for Lynn: Ashes to Ashes (Last Night) by serialkarma
Title: Ashes to Ashes
Author: serialkarma
Recipient: lynnmonster
Fandom: Last Night
Character(s): Craig Zwiller
Summary: Craig thought it was understandable that he was surprised when he heard himself say, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," to the guy who was crouched over him with his dick in his hand
Ashes to Ashes
by serialkarma
After the news broke, there were the riots. And after the riots, there were the parties. Days, weeks-long parties. "Orgies," sniffed the talking heads. "It’s a disgrace, it’s disgusting, why can’t people meet the End with dignity, with self-respect, with their pants on?"
Craig didn’t see the problem. He figured having a lot of sex in the face of death was a pretty understandable thing to do.
He went to a few of the parties. But after a whil--and if someone had told him this he’d have laughed in their face--it started to get kind of monotonous. For a bunch of people intent on fucking as much as possible before the end of the world there was a disappointing lack of variety in the fucking itself.
(Craig was best man at Patrick’s wedding. He was been kind of surprised to be asked, but not really when it came down to it. Patrick was, well, odd, and kind of reclusive, and even though he and Craig could go for months without talking--eighteen in a row was the record--eventually one of them would ring up the other and they’d go for a beer and talk about cars and hockey, and politics if they felt like arguing, which they usually didn’t. Craig kind of got the impression Patrick didn’t have a whole lot of other friends. But then again, he seemed to get everything he needed from his wife, so maybe he didn’t want any more.)
After the third morning in a row waking up sandwiched between two naked women--and the memories of last night already merging with those of the night before, and the night before that--Craig realized he needed a plan--something with structure, organization. Maybe a schedule.
First, he tried a spreadsheet, but that got too unwieldy. By the time he got to number 50 (handcuffs) he couldn’t remember if he’d already listed "blind woman," or "natural redhead." Besides, did he really need to cross-reference this stuff? No.
So he went out, picked up some beer, a carton of smokes, and some permanent markers, and spent an entire Sunday covering the kitchen walls, the cabinets, inside and out, with anything that came to mind. Everything. By the time he’d covered every last inch of available space he was drunk, his lungs felt like they were threatening to secede, and he was so horny he laid down on the floor and jacked himself while reading the inside of the cabinet under the sink. It took about three hard pulls on his cock, and he got to "fuck identical twins (at the same time)," and then he was coming in hard, hot spurts all over his chest and stomach.
(Craig had never been interested in marriage, when it came down to it. If he’d been asked, he would have said something about waiting for "the right woman," and how she was so hard to find these days, and he wasn’t ready to settle down, and all that was kind of true. But mostly, he just couldn’t imagine having sex with only one person for the rest of his life. Cliched, but there it is, he’d told Patrick the night Patrick told him he was getting married. Patrick had just smiled.
"What?" Craig asked, putting his pint glass down on the table. "You think I don’t know what I’m talking about, right? That I just need to meet the right girl and that’ll be it, I’ll be all, ‘oh, love is the answer, love is all around, let’s have babies and then sex will be this nice memory and I won’t care, because my life will be so fulfilled’?" He was irritated, all of a sudden.
"Actually, no," Patrick said. "I was just thinking that I can’t imagine you ever getting married anyway."
"Oh." Craig took a sip of beer, feeling kind of silly.
"I was going to ask you if you’d be my best man," Patrick said.
"Oh," said Craig again. "Okay.")
He started out with the easy stuff, nothing too exotic. He put "threesome" on the wall, but crossed it out immediately--that way it seemed like he was farther along. He put "have sex while stoned" up there, too, which he’d done on a pretty regular basis at university.
He did it again, though, when he fucked the redhead, just for old time’s sake.
Sex with a blind chick turned out to be pretty fucking amazing. She was just average in the looks department (would probably have been really pretty with some makeup, but Craig figured it was kind of tough to put makeup on if you couldn’t see your face), but she did things with her tongue that made his spine melt and his toes curl until they cramped. Then, while he was still kind of shaky with the aftershocks, she gave him a wicked smile, reached into her bag, and grabbed a scarf.
