bad medicine

Shoulders hunched under the black shirt, Chase slipped out of his car at the curb. A half block from the Grill and he’d been lucky to get the spot. Some lady who might’ve been Mikey’s coach journey buddy, the one who’d run a mile at the thought of sitting next to a convict, had pulled out as he’d got there, white hair looking like it’d been styled to withstand a hurricane, her face wrinkled prune like as she’d scowled in her rear view mirror in the direction of the Mystic Grill. For just a second the lights from within had swept through the plate glass window frontage, catching her face in a wash of neon, like streaks of paint, and then she was burning past him. He glanced back the way she’d gone, bumping the door shut with his hip. ”If you get this, come on down to the Grill. I know it’s some social shit but, you know, maybe you’ll meet some nice woman who’s willing to overlook your mug and still wanna spend some time with you.”

Swallowing hard, Chase dropped his hand, thumbed off the call. He stood for a moment, the muscles in his jaw flexing, the pad of one thumb hovering over the screen. He’d given Mikey space since he’d arrived in town, had tired not to push him too fast. Twenty years in the clink and there was good reason for some of what had happened there to cling to him after. Drinks, dinners, nights spent just sat in front of the TV watching a game like they’d done as kids, over a pizza and a couple of beers. Brothers again after years of the Agnellis standing between them. Tonight wasn’t the first time he’d tried to nudge him on but it was the first time he’d tried to drag his brother out to a party.

Off the clock. In some hope …

Sap. The word rumbled in his head in his brother’s voice, not the Mikey of now but the one who’d ragged on him like a big brother when he’d had his first crush, age 13. His other hand came up, scratching through the thick dark waves of it, like it’d been mussed, a trace of heat rising in his cheeks. Without staring at the screen again Chase shoved the phone in his pocket. Maybe he was, he was definitely something to be playing phone tag the way he had been since he’d been yanked out of Roxxi’s classroom by the witness he’d finally caught up with on the road halfway back to Mystic Falls.

Calls caught in the no man’s land of voicemail messages, the universe’s version of keeping them squarely on either side of the desk. Still, he’d kinda wanted to side step that fate and put out the invite. Not the store. Off the clock.

Eyes flicked up and down the sidewalk as he started up it, half looking out for the dog that’d trailed after him on and off all week. An animal spirit maybe if you believed in that shit and he didn’t, even if he half harboured some secret belief that there was some mystical, technologically advanced city hidden out there that’d come to light at some point.

Chase clucked his tongue at himself as he reached the Grill, shouldering open the door. The place was already crowded, those black lights leaving some clad in the shreds of shadows that were gonna make the corners of this place dangerous territory later on. Others were outlined in splashes of neon, the paint being daubed on in little booths picked out in those lights. A dude at a table close to the door was already looking up expectantly, a trio of wristbands dripping from his fingers. Traffic light like, he was guessing red for no thanks man, amber for a maybe, green for … His eyes cut around the room, picking out the bracelets circling wrists.

The guy juggled them like he was chivvying him along. Chase raked teeth over his lower lip, stilled as hands settled on his shoulders, small, pressing flat as they slid up to curl over his shoulders. A shift of weight at his back, the kid with the bands not impatient anymore but looking over his shoulder, with his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. At the press of a definitely female body tight against his back Chase knew how the kid felt. His own breath rasped out, his hands hovering down at his sides, fingers curling like they were ready to reach back and find an anchor point. Those smaller hands were gliding down, one to his arm, holding him and her in place while the other skated to his chest. ”You didn’t think maybe I could help you with something, Professor?” He hadn’t planned to but then again he hadn’t exactly set his plans in concrete tonight.

His laugh was rough, a hoarse croak that probably wasn’t audible over the music. Chase twisted his head at the peck of her lips, his hands reaching back then to curl around her thighs, no chance of messing up the paint job he could just about see in his peripheral vision. ”Cards Against Humanity. Magic: The Gathering was last night and I was working through that one.” He shrugged his shoulders a little, shifting the front of his shirt enough that the cling of the cotton revealed a total lack of his badge wallet on his belt. ”I’m not tonight. The fun’s safe from me tonight.” And maybe just starting for him.

