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Yes, it’s the long awaited FT spin-off! Just to clarify, this is separate and independent fic from Fox Trail, although its characters may be found in FT. There is no need to read Fox Trail in order to enjoy this fic, because it can stand for itself. I suppose you can consider this as a prequel of sorts.
PG-13/R Warning: Sex, alcohol, deceit, and murder can make quite a disturbing combination. Proceed with caution and an open mind.
The dim lights shimmered away as Julian closed his eyes, lost in the dizzying sensation. Breathy gasps, heartbeat, and guitar strums thundered painfully in his ears, the noises magnified by the heady mixture of alcohol and impending orgasm.
(Flares flashing loud…)
Her slender fingers clenched on his shoulders, her red-painted nails scraping his sweat-slickened skin as she suddenly arched from the bed. Smiling smugly to himself, he caught her at the waist, hauling her heated body closer without missing his rhythm.
(Rhythms drowning out the cries you turn deaf to…)
Below the shadowy bedroom, a local alternative band strummed the chords of a dismal song, the electrical guitars rising in a crescendo as he emptied himself into her. The song was blank, for the vocalist had abandoned his microphone for a quick fuck. Yet in his hazy mind, Julian was there on the small stage, silently singing the words he had authored himself.
(While tomorrow catches up with all the songs you haven't sung)
“Julian… Ah!”
“Shh,” he whispered huskily, smothering her scream with his mouth. He did not want to hear it; only lovers screamed their beloved’s names into the night.
(Still never soon enough, it cries)
The linen sheets flew as Julian tossed them upwards and rolled away. The fanciful white figure dancing in the small, dark bedroom like a ghost before setting back over a girl’s limp, sated figure. Julian sat up at the edge the bed, his pale fingers already reaching a pack of cigarettes he conveniently kept at his nightstand. With a few taps, a cancer stick slid out of the box along with a worn-out bronze lighter emblazoned with his name. He flicked the lighter open, and gave life to the limp, white roll with one long drag.
The girl’s hand shot out, grasping his thigh in an inviting gesture. “Stay for a while.”
But, only lovers lied in each other’s arms on cold Boston nights like these. She… She was just a shot of vodka, or a nice long drag of nicotine - a few moment’s worth of blissful forgetfulness; transient and superfluous but nonetheless addictive, sweet but leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
“Julian?”
He stared at her through a curtain of silky pale brown locks with unseeing lime green eyes, his lips releasing ash-colored smoke as he mouthed the same chorus over and over again.
(Never soon enough)
Julian shook his head, a sultry, sardonic smile lifting his lips and the stick that hung jauntily off it. “Got work downstairs, sweetheart,” he replied suavely, making a grab for a pair of jeans strewn on the floor. He stood to pull it up, and as her hand fell away, and Julian looked at it dispassionately. Without bothering to button his pants, he leaned over her and boldly cupped her breast beneath the sheets. “But hey, I had a good time. Bye, love.”
He swept towards the door before she could reach out another hand and start attaching unwarranted strings. No complications, no attachments, just brief spurts of lust expended on convenient yet ephemeral companions; that was how he preferred his affairs. Sluggishly he reached for the door, his gaze fortuitously landing on the mirror hanging on his bedroom’s door. The man who greeted him was almost beyond recognition – bloodshot verdant eyes stared back at him accusingly, looking more feral superimposed upon the lean, angular, but somewhat delicate-looking face shadowed by wayward locks of shoulder-length hair. Though his was a face construed by many as stunningly attractive, to him it was a curse. He had his mother’s eyes, her delicate, almost translucent alabaster skin, and the fine bone structure that had made him pariah in his own father’s eyes and a sadistic entity’s feast of amusement.
(It dies... slowly)
With a self-recriminating, almost maniacal grin, he yanked open the door, and left the girl alone in his small, cramped apartment. She was a good fuck, and quite attractive enough for a second whirl, but as usual, he had forgotten to ask for her number, much less her name. Like most of the women he took to bed, she remained nameless and faceless. Shrugging, he made his way downstairs.
(Never soon enough…)
.
UNSUNG
by Foxdance
Chapter 1
CambridgeBoston
September 1999
.
Umberto’s Pub was sparsely crowded, as usual. The regulars could barely be counted with two hands. Seedy and located at the shady area of downtown Cambridge, it was not Julian’s ideal place to sing his tunes, but there was not much choice for a penniless nineteen-year-old barely starting his music career. Besides, Fray, the owner of the bar, had allowed him residence in one of the spare quarters of the dilapidated two-story building as part of his salary, which was much more than he can say for Harvard’s posh male dormitory. Then again, he had gotten himself kicked out of Lambert Hall for smuggling alcohol and women into his quarters, but that wasn’t the point.
