist of muscle in his jaw pounded.

“You tell me. Though, the way you were looking at him just now when he went to the bathroom, I don’t think you have to.”

“Oh- uh, God, Warren, man, you’re sick.”

“I’m sick,” he chuckled, buoyant with good humor, “I’m not the one who was looking at my brother’s ass like it was a two-for-one special,” thoughtfully, he raised his eyes to the ceiling, “Though I am an only child, so-o…”

“Hey, fuck you. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but it’s, it’s all wrong.”

“It’s all right, Tucker,” Warren patted his hand in a way that made him want to cut it off, yet he couldn’t move away, or didn’t really want to, or something... “I know what he’s like. He gets under your skin,” Warren leaned closer, the caustic perfume of liquor on his breath making his words darker still, “You don’t want to want him, cos it’s wrong,” he giggled, “but ya can’t help it, can you?” Warren moved away again, and Tucker was glad. That voice of his was enough to make him need a bath.

And yet, yet- Warren was one smart motherfucker, had always been, oh he was a jive motherfucker, but a more evilly intelligent, perceptive one had never been made. He knew, and he knew so much because- the thought was like a hotshot in Tucker’s bloodstream, poisonous wine-red death he could taste- he knew because he had had Andrew, he’d had his little brother. But then, hadn’t Tucker once had Andrew as well?

“How would you get him to agree to something like that?” Tucker asked cautiously, to see how much Warren really knew, or though he knew.

“Because he’s in love with me,” he replied, matter of factly.

Tucker felt the electric thrill of his face going pale, his head turning to helium. He drank his drink too quickly and then flinched at the bitter pain that rushed through the bones in his helium-light head.

“We’re practically family,” Warren said, and that, that was the worst sound Tucker had heard in his entire life.

“Shit, Warren, did you know that there’s a guy sleeping over there?” Tucker had not noticed the small bundle of flesh and bed sheets before that point. At first, he’d thought it to be an illusion made in the dusty, thick darkness, broken only by the hardest-working bare bulb he’d ever seen- trying to put light in this black place… but once his eyes adjusted, it became clear that a person was asleep in that bed over there.

“That’s just Jonathan,” Andrew said brightly, before Warren had a chance to answer. Behind Andrew, Tucker could see Warren’s face shift into a leer.

“Well, I’m sure Jonathan doesn’t want to be woken up. Oh, hey, wait, is that Jonathan from Sunnydale High? I haven’t seen him in years-”

Warren patted his mouth in a mockingly exaggerated yawn. “That is so interesting, Tucker, and I’m sure Jonathan would really get a kick out of seeing you here all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, but he’s a sound sleeper, so we’re not gonna worry about him, okay?”

That’s what Andrew’s in love with? Tucker shook his head and muttered something to himself. Warren heard, but cheerfully ignored him.

“Andrew,” Warren said, his voice a rich treat, cake shot full of brandy, wet heat down the back of the neck, “Why don’t you close your eyes for a moment?”

Smiling a little, Andrew did so, and Tucker started to frantically wonder what was growing, stretching, waking to life in Warren’s mind. In the dim light, he could see Warren’s eyes becoming luminous, floating like two October moons. He placed his hand on Tucker’s shoulder and nudged him forward, toward Andrew, who patiently waited with his eyes closed. He looked back at Warren, who only pushed him forward again. Had they all gone insane? What was Andrew doing, laying himself open to God only knew what just because Warren had asked him to? And Warren, what was his trip?- he’d gotten way weirder than Tucker had ever known him to be in high school. Used to be, he was the insane one… And what was Tucker doing, kissing Andrew, letting their mouths pool together like that, liquid and messy and just as he had remembered it?

Warren walked around to Andrew’s side, and as he was moving his hand down Tucker’s back, turning his head to the side to be kissed deeper, Warren rubbed his lips against his cheek, down his feather-white neck. Andrew pulled away, startled.

“What, what’s going on?” he asked, his voice like the whine of a weary door, “Were you-” he pointed at Tucker, “Was I kissing you?” He blinked, as though he’d just been woken.

Feverishly, Tucker looked around him, like he could just run away and not come back. His gaze crashed to the floor like a drunk. He looked up long enough to see Warren still sort of circling them.