So hey, cross "have sex while blindfolded" off that list, too.
For two weeks he was like a machine, a fucking machine--a fucking machine. He slept with identical twins (at the same time), had sex on the subway at night (so he’d watched Risky Business a lot at university), spanked someone (didn’t do much for him), been spanked (did way more for him than he’d expected), fucked a girl up the ass (pretty good, but he didn’t really see what the fuss was about. Neither did she, as it turned out), and he was only about a third of the way through his list. He started to prioritize.
(The only time Craig ever, briefly, reconsidered his stance on marriage and how it was Not For Him, was at Patrick’s wedding, when he watched the bride and groom dance. They didn’t move, much, just a small circle in the center of the floor under the tent, foreheads touching, eyes closed. It looked…nice, he thought.
Five minutes later, he wound up trapped against the bar by Patrick’s great-aunt whose name he’d blocked out, trying to fend off her drunken paws and getting splashed with crème de menthe.)
A month into it, then, and given the amount of stuff he’d done, Craig thought it was understandable that he was surprised when he heard himself say, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," to the guy who was crouched over him with his dick in his hand.
On the street outside the guy’s apartment, he ran a shaky hand through his hair, lit a cigarette, and then tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
It wasn’t the kissing. That part had been fine. Better than fine, actually. Soft at first, then harder, wet and fast and way more aggressive than most women were--at least in Craig’s experience (except lately, come to think of it, and he wondered, for the first time, how much of that maybe had to do with what was coming. People kissed like it meant everything, now, whether they’d known each other for years or minutes.) So that part was no different, when it came down to it.
Except then it was, because the guy backed Craig up until he was against the wall and put a hand on his chest and held him there, and Craig could have pushed him off, could have gotten away if he’d wanted to, but it would have required some effort, and he was kind of surprised to feel himself getting hard at the idea having to work for it.
Huh.
The guy--John? Jim? No, John--fumbled at Craig’s hip and he tensed slightly, until he realized John was just opening the door to the apartment. He let himself be backed in the door and down a dim-lit hallway, the two of them kissing the whole time, John’s hands sliding from the door to Craig’s waist and then up under the tail of his shirt to his bare back. The feel of skin on skin sent a shudder through him and he opened his mouth on a gasp, and the kiss was suddenly deeper, hot and hard. John was taller than him; there was a crick in Craig’s neck, so the feel of a couch behind his knees was welcome and he let himself sink back, John bending over him and pushing him into the corner, still kissing him.
Then he was kissing his neck, and Craig’s shirt was unbuttoned and John was kissing his chest and then his hand was on Craig’s crotch and his hips were bucking up. It was good, it was really good, and then it was great, because John’s mouth was on his dick and damn, people were right, guys really did give better blow jobs. Or at least this one did, because it felt like every nerve ending Craig had was oriented toward his cock and his spine was liquefying in a way that put the blind chick to shame and then he was coming, right into John’s mouth, shouting he had no idea what and seeing nothing but blinding white light.
And hell, his pants were still mostly on. Nice.
John moved up and kissed him, and okay, that was weird, he’d never been a big fan when women tried to kiss him after a blow job either. But John was a really fucking fantastic kisser, and Craig kind of forgot that he was supposed to be grossed out and got into the kissing again. He put his hands on John’s hips and John ground his hips down, and Craig could feel the guy’s dick, still hard, against his leg, and it was weird, too. But the kissing was still really hot and he didn’t want to stop that just yet.
So he wasn’t really paying attention when John lifted his lower half up and fumbled at his fly for a minute. Craig was sucking on John’s tongue and running his hands over John’s smooth back under his sweater and he didn’t realize until the kissing stopped that John’s fly was open and his dick was out.