“Oia! The Adonis finally decided to leave his bed bunny and actually work,” Fray commented sardonically from the bar area as he dutifully wiped non-existent grime from his oak counters. “I’m paying you on a per hour basis. If you ain’t down here, you ain’t paying your dues, and you’ll have to find a way to pay me cash for rent.”
Julian rolled his eyes, swaggered towards the bar, and took one last drag before crushing the remainder of his nicotine stick on a bowl of peanuts. Ignoring the clean freak of a bartender’s look of utter disgust, Julian retorted nonchalantly, “Put a sock in it. You know I’m the only reason this shit joint of yours is still alive.”
Fray pushed his amber-tinted glasses down a notch down as he stared in disbelief at his bar’s chief performer, his wild raven corkscrew curls falling over to curtain his round hazel eyes. “Pray tell, how that is so when you are barely on stage doing what I’m supposed to be feeding and housing you for?’
“Just look at me, Fray,” Julian said, leaning onto the counter and casting a cocky look at all the customers, which incidentally were all females, discreetly ogling his bare torso. “Now look at your customers. See how they drool over my state of undress? These women come here night after night not for your piss-like beer or for your girlfriend’s crappy cooking, but to bask in my presence.”
“You’re turning my bar into a goddamn brothel,” Fray mumbled, shaking his head. Sighing loudly, the tall, thin bartender turned his back on Julian and walked past colorful array of bottled liquor behind his bar to reach inside a small cupboard. He grabbed a pack from his emergency stock of tetra packed instant coffee, his temporary tonic for impetuous customers who could not hold their drinks, and tossed it to Julian, aiming to smack him in the nose, but unfortunately the cocky bastard was agile enough to catch it in mid-air. “Sober up,” Fray ordered as he watched his tenant/employee chugging down the liquid caffeine. “And button your pants, for chrissakes.”
“Midou!” Byron, the drummer, suddenly yelled from the stage, his hand poised to throw a microphone. “About time you came back!”
Julian watched the microphone fly and waited until the last second before effortlessly catching it. The female coeds in the audience gave a resounding gasp of awe, just as he expected. “I didn’t like the song earlier,” he retorted to Byron.
“What the fuck? You wrote that song.”
“I said I didn’t like it,” Julian gritted heatedly. He nodded to the main guitarist. “Reiss, give me something from 3 Doors Down.”
Julian hopped to the small stage, accepted their secondary electric guitar from Byron. With an ardent toss his head, he shook his wild mane of silky pale brown, and acknowledged the girls with a flash of his infamous magnetic smile. Beside him, Reiss was already beginning to strum out the opening chords of the next tune, and Julian began to stroke his own guitar in rhythm with Reiss’ pace. Leaning forward to intimately touch his lips to the microphone, Julian crooned.
“There's a another world inside of me that you may never see
There are secrets in this life that I can't hide
Somewhere in this darkness there's a light that I can find
Maybe it's too far away
Or maybe I'm just blind
Maybe I'm just blind…”
The pub door swung open, and idly Julian cast it a bored glance. It was common for people to come in the middle of a song, and even more common when the patron was young, female, and had eyes that instantly darted to his form onstage, devouring him on sight. Which was why he gave no particular attention to the petite adolescent who came in. By his standards, she was quite pretty, with her strawberry blond hair curling wildly about a finely sculpted oval face, her huge lavender eyes watching him as she gracefully made her way to one of the tables. Cute, buy he’d have to wait for a few more years. By her height and the juvenile outfit of pink lacy top and denim skirt, she seemed to be somewhere around her middle school years.
“So hold me when I'm here
Love me when I'm wrong
Hold me when I'm scared
I won't always be there
So love me when I'm gone
Love me when I'm gone…”
When the door swung another time, Julian no longer paid any notice… Until he realized that the man who walked in bearing the unbearably impudent smile was a familiar face. The new customer was in his late twenties, Asian, rather military-like with his closely cropped hair and athletic build, and was beckoning him with a nod. Julian’s fine brows met over narrowed bottle green eyes as he finished the last few lines of the song, already itching to step down and box the hell out of the intruder.
“Don’t forget you still owe me for the last brawl’s damages,” Fray nonchalantly reminded him from the bar as he slid a B-52 to a young woman on the far side of the bar.
Casual the remark may be, it was still incredibly effective in dousing the murderous intent in Julian’s eyes. The band vocalist groaned loudly as he hopped down and walked to the man at the back of the pub, ignoring the meager audience’s hushed clapping. Viciously he jerked a chair across the man and plopped down inelegantly, his hand shoved crossly into his messy hair.
“Iwashi-san,” Julian sneered at the Japanese man. “Nandesuka, ahou?”
“I can speak perfect English, thank you very much,” Iwashi replied, dark brown eyes sparkling as he accepted the mug of beer a barely-clad waitress brought him. “Or do you already foresee that this conversation will inevitably turn acrid, and you are trying to shield these lovely bed warmers’ ears?”