“Warren?” Andrew’s eyes followed him as he paced the floor softly. “Warren? Why did you-”

Finally, Warren stayed put. “Shh, it’s okay, Andrew,” he kissed Andrew’s cheek. Tucker wanted to beat his head against the concrete floor. “I just wanted to see what you’d look like, kissing him.”

“Why?”

“Because it was hot,” Warren laughed, which made Andrew laugh. Tucker didn’t laugh. Warren said some words into Andrew’s ear, and first Andrew kind of flinched at whatever it was that he was saying, and then he sucked at his bottom lip, and then, finally, he nodded.

“It’ll be all right,” Warren said softly, inching his hand up the back of Andrew’s neck. With his other hand, he did the same to Tucker, made the same proprietary gesture. It was damn creepy, but strangely, sweet. Sweet- it was sweet. Against Tucker’s will, he had to admit that he liked this, feeling like he was, he didn’t quite know what, a part of something, perhaps? All his life, he’d felt so alone; and those days with Andrew, when they’d been still-young, before something broke in Tucker’s mind and in Andrew’s heart- those had been his happiest days. Warren here, now, didn’t make it worse, not really. Warren was just so, just so intense, like he secretly held the entire universe gagged and tied behind those black-honey eyes...

Gently but insistently, Warren was pushing Andrew and Tucker together, joining them. Everybody held their breath once the two of them were mouth to mouth again, kissing slowly, lazily, as though no years had passed, and they could afford to take that kind of time again. Warren’s hands were on them both, moving to the tempo of their kisses; both of them were unable to forget Warren there, making all of this happen. Deus ex machina.

Once they came apart, Warren pulled Andrew close, making him lose his breath, gasp, a shallow little sound, and Tucker watched his brother being kissed now by some other man. It was unnerving and infuriating and- Warren had been right, it was hot. Seeing Andrew like that, losing control in somebody else’s arms- it was doing things to Tucker. When Warren let go of Andrew at last, Tucker grabbed Warren by his shoulders, thinking to shake him, thinking to throw him against the wall.

“It’s better than you thought, isn’t it?” Warren asked, his eyelids coming down almost mechanically over the amber-spangled treasures set in his ocular orbits, eyelashes coming down like night. “It’s all right,” he whispered, “Nobody’s gonna know. Nobody cares. We can do what we want…” He trailed off as he placed his hand against Tucker’s cheek, fingers like steam on his skin. Warren’s wrist brushed against his lips, before he could stop himself, he pressed his lips to his pulse point, tenderly.

Warren didn’t kiss him as roughly as he had Andrew, but Tucker suspected that he was allowed to treat Andrew thusly both because it was what Andrew liked and because Warren knew that even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t complain. Tucker, however, would knock out a couple of Warren’s teeth if he let one finger fall in a way that bothered him, Warren knew that. Having a rep for insanity could sometimes be a good thing. Tucker used that knowledge now, silently let him know that he wasn’t going to hurt Andrew in front of him. His hand on Warren’s neck- If you hurt my brother, I’ll beat you senseless. Tilting Warren’s head back to kiss his throat- If you do anything he doesn’t like, I’ll rip your heart out. It was impossible to say if Warren actually understood any of these wordless promises, but his feverish inhalations and exhalations seemed to be as much out of agreement as rapture.

“Um, you guys, I’m still here,” Andrew said, more than a little forlornly.

“Nobody’s forgotten about you,” Warren said, his voice low. He kept one arm about Tucker’s waist and pulled Andrew into their little knot with the other. It made Tucker’s heart jump a little bit, to see Warren press his lips to Andrew’s trembling eyelids like that, to see him lick his lower lip just before he kissed him with a kind of luscious anger. It was like he could almost felt what Andrew felt, and feel what Warren felt as well.

“Andrew’s bed is bigger,” Warren murmured. With his eyes barely open like that, head lolling to the side so that Andrew could nip at his neck, Warren looked drugged. It’s not him, though, Tucker thought, it’s us. We’re the ones who are going under.