John knelt up and loomed over him, suddenly big and dark, blotting out the light from the table lamp. Craig felt his hackles rise. John ran a thumb over Craig’s mouth and tugged on his lower lip and whispered, "Suck me."
And Craig took one look at John’s face, shadowed with desire, and John’s cock, good-sized and red and strangely alien--which made no sense, he thought later--and then he was saying, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," and a few other meaningless babblings, and he was getting up off the couch and John was sitting back and staring at him and Craig was bolting.
He walked briskly--he wasn’t running, he would not run from this, what was he, a pussy?--and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
It had been good, better than he’d thought. John was…well, hot still wasn’t a word that Craig really got when it came to guys, but he didn’t make his stomach turn and he’d given head like Craig had never even thought to imagine. He felt kind of bad--actually, he felt like shit, that was a shitty thing to do to a guy. He knew what that was like, and it was never good, and the entire had, what, three weeks left? He hoped the guy managed to get properly laid before the end. It just wasn’t going to be by Craig.
Nope, gay sex was clearly not Craig’s deal. Which was fine, he had more than enough on his list to get through anyway. Maybe if he had time he’d come back to the whole blow job deal, but in the meantime he had to have priorities. He had a schedule.
(Two weeks and six days later, sitting next to Patrick in front of the fireplace, Craig thought he maybe knew what he’d been missing, that night with John. He didn’t have it with Patrick either, not really. He’d never really had it with anybody. But he remembered Patrick’s wedding, and the way Patrick and his new wife danced together, and thought that maybe if at least one of them had had it, once, that would be enough.
It almost was.)
**end**
Note: With deepest apologies to lynnmonster for the lateness of the story. Last-minute unavoidable RL craziness-capped off by an oh-this-is-beyond-farce moment when my spacebar DIED (My email to brooklinegirl: "Okay,soiwasjustabouttoemailandsayyes!iwasalmostfinished!andthenmyspacebarCEASEDTO
WORK.ATALL.Asyoucansee.") all resulted in the appalling lateness. I'm so sorry, sweetie! And I hope you enjoy it anyway!
Author: serialkarma
Recipient: lynnmonster
Fandom: Last Night
Character(s): Craig Zwiller
Summary: Craig thought it was understandable that he was surprised when he heard himself say, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," to the guy who was crouched over him with his dick in his hand
Ashes to Ashes
by serialkarma
After the news broke, there were the riots. And after the riots, there were the parties. Days, weeks-long parties. "Orgies," sniffed the talking heads. "It’s a disgrace, it’s disgusting, why can’t people meet the End with dignity, with self-respect, with their pants on?"
Craig didn’t see the problem. He figured having a lot of sex in the face of death was a pretty understandable thing to do.
He went to a few of the parties. But after a whil--and if someone had told him this he’d have laughed in their face--it started to get kind of monotonous. For a bunch of people intent on fucking as much as possible before the end of the world there was a disappointing lack of variety in the fucking itself.
(Craig was best man at Patrick’s wedding. He was been kind of surprised to be asked, but not really when it came down to it. Patrick was, well, odd, and kind of reclusive, and even though he and Craig could go for months without talking--eighteen in a row was the record--eventually one of them would ring up the other and they’d go for a beer and talk about cars and hockey, and politics if they felt like arguing, which they usually didn’t. Craig kind of got the impression Patrick didn’t have a whole lot of other friends. But then again, he seemed to get everything he needed from his wife, so maybe he didn’t want any more.)
After the third morning in a row waking up sandwiched between two naked women--and the memories of last night already merging with those of the night before, and the night before that--Craig realized he needed a plan--something with structure, organization. Maybe a schedule.
First, he tried a spreadsheet, but that got too unwieldy. By the time he got to number 50 (handcuffs) he couldn’t remember if he’d already listed "blind woman," or "natural redhead." Besides, did he really need to cross-reference this stuff? No.