Julian swept a derisive glare at Iwashi’s outfit; clad in his usual olive military garb, guns and holster s plumping his vest, the audacious man did not even bother blending in. Either Iwashi was deliberately trying to irritate him, or he had come from an operation… That last possibility made Julian raise his brow.
“Alright, hurry up and spill it, and then get lost,” Julian said, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“I’m not here entirely for you, if that’s what you want to know. Although your father did specifically order me to see if you’re in any trouble.” Iwashi chuckled. “Obviously, you are.”
“No, I’m not,” Julian retorted smoothly. “I never liked living in that fancy dorm. It’s so boring.”
“So I hear. According to the quartermaster’s records, you brought in a bunch of women and got them drunk. What was that, an orgy?”
Julian realized they his father’s men had again broken into his school’s records to spy on him. Silently, he cursed his father and his constant meddling to perdition. “Yeah. Jealous?”
“Hell, yeah. Sounded like a blast, at least until your pop bashes you for it.” Iwashi absently snatched a cigarette from his vest pocket and lit it open and cast the dingy pub a derisive a look. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. Your father’s filthy rich, but you’d rather defy him and live in this ramshackle rat hole. Your old dormitory looked like a damned hotel.” Iwashi emphasized with a low whistle. “All this shit for your stupid pride.”
“I don’t want his money if he’s going to use it to control my life. In fact, I want nothing to do with him. He can cut off my credit cards and allowance for all I care; I can feed myself.”
“God, you’re such a pain in the ass. Midou will have a fit. You tarnished his name, you’re a disgrace to the family, when will you ever learn, yadda yadda…”
“You forgot ‘you should be more like Kira,’” Juno mumbled without a trace of bitterness. Although his younger cousin may be his complete antithesis, they grew up as brothers. He adored Kira despite his perfect Yale GPA, absolute sense of responsibility, unquestionable obedience, and incessant state of bitterness. “Speaking of which, Kira’s here, isn’t he?”
“Where the Fox goes, the Shadow goes. That’s the routine.”
“Don’t tell me she’s decided to become a Harvard professor and bore the world to utter doom.”
“We don’t particularly know if she’s here, but intelligence reports say they detected traces of her aura around here. Incidentally enough, there’s been news of a serial murderer on the loose around this area. Heard about that? Three dead college kids in five days, all systematically slit open from navel to sternum. There might be a connection. It’s worth checking out, since we haven’t had a reading in over four months.”
“So where do I fit in all this?”
“Nowhere,” Iwashi replied, pushing himself off his chair. “I just came by to tell you that your father has assigned you a new bodyguard, since you tormented the last one into switching departments. Bet you thought you got off the hook, eh?”
Julian snorted. “I don’t want another loser dragging on my heels. Give me a break.”
“Someone has to keep you on a leash, kid. You’re getting too rowdy. Besides, the Fox may be around, and you know what happened the last time she got her hands on you and your pretty little neck… Or should I say ‘wrists’?”
Julian self-consciously jerked his hands together, the slight sound of clanging chains tinkling as he fingered his wrists. Oh, he remembered too well. One does not easily forget being chained like a dog for an entire year in a damp, dark basement.
“Your ‘companion’ will arrive tomorrow morning to accompany you to class, assuming you still go to class,” Iwashi said with a raised eyebrow as he turned around and walked away. “This one’s a green horn, but tough as nails. Treat her well, and don’t sneak off.”
“Her?” Julian echoed with a bewildered frown.
Iwashi only answered him with a Cheshire cat grin before he pushed the door and disappeared into the cold, dark alley.
There were certain complications involved in being the son of one of the richest men in the world, who also happened to be the head of a large organized underground intelligence and assassination network. Beneath the corporate exterior of Pacific Industries lies the White Dragon, an organization committed to assassinating every incarnation of a fox spirit hell bent on causing devastation to human kind. It was a paranormal affair, one that many cannot comprehend, but it was a family legacy that has persisted for the past two thousand years. A mafia that assassinates every woman that a stray earth spirit possesses… Odd, but that was another story.Ψ
As a consequence, not only was Julian’s life under constant watch by the tabloids who enjoyed painting him as a spoiled, degenerate playboy, but he was also under continuous pressure from his father who kept demanding perfection from him. Unfortunately, Julian was far from perfect. He had the connections that admitted him into Harvard, but he as a musician at heart who loathed the business course his father imposed upon him. In fact, he hated everything about his posh university. He also detested the way his every move was under surveillance 24/7 by bodyguards and discreet spies who reported every single mess-up, drunken incident, and road ticket to his already disenchanted father.
Most of all, he despised his father. Ryouko Midou had not only been – and still is – a despotic parent, but he was a cold and uncaring monster. His obsession with his organization and its twisted ideal had made him sacrifice his own son’s life. To some extent, Julian believed his father hated him with the same vehemence as he himself did.