The three of them made their way over to Andrew’s bed, walking like ghosts in the dull shimmer of the one lightbulb. They sat at the edge of the bed; Warren pushed Andrew back a little, to get him to lie down. Reclined, Andrew seemed at once so much more defenseless, and then, with a turn of his head that left his neck open to whomever wished to feed upon it, so much more wanton. The sound he made, somewhere hidden in his throat, it sounded like purring. Warren’s mouth was on his neck, hands shoving aside his tee shirt, as though it were difficult to do so. This was for Tucker’s benefit, and he knew it; he was showing him his own brother’s flesh, both to shock and arouse him. Keep trying, asshole, he commented to himself bitterly, it takes more than Andrew’s body to shock me.

It took Andrew’s voice. Andrew said his name, softly- he sounded as if what Warren was doing to him was unspeakably painful.

“I shouldn’t,” Tucker said, just as softly, back to Andrew, but he was leaning over Andrew, his eyes fixed on his partially open mouth. Warren didn’t seem to be paying attention, seemed to be in his own world. As though he had no control over his own body, Andrew was pulled up into a sitting position by Warren, who then pulled off his shirt, then made him lie back down.

It made him feel faint, almost see stars, just then. When had Andrew gotten all of those marks all over him? That wasn’t, that wasn’t right. Warren’s mouth was all over him, brushing over past injuries, making it look as though his lips were colored and their hue was bleeding onto Andrew. He must have lapsed into a kind of waking sleep, things were happening and he didn’t see, didn’t catch them at first. Suddenly, Warren’s hand was down Andrew’s pants. Tucker shook his head- he wasn’t watching this, wasn’t wanting to-

But he was. Stop acting like you’re so clean, said a voice in his head- in a wet-velvet tone like Warren’s- how many times did you do exactly what he’s doing right now? Then, Do you want a taste? coming back to him, perfectly replicated in his head.

Andrew’s neck twisted, his hips came up and then went down, as though he were moving to music that only he could hear. “You want this,” Warren purred, a sound about soft black leather, and Tucker knew that he was speaking as much to him as to Andrew, if not more so.

“Want this,” Andrew echoed, his voice a thin silver wire winding about Tucker’s throat. It were as though Warren were using him as a ventriloquist’s dummy, making him say the words that he wanted Tucker to hear. Warren’s face was buried in Andrew’s neck; Tucker could hear that he was saying something, but it just sounded like gibberish to him.

“If he, oh, if he, if he wants to…” Andrew said, in response to something Warren had said. From where he was sitting, Tucker couldn’t see exactly what Warren’s hand was doing, where exactly he was touching Andrew, but he didn’t have to be told- the way his arm kept on moving up and down like that was explicit enough. Tucker wet his lips.

Warren sat up, suddenly, leaving Andrew a trembling mess spilt on the bed. Still straddling Andrew- how the hell was he keeping his balance?- he turned a little bit toward Tucker. “Don’t disappoint your brother, Tucker.” His smile was like a razor slash

“All right,” Tucker snarled, suddenly not caring too much about anything anymore, “You want this? Both of you-” He pulled Warren close and gave him what was more like a punch in the mouth than a kiss. Blood scented the pudding of their crushed lips, Warren’s blood, laced with the liquor that coated the inside of his mouth like adhesive. He pushed Warren aside and leaned over Andrew, who was now shaking even more after what he had just seen. While he’d been fucking with Tucker, Warren had pulled his hand away, so Andrew had had to look after himself. He looked at Tucker and blushed.

“Did you miss me, Andy?” He tugged at Andrew’s hair gently. Nobody else called Andrew “Andy”; for one thing, the diminutive of his name didn’t really suit him, and for another, Tucker believed that it was his right alone.

“I missed you,” Andrew sighed breathlessly. Tucker wanted to believe that it was as much from genuine emotion as arousal. Softly, he pressed his lips, rouged with Warren’s blood, to Andrew’s, opened his mouth gently. Slightly bent, like the crook of a street lamp, Warren watched from Andrew’s lap. Tucker and Andrew didn’t stop kissing- it was almost as though Warren didn’t exist.