Dropping his head an inch as he craned around a little more, Chase got a better look at the paint that streaked her. Yellow running the length of arms lined with leaned muscle, like crackles of electricity, blue on her chest and neck, highlight collarbones and that hollow of her throat he’d almost had his face in the last time. The patch around one eye catching his for a moment before he snorted. ”You gonna report me for stalking? Sorry to burst your bubble, honey, this is just a lucky coincidence.” He winked at her before he mock frowned, his hand skimming up towards her waist like he was in search of something. ”You got your phone tucked in there?” He was tempted to switch his own off but getting the badge in the first place meant never being off the clock. ”What are you…” Chase abandoned the search then, head dropping further as he skimmed that hand up to settle over hers, looking for the colour of the band that ringed her wrist before he gestured to the orange one the kid was holding out to him. Facetious little punk.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1119

This almost felt like that game you played as kids. Shaking cupped hands held over the flames of candles, matches or someone’s dad’s Zippo. Chicken. Who could hold out longest before they whipped their hand back to the roaring hoots of the others. Roxxi had almost been double dog daring him since the moment she’d pulled him out of the crowd. Chase could practically feel that heat against his palm now as he curled his fingers in, could definitely feel her as the burn against his back, body heat no match for the thin cotton of his shirt and whatever it was she had on. Out of sight as she was he couldn’t tell anything about her, except for the fact that she was driving him crazy again.

The purr of voice, the flick of her tongue against skin suddenly burning hot enough that he couldn’t feel that flame even if it was melting flesh from bone. Chase let out a rumble of sound, his head dropping forward slightly. Melting. All cause of her. ”Still after a trip to the pokey?” he asked, a low vibration of amusement underlying his words. ”And there’s me without my cuffs.” Left at home like every other symbol of his job he could shed. Like Superman leaving the cape at home to go play as nothing but Clark Kent for the night.

He hadn’t intended on anything but a few beers, a couple of hours with music washing over him as though this were the Mystic Falls’ version of Bourbon Street. An immersion in the party that wasn’t gonna end up with him having to drag drunk and disorderlies back to the station to sleep it all off. As if Roxxi hadn’t believe he was off the clock her palm started to wander again, muscles quivering faintly with his sharp inhalation as she skimmed his abdomen, his belt, not finding what she was looking for. Dark brows hitched with his breathing as she dipped under his shirt and then down just little. ”You make a complaint this way and even she might cave and pay you back.” He’d been here weeks ago on a case, the last known location of another missing person, the manager the one who’d talked to him at the end of the bar. Not in sight tonight. A bonus for him cause when folks knew you were a cop going off the clock was always harder.

Roxxi had loosened up when he’d moved finally, her hand still anchoring to him but her face in view, one dark brow hitched, a frown pulling at those pretty features. Innocence filled Chase’s own for a moment before astonishment snuck in. ”The only time I panty raid is when they get taken off in company, there’s no fun to it otherwise.” He would’ve asked her to do that but how in the hell did you broach that stuff after weeks of that game of tag, back and forth. He’d never been one of those guys taking things over a line down the phone, hell, he’d never been one at all until she’d invaded his space, pushed to the point where he was reaching out for someone who’d pushed into a life he’d desperately tried to keep orderly since he’d gotten here.

The messy was what was meant to have been left behind in New Orleans. A fresh start here, one for Mikey too, but Chase could already feel himself dipping a toe into those dark waters again for a woman, some masochistic part of him hoping that dark water would rush over his head. Fingers dipping now, following the lines and curves – under her guidance at the end. ”Why? You got something to hide from me Professor? We usually go a little private for the full body search.” In this case his bedroom, or hers, that skim of a hand that still burned expanding without every pair of eyes on him. Pulled back into Roxxi, Chase wondered if there wasn’t something a little more brazen about her than he’d even bet on.

He kept his eyes on hers, his pulse a hard hammer in his throat that bucked as he skimmed bare skin and she squeaked. The faint scratch of lace before he found the phone tucked in against the lean muscle. Chase tugged it free, his eyes narrowing as something molten came into them, that hot ooze of chocolate from the centre of a fondant. He swallowed, glanced down at the phone curled in his hand before he slipped it into his pocket. ”I’m a cop, wouldn’t take me two minutes to track it down but you can consider this a confiscation.” No interruptions, not like the comic book store or her work. His own could ring itself into oblivion tonight, it wasn’t coming out.

Fingers closing over her wrist, Chase tried to steer this night another way. Work was off the board now, nothing to bring this to a shuddering halt that left him heading home hot under the collar. Green. Not complicated for her but hell. He wouldn’t have been out there in the crowd looking for other company if she hadn’t been here. It would’ve been a wait at the bar with all of this washing over him, waiting to see if Mikey would drag himself in. He’d gestured for the kid to give him the orange but Roxxi was taking the red, beaming at the kid before she slipped the band on. Red.