The evening wore off soon enough, and with the aid of several more vodka shots he wheedled off Fray, he managed to keep himself sane. The alternative rock music beat in his head like a drug. Drawing from the troubled thoughts that the visit brought, he belted out song after song with a passion that surprised even his band members and delighted the few fans that persisted until the wee hours of the night. And then it was time to close. The remaining customers filed out as band packed up, and somehow Fray managed to bully Julian into taking out the trash. After all the tables had been wiped clean and the chairs put away on top of the tables, Fray tossed Julian the keys to the pub, and together with the cook (who also happened to be his girlfriend), he went home to his own apartment several blocks away.
Left with a massive trash bag and a ring of jingling keys, Julian wearily locked the front door and proceeded to drag the garbage out the kitchen door leading to the back alley, where a truck would pick it up early the next day. It was almost three in the morning, and if his insomnia doesn’t kick in, he’ll be lucky enough to get at least some four hours sleep before he had to run to class.
The pungent smell of trash greeted him as he marched to the pile behind the building, right below the rusty drop-down of the fire exit. The garbage truck, apparently, has forgotten to swing by, again. Annoyed, Julian simply dropped the bag near the pile, and was about to walk off when he heard a loud groan.
At first he thought he was hearing things. After all, he was painfully drunk, at least drunk enough to have been scammed into taking out the trash which he would never agree to otherwise, but when he glanced back, he finally made out what appeared to be the silhouette of a man’s legs sticking out from beneath the trash bag he just took out. Cursing loudly, he hauled the bag away and gaped in bewilderment at the figure of a boy lying unconscious among black plastic bags, empty soda cans, and cigarette butts.
Propping both hands on his waist, Julian struggled to make sense of the situation through the alcohol induced daze. From the modicum of light streaming out from the kitchen door he left open, he could make out the blood spatters on the boy's collared white shirt. The kid must have been a passer-by who got himself mugged or beaten up by a bunch of drunken hooligans. Julian knelt down and placed a hand on the boy’s sternum, exhaling a relieved breath when he detected the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Good, he wouldn’t have to call the police to haul the kid away. That would have been too much hassle. Ah, but 0now, what’ll he do? He couldn’t just leave the boy out there; the autumn chill would kill him with pneumonia if his wounds don’t develop infection first.
Groaning loudly, Julian proceeded to haul the boy by the shoulders inside. He only hoped Fray’s wouldn’t mind if he let the kid sleep on one of pub’s booths. After Julian has managed to hoist the young man on the booth’s seat, he wearily flipped the lights open before coming back to inspect the damage on the kid.
Julian raised an eyebrow as he leaned back on the table, staring at the kid’s face. The boy was almost too pretty. He had a face that could easily be mistaken for a girl’s, wild platinum locks curling about his thickly-lashed eyes, and a striking pallor that made him almost waif-like. Julian assumed he was in his late teens, perhaps just a couple of years younger than himself. The pristine white polo shirt and matching khaki pants was too reminiscent of the prep school kids from Harvard. Julian pulled out a folded pair of horn-rimmed glasses and frowned at the impossibly thick lenses. Just great, he thought. He had just picked up a geek who was insipid enough to get himself mugged. For a minute or so he debated whether to crush the glasses or not, just to get back at the blonde idiot for imposing so much hassle. In the end he simply tossed the glasses into another booth and groggily turned away.
Mumbling cusses softly to himself at his incredibly sordid luck, he swaggered back up to his room upstairs, hoping that the wench he left earlier had stayed around for another quick screw before leaving. But when he crashed into bed, she was gone, and he was too drunk to notice.
-to be continued-
Song and lyrics © 3 Doors Down, Love Me When I’m Gone
Ψ Reference to Fox Trail
Author’s note:
And there goes the first chapter. I’m keeping my chapters shorter this time, and the story will only stretch to around 50,000 words. Hopefully, this will answer certain questions regarding FT, as well as develop the characters I have purposely neglected (Juno, Seth, Naomi, Suu). Feedback, people? I’m quite uncertain about the way this chapter is written, since I’m adopting a stricter POV for every chapter segment. I’m also concerned about the adult theme of the material, since I know my regular readers range from early twenties to as young as pre-teens. I’m just comforted by the fact that I’ve at least chatted or corresponded via email with most of the younger readers, and they’re actually quite mature. But still… Debauchery bad! You get my drift.
This fic is a Christmas gift for everyone who has stayed with Fox Trail through out the erratic update lags cough6monthlateforFTcough. I felt so guilty for making you guys late that I decided to atone with this little fic. You don’t know how much your support has helped me grow into the writer that I am now. I love you all so much. Gimme a hug! group hug
REVIEW! Feeeeeed meeeeee…