So he went out, picked up some beer, a carton of smokes, and some permanent markers, and spent an entire Sunday covering the kitchen walls, the cabinets, inside and out, with anything that came to mind. Everything. By the time he’d covered every last inch of available space he was drunk, his lungs felt like they were threatening to secede, and he was so horny he laid down on the floor and jacked himself while reading the inside of the cabinet under the sink. It took about three hard pulls on his cock, and he got to "fuck identical twins (at the same time)," and then he was coming in hard, hot spurts all over his chest and stomach.
(Craig had never been interested in marriage, when it came down to it. If he’d been asked, he would have said something about waiting for "the right woman," and how she was so hard to find these days, and he wasn’t ready to settle down, and all that was kind of true. But mostly, he just couldn’t imagine having sex with only one person for the rest of his life. Cliched, but there it is, he’d told Patrick the night Patrick told him he was getting married. Patrick had just smiled.
"What?" Craig asked, putting his pint glass down on the table. "You think I don’t know what I’m talking about, right? That I just need to meet the right girl and that’ll be it, I’ll be all, ‘oh, love is the answer, love is all around, let’s have babies and then sex will be this nice memory and I won’t care, because my life will be so fulfilled’?" He was irritated, all of a sudden.
"Actually, no," Patrick said. "I was just thinking that I can’t imagine you ever getting married anyway."
"Oh." Craig took a sip of beer, feeling kind of silly.
"I was going to ask you if you’d be my best man," Patrick said.
"Oh," said Craig again. "Okay.")
He started out with the easy stuff, nothing too exotic. He put "threesome" on the wall, but crossed it out immediately--that way it seemed like he was farther along. He put "have sex while stoned" up there, too, which he’d done on a pretty regular basis at university.
He did it again, though, when he fucked the redhead, just for old time’s sake.
Sex with a blind chick turned out to be pretty fucking amazing. She was just average in the looks department (would probably have been really pretty with some makeup, but Craig figured it was kind of tough to put makeup on if you couldn’t see your face), but she did things with her tongue that made his spine melt and his toes curl until they cramped. Then, while he was still kind of shaky with the aftershocks, she gave him a wicked smile, reached into her bag, and grabbed a scarf.
So hey, cross "have sex while blindfolded" off that list, too.
For two weeks he was like a machine, a fucking machine--a fucking machine. He slept with identical twins (at the same time), had sex on the subway at night (so he’d watched Risky Business a lot at university), spanked someone (didn’t do much for him), been spanked (did way more for him than he’d expected), fucked a girl up the ass (pretty good, but he didn’t really see what the fuss was about. Neither did she, as it turned out), and he was only about a third of the way through his list. He started to prioritize.
(The only time Craig ever, briefly, reconsidered his stance on marriage and how it was Not For Him, was at Patrick’s wedding, when he watched the bride and groom dance. They didn’t move, much, just a small circle in the center of the floor under the tent, foreheads touching, eyes closed. It looked…nice, he thought.
Five minutes later, he wound up trapped against the bar by Patrick’s great-aunt whose name he’d blocked out, trying to fend off her drunken paws and getting splashed with crème de menthe.)
A month into it, then, and given the amount of stuff he’d done, Craig thought it was understandable that he was surprised when he heard himself say, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," to the guy who was crouched over him with his dick in his hand.
On the street outside the guy’s apartment, he ran a shaky hand through his hair, lit a cigarette, and then tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
It wasn’t the kissing. That part had been fine. Better than fine, actually. Soft at first, then harder, wet and fast and way more aggressive than most women were--at least in Craig’s experience (except lately, come to think of it, and he wondered, for the first time, how much of that maybe had to do with what was coming. People kissed like it meant everything, now, whether they’d known each other for years or minutes.) So that part was no different, when it came down to it.
Except then it was, because the guy backed Craig up until he was against the wall and put a hand on his chest and held him there, and Craig could have pushed him off, could have gotten away if he’d wanted to, but it would have required some effort, and he was kind of surprised to feel himself getting hard at the idea having to work for it.
Huh.