Finally, Warren moved, sat down in the middle of the bed. Watching the two of them, it was, it just delicious. The way Tucker covered Andrew’s body with his own, placed his hand around Andrew’s wrist and made the hand that was in his pants move about. Warren reclined on his side, resting his cheek on his hand. They stopped kissing for a moment and Tucker pulled off his shirt. Both brothers were milky-pale, Warren noted with pleasure, they had the same delicate ribs, as though molded from liquid glass, they had the same pulled-taut tender lower bellies… Such a delightful family, Warren said to himself, laughing airily at his own silliness.

The way Andrew smoothed his hands over Tucker’s back, the satiny brushing skin over skin made… Warren shifted in position against the tightness between his legs. He wanted back into this, this, whatever the three of them made up together. When Tucker pulled away to take off the rest of his clothes, Warren took over kissing Andrew. His lips had the texture of threadbare velvet, worn wet and slightly swollen. He pulled at Warren’s shirt with childish insistence until Warren yanked it off. Tucker stood by the bed, looking incensed.

“I wasn’t done,” he said, and it was hard to tell if he was really angry or just playing-acting. When he spoke, Warren lowered his eyes anyway.

“You’ve got time,” Warren said, turning his head away from Andrew, “This is far from over for all of us,” he closed his eyes like a shy girl, “Or we could all just do it together, no turns, no waiting.” Beneath him, Andrew let out a high-pitched sigh.

Tucker frowned a little, sucked in his cheeks for a second. “We’ll do what Andrew says is all right.”

Soft in the light, Warren smiled, beatifically, almost; the neat aisles of his teeth looked like a knife’s edge. “Andrew, what do you want to do?”

“I want you both to shut up and fuck me,” he laughed, a bit nervously, Tucker thought.

Feigning total indifference, Warren shrugged. “If that’s what you want…”

Efficiently, Warren and Andrew pulled off their clothes, so now the three of them were nude in the baby powder light of the one light bulb, the Cyclops-eye voyeur over them. They fell onto Andrew’s bed, toppled, made the bed cough in annoyance. Andrew lay between Warren and Tucker, looking sweet as saccharine- Tucker felt something odd, at seeing Andrew like that, looking as though he were being pushed past some limit and only just holding onto himself- being kissed from the front by Tucker and from the back by Warren-

Warren- At the thought of him, Tucker reached over Andrew and pinched the thin skin over Warren’s ribs. To remind him, remind him that Tucker was still there, and what the meant. Oddly strong, Warren fixed his hand over Tucker’s, moved it down his side, steadily lower until Tucker got his fist around blood-saturated flesh. Warren was like a length of pipe- or some other dumb, hard thing. As Tucker touched him, he kissed Andrew, unable to stop kissing Andrew, as though that made this all all right.

“I’m going to fuck you,” Warren said against the back of Andrew’s neck, meaning to have Tucker hear this as much as Andrew. Tucker’s hand fell away. One eye open, he watched Warren steady Andrew’s hips, enter him dry, watched Warren’s face skewed with pleasure. Andrew let out a cry that split the silken silence all around them, split something within Tucker. It was painful, watching this, but a good kind of pain. He slipped his hand between his thighs.

“Oh, oh, let me,” Andrew said softly, his voice jingling like a bell. Before Tucker could say anything about it, he was jerking him off. Those long white hands were no less soft than Tucker had remembered. Every so often, Andrew wet his fingers, brought them up to his lips, licked from them Tucker’s fluids, with a shy smile. Tucker covered his eyes with his hand.

“Don’t,” Warren said, his voice scrubbed jagged, “You want to watch this.” He reached across Andrew and pulled Tucker’s hand away. Now that he was looking again, Warren pushed into Andrew viciously, made him cry out as he had at the beginning. Tucker made himself flinch; he knew that was the correct reaction. He was panting like a dog when Warren did it again, drove into Andrew like that. The third time, Tucker came.

Through the rest of it, Tucker lay there, looking serene as a dove as Warren screwed his brother raw. It was like a dream, one hell of a sick dream, but very dreamlike, all the same. For a second, he started to wonder about Jonathan, if he wasn’t really dead under those sheets, if Warren had not killed him before they went out that night- But then, Andrew began to breathe heavily and brokenly, and Tucker still remembered that sound, what that meant. As he came, Tucker held him close, felt heat spill onto his thigh as Andrew rubbed against him a little, to give himself an extra little push, maybe. Warren finished, right after Andrew, not that Tucker really cared all that much.