”Seems a little unequal to me,” he rasped. He leapt, bumped against his as she smacked at him, palm squeezing the thick muscle under the denim. Chase slipped his hand to the small of her back, mouth against her ear as she drew him through the crowds and out onto the floor. ”You grow up in New Orleans without a sense of rhythm something’s wrong with you.” He’d had it, the geeky kid not entirely void of grace, although there’d been times when he’d felt like every ounce of it had bled out of him along with everything else. ”This is more your speed huh? No guys in tights, no questions over every minute of Frank Castle’s origin story, all of this… who knew professors got this wild on their nights off.” Chase dragged a hand over her skin, thumbs tracing those lines of neon electricity over her skin, urging those arms up and around his neck as he settled his hips against her, drawing Roxxi into him and the grind of the music that had dipped from somewhere pulsing and loud into something almost primitive that dragged his heartbeat with it.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1106

Flirting over those cuffs had been a part of their dance. Each move closer – although their orbits hadn’t yet gotten past that binary star stage – accompanied by another quiet click. Chase’s stomach pitched faintly as other thoughts – memories in that foggy way that shredded as soon as he tried to brush fingers over them to catch their shape – flickered in his head with each of those imaginary clicks. Times it hadn’t been fun, wrists scored deep by the hard metal, blood dark on those glittering teeth as he’d taken them from his belt. More waking nightmares he hadn’t entirely shed. ”Gotta make sure the evidence is unshakable first. Don’t want you slithering out of ‘em.” A hollow voice, trying to slather on a little humour as the corner of his mouth kicked up.

Brittle as glass though, the smile stuttering in those strobe lights. Half there, half not. Big bad never a label he’d wanted to wear. It’d been the cape he’d wanted, navy blue nylon wrapped around him like a shield as he went into those mean streets of New Orleans.

Mystic Falls was supposed to be a step away from that, his grip on that cloak loosening until he managed to start to heal those lumps he’d taken on those streets. The ones that had put that puff at the bridge of his nose and carved the scars into his skin. Little scars that disappeared in this light, all those imperfections washed away, almost forgotten with the press of Roxxi’s fingers, the huff of her breath against his neck. He could feel where she pressed against him, that snatch of his wrist to inspect the shackle she’d put on him. Red for him, green for her, a gulf between that she’d cross with the clutch of a hand.

Chase’s breath huffed in and out, his eyes narrowing as that smile returned in a flash of teeth and the glimmer of dark eyes gone narrow. ”That sounds like breaking the law to me,” he drawled. He closed his fingers around the hand she’d clamped on him though, one thick finger working between it and her wrist, rubbing back and forth against that tender skin.

The feel of her pulse had been there, flowing from her to him, the heat sinking into him to settle like an atmospheric layer beneath his skin, global warming lighting up every nerve as his arm had slipped around her and they’d headed into that crowd. Bodies pressing close, pressing them closer. Music wrapping around them to join the beat of her pulse in him. It was that way at home if you went looking for it. Bars filled like this every night, the zydeco and jazz rhythms made for this, even if most of the time he hadn’t been. Not inept, just unpractised, raw.

Shocked.

Chase narrowed his eyes again at Roxxi, his smile a shifting thing again. Could they have already passed each other like that? Gliding in that city were the crowds were like tides, coming and going, crashing up against one another before they drifted apart. ”Surprise,” he muttered, like he was calling it a shocker. It was, really. A tie back to that place he’d escaped from – that Mikey had escaped from. ”Central City. Worked the Garden District at times though.” Standing over bodies there, picking up drunks, buffing them up in the cells, sending them out again the next morning to tumble once more. Names racked up until he couldn’t remember them anymore, but, he was sure, he’d have remembered her.

There was no forgetting that mouth, the hands that could light him up like a stormy sky with a clever trail of fingers, the body that curved into him and threatened to drown him – without a single word of complaint off of his lips. Maybe off of hers though.

He grinned, eyes dropping to that mouth that threatened as he teased. A groan, not quite the sort that’d permeated his dreams, but a groan all the same rolling out. ”Who’s not backin’ up the threat with the cuffs now?” He pressed his lips together though, any sorta cheesy retort to drag a louder groan out of her lost in that shift. The press of his leg against hers, the way it had done at Kitschy Kitschy Coo that first night. The job had cut them off then, invading with that shrill ring before hers had come back with a different sort of groan. Pulling them apart, bringing them back together at Whitmore. Shoved aside now.