The guy--John? Jim? No, John--fumbled at Craig’s hip and he tensed slightly, until he realized John was just opening the door to the apartment. He let himself be backed in the door and down a dim-lit hallway, the two of them kissing the whole time, John’s hands sliding from the door to Craig’s waist and then up under the tail of his shirt to his bare back. The feel of skin on skin sent a shudder through him and he opened his mouth on a gasp, and the kiss was suddenly deeper, hot and hard. John was taller than him; there was a crick in Craig’s neck, so the feel of a couch behind his knees was welcome and he let himself sink back, John bending over him and pushing him into the corner, still kissing him.
Then he was kissing his neck, and Craig’s shirt was unbuttoned and John was kissing his chest and then his hand was on Craig’s crotch and his hips were bucking up. It was good, it was really good, and then it was great, because John’s mouth was on his dick and damn, people were right, guys really did give better blow jobs. Or at least this one did, because it felt like every nerve ending Craig had was oriented toward his cock and his spine was liquefying in a way that put the blind chick to shame and then he was coming, right into John’s mouth, shouting he had no idea what and seeing nothing but blinding white light.
And hell, his pants were still mostly on. Nice.
John moved up and kissed him, and okay, that was weird, he’d never been a big fan when women tried to kiss him after a blow job either. But John was a really fucking fantastic kisser, and Craig kind of forgot that he was supposed to be grossed out and got into the kissing again. He put his hands on John’s hips and John ground his hips down, and Craig could feel the guy’s dick, still hard, against his leg, and it was weird, too. But the kissing was still really hot and he didn’t want to stop that just yet.
So he wasn’t really paying attention when John lifted his lower half up and fumbled at his fly for a minute. Craig was sucking on John’s tongue and running his hands over John’s smooth back under his sweater and he didn’t realize until the kissing stopped that John’s fly was open and his dick was out.
John knelt up and loomed over him, suddenly big and dark, blotting out the light from the table lamp. Craig felt his hackles rise. John ran a thumb over Craig’s mouth and tugged on his lower lip and whispered, "Suck me."
And Craig took one look at John’s face, shadowed with desire, and John’s cock, good-sized and red and strangely alien--which made no sense, he thought later--and then he was saying, "I--I can’t. Sorry. Gotta go," and a few other meaningless babblings, and he was getting up off the couch and John was sitting back and staring at him and Craig was bolting.
He walked briskly--he wasn’t running, he would not run from this, what was he, a pussy?--and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
It had been good, better than he’d thought. John was…well, hot still wasn’t a word that Craig really got when it came to guys, but he didn’t make his stomach turn and he’d given head like Craig had never even thought to imagine. He felt kind of bad--actually, he felt like shit, that was a shitty thing to do to a guy. He knew what that was like, and it was never good, and the entire had, what, three weeks left? He hoped the guy managed to get properly laid before the end. It just wasn’t going to be by Craig.
Nope, gay sex was clearly not Craig’s deal. Which was fine, he had more than enough on his list to get through anyway. Maybe if he had time he’d come back to the whole blow job deal, but in the meantime he had to have priorities. He had a schedule.
(Two weeks and six days later, sitting next to Patrick in front of the fireplace, Craig thought he maybe knew what he’d been missing, that night with John. He didn’t have it with Patrick either, not really. He’d never really had it with anybody. But he remembered Patrick’s wedding, and the way Patrick and his new wife danced together, and thought that maybe if at least one of them had had it, once, that would be enough.
It almost was.)
**end**
Note: With deepest apologies to lynnmonster for the lateness of the story. Last-minute unavoidable RL craziness-capped off by an oh-this-is-beyond-farce moment when my spacebar DIED (My email to brooklinegirl: "Okay,soiwasjustabouttoemailandsayyes!iwasalmostfinished!andthenmyspacebarCEASEDTO
WORK.ATALL.Asyoucansee.") all resulted in the appalling lateness. I'm so sorry, sweetie! And I hope you enjoy it anyway!