The rest of the night was full of variations on the same theme. After a while, it became, not boring, but numbing. Tucker no longer felt anything, good or bad, as he fucked and was fucked- like a kind of puppet show entirely for Warren’s enjoyment, he was starting to think. He wondered if Andrew felt anything, if he had felt anything at all throughout the entire operation. Tucker couldn’t quite explain it, but Andrew seemed elsewhere, no matter what was done to him, nothing seemed to touch him. For his part, Warren never stopped leering, sweating, moaning, like every time was the first. It was a bit unsettling- what gave him the right to like it that much?

Finally, when none of them seemed as though they could take it anymore, they collapsed, Andrew still between Tucker and Warren, his head next to theirs’ on the pillow, gold up against the coal.

“Whoa, when did you get here?” Jonathan asked him, scratching his head and making his already disheveled hair stand completely on end.

“Last night. I slept on the couch,” Tucker mumbled, more to his bowl of cereal than to Jonathan.

“I didn’t hear anything. I must have been dead to the world.”

Thought you were for a while there, Tucker almost said, but thankfully thought better of it. What was the point? He shifted in position a little bit and briefly shut his eyes against the pain shivering up his hips and thighs. Somebody really had to teach Warren a little restraint- or had it been the time with Andrew that was causing the ache in his lower body, which was like dozens of piano hammers pounding his bones? It was Warren, he knew, Andrew had been gentle, sweet…

The circles under Andrew’s eyes had gone from mauve to dove gray in twenty-four hours. Something stabbed at Tucker; he found it absurd. Pointily, he told himself, After what you and that sick fuck Warren did to him last night, you don’t have the right to worry about him anymore.

Since Jonathan’s back was turned, Andrew kissed Tucker on the cheek as he sat down at the table.

“How’s college?” Andrew tried to asked lightly, though his voice was strained, spread thin.

“It’s all right,” Tucker shrugged, remembered the teeth marks on his shoulder, like some kind of primitive writing.

“Do you have a, have a, um, girlfriend?”

As if on cue, Jonathan drifted out of the room like a theatrical backdrop being made to move by the turn of a crank.

“No,” Tucker shook his head. He looked down, “You didn’t tell Warren about us, did you?”

“No. I’ve never told anybody. I mean, I love Warren, but I don’t know if he, if he would understand. Why?”

Tucker looked into the chips of cheap cerulean glass that Andrew had been given in the night in exchange for his sweet blue eyes. You look so beaten down, he wanted to say, but instead sighed, “Because he seemed to know, to know that there was, had been something between us.”

Andrew went the color of burnt paper. “Oh. Well, ah, maybe he guessed. He’s kinda good at that, guessing…”

Tucker laid his hand over Andrew’s, afraid to touch him too hard. Andrew had taken so much from him and Warren last night- how could he still be standing? How could all of his parts still be attached? “Mom misses you.”

“You talked to her?”

“Yeah, I went over there the other day. I think she wants you to call her.”

Andrew shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t talk to her or Dad. I just, I, I don’t have anything to say to them. They’d have plenty to say to me, though,” he laughed, with an uncharacteristic nastiness, “Tell me what a loser I am or something…”

“They’re horrible, I know. I lived in that house, too.”

“It wasn’t the same for you, though.”

“No, you’re right, it wasn’t.”

Just then, Warren came into the room. His hair was obscenely slick, like chips of obsidian, wet from his shower. Soft trains of water unwound down his face and throat. “Hello, Andrew,” he said, kissed Andrew’s mouth. Tucker got no such greeting, and was glad for it.

Something had changed in Warren, something had burnt his heart black- perhaps overnight as shock could turn a person’s hair white- made him a shadow of a man, something unnatural. Tucker, who knew a thing or two about unnaturalness, was becoming more and more disgusted. How could Andrew, his Andrew, let that monster put his hands on him, kiss him, fuck him like that? Though it shamed him, he did still think of Andrew as his, and to see somebody else misusing what he once loved-

Once, Tucker had given Andrew everything, taken so little in return. He’d taken some of Andrew’s innocence, but Andrew had had so much, still had, somehow… He hoped that Warren would never take that. And then, he wondered, Do I still have the right?