A groan of his own rasped out, his fingers flexing into that dip of her spine as her mouth dragged over his throat, his jaw, her tongue a teasing tickle. If this was half he might not survive the whole. ”Gonna tease me with a glimpse?” he asked. Christ. Chase’s head fell back slightly, eyelids drooping, those onyx orbs peering through equally dark lashes. Dead by dawn, that final connection of lips again the nail in his coffin, driven home with his own hands, clutched at for this.

Lights washed over them, washed away time until he lost all track of it. The party had carried on around them, those flashes of colour all he knew outside of her, a neon cage they shared. Chase wasn’t sure he was leading through most of it but it didn’t matter as long as she was wrapped around him that way, that binary orbit shrinking until finally they were alone in it. Him and Roxxi shrouded in darkness except for the telling writhing of those yellow streaks he’d traced with his fingers while they’d slid and bumped against one another.

Yellow shifting, showing, coming back against him in a way that had Chase’s breath roughening. His hands on her biceps as she kissed him, sliding to her rib cage, that red glow stick pressed between his palm and her, a reminder of just what he was locked into. Fingers, warm as his own hot skin disappeared under his shirt, leaving him sucking in his breath. Not shying away from that touch but left alive by it. Nerves sparking like live wires under his skin, crackling in his ears.

Were they both breathless when she pulled away? He didn’t know, his lips were damp with her, the muscles her nails bit into lightly quivering. Roxxi tipped her head back, leaving her throat open to him as she found her voice. Chase stared there a moment, wondering whether to drag his mouth down that decorated column to find where her pulse would thud against her skin. ”Not this forward? I’m not either,” Chase rasped. ”’s a special case? This. You…” Him? If this was a tease she would’ve been pulling away. A knowing smile on her lips instead of that genuine apology that had been overlaid with something else the last time.

He was gonna press his brow to hers, promise her what that case could be before he let himself focus on it again but Roxxi’s hand was rising away, her thumb on his lip, fingers on his stubbled cheek as she watched him. Chase watched her, let her toy with him. No nip of the teeth her thumb brushed against, just that skim of his tongue against it before she was snatching it back. Naw, not a tease, just that searing heat that lasted a long breath again. Another parting with him breathless, post-marathon like strain about it.

Chase gave a genuine groan then. ”Not even if I break out the cuffs to keep you in it?” he asked rough. Not half bad was a step on what she’d called him that first time she’d hollered out to him at the store. ”There’s no ruining this, no running either. I could slap an APB on you, drag you in til we trip over that edge. I want you, Roxxi.” Bald honesty in those rasped words as he dropped his head. Mikey’d always been the silent one but he’d learned to pick his words and give what mattered weight, layering it with an eloquence that burned away leaving him with that one simple phrase and a need that would put him on his knees.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1367

If he’d been streaked with paint the way she was it would’ve been streaking down his skin by now. Heat inside, pressing against his skin from outside, from her, until Chase felt slick with it all. Any cool he might’ve once held on to with that hard edged stone faced persona he had to slip on for the job was long gone. Fingers, lips, words rasped low at him washing it all away until the toe they’d dipped in at the store had become that rapid plunge up to his neck in scalding water. Like the frogs they’d had to dissect in high school he hadn’t even realised how far gone he was until it was too late.

Chase snorted a breath out through his nose, dark eyes narrowing at Roxxi as she tossed the question at him. The madonna impression hadn’t even been there for a moment. She’d cut off any comparison to the dark haired, doe eyed women he’d seen on pedestals and paintings in every one of the churches in the neighbourhood growing up. On his knees as a kid, the altar boy in comparison to Mikey’s wild child, knees aching, hands sweatily clutched together as a teen, praying that Mikey would somehow skid out of the hands of the Agnellis and be released from the cell he’d been caught in. Mother Mary, supposedly watching over them all and giving him nothing.

Did he want that from Roxxi? From any woman who swaggered into his life? The achingly sweet, perfect, naïve counterpoint to the darkness that had clung since Georgie first got his claws in.

The head shake was probably lost in the dark, but Chase’s voice forced its way out of a throat that was dry in contrast with his slick damp skin all the same. ”No.” That single word croaked, breaking off into a laugh swallowed with that kiss that came with the echo of those breathed words. There was nothing special about him. No alter ego, no super powers that would’ve allowed him to clean up the neighbourhood that had chewed his family up, not even the smarts to get himself out of New Orleans before the city had left him battered. ”Not like you,” he whispered into that kiss. Thick fingers sliding through her hair, anchoring her there to take what he wanted, that kiss that pressed anything more he might have said against the thud of her pulse that pounded in his lips.

This was special, she was special and he … he was just caught up in the orbit of all of that, happily burning up in the atmosphere until all that would be left was that burnt out husk plunging to the earth without a word of complaint. For so long he’d resisted anything close to it, married to the job even as it chewed him up, only escaping when word of Raven’s presence here had given him that reason to bolt from New Orleans and the pressing darkness there. Fresh start, for him, for Mikey, finally paying out maybe. Definitely paying out.

Chase’s hand slid down to curl around Roxxi’s bare thigh as she brought her leg up, curled it around him to keeping him pinned there. No escape from the atmosphere, no air to drag in either when she was shivering like that. He hummed at it, fingers kneading as he pressed his brow to hers for a moment. Eyes on hers with that growled threat to keep her from scooting away from him. No real threat there but as Roxxi’s hands slipped up to his biceps, gripping just as hard, Chase wondered if digging earlier than this would’ve had them closer than this dance they’d fallen into of brushing up close like this and then being pulled apart. Life’s gravity doing a number on them.

His lips curled faintly, teeth nipping at them as she turned her face up towards his. A slow shake of his head, duty threatening to come rolling back with the thought of his brother at home. A good example for Mikey, that straight and narrow road hair fucking thin. ”With every fuckin’ breath tonight,” he whispered against her mouth. ”Thought you were just gonna blow it all off after that night at the shop, but you’re not – you’re slippery but you’re still there, still holding on. Not lettin’ you go this time Professor.” The grip she did have on him left that ache intensifying in the pit of his stomach. No slipping out of this yet. He was the one eel slick beneath the bite of her fingers. The one slipping his other hand to the curve of her hip to boost her all the way up against him.

A muscled forearm pressing her hips into his, feet sure as he turned them around to start back towards the exit. The party was still raging around them but he didn’t want a dark corner tonight, skulking away like there was anything to hide in this. Less she had something lurking in her life to keep him away from. Sheets of twisted and teasing words obfuscating a truth he wasn’t sure he would’ve dug into anyway. ”You got a reason to be home tonight?” Chase asked, voice rising above the crowd as he swayed through them. No liquor in his system tonight, no reason he couldn’t get behind the wheel and finally put an end to the game of kiss chase the two of them had been snared in since she’d picked him out of that crowd.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 924

A guy whose family’s luck had turned black as pitch before he’d even gotten out of high school should’ve believed in curses. Ill wishes handed out by people whose stock in trade was misery. You could only live under the dark cloud of that before it started it started to leave everything in your life overcast. A touch of that curse brushing up against everything in his life eventually. Mikey, the job, his sanity … this.

Hands clutching at Roxxi’s thighs as he worked through the crowd, Chase tried to juggle what this was. It’d started to spill out of his mouth as she’d prompted him. What he wanted it to be. Seeing that spill of hair like black silk on his pillow, draped on hot bare skin as he put some sort of claim on what had slipped away from him enough that he’d wondered whether this was under the same curse as everything else. The professor destined to slip out of his hands, the two of them resigned to those phone messages. An eternal game of tag designed to torment him for an eternity.

Naw. Even if he had to punch through that wall between them until his chest heaved and his knuckles were bloody he’d do it. Any guy with half a brain cell would do the same.

His heart pounded faster than the music in his chest now. Hers, maybe, a counterpoint against his own, the rhythm below the melody. Mother Mary. The lap of her tongue against his throat, leaving a trail of heat behind it as he groaned into her cheek. He nudged his nose into her cheek as he asked, the words a rasp against tender skin. Chase almost froze as the answer didn’t come immediately. That same hesitation there’d been at the store? Another excuse for the Professor to run like she had before. Pants on fire, hers … and his when she’d shot out the door.

Dark eyes narrowed at her, gleaming slits in the flashing neon bright of the Grill. One brow rose. ”You tell me you’ve got a class in the morning and I’m gonna call the school, tell them you’re in a cell for the night.” Caged up with him when she eventually eroded his last bit of control and all that heat snapped out in one uncontrollable rush to consume them both.

He-

”You wanna paint me now?” Chase stared at her for a moment, watching her eyes go wide before she gulped. For just a second he shook his head and then he was lowering it, the laugh strained, puffing against her collarbone and those painted streaks that glowed bright on her own skin. Another tactic maybe but he couldn’t threaten to lock her up to get out of this one.

Chase’s hands squeezed her hips before he let her slide down. He’d have tangled them in her hair then, dragged her mouth to his to wring some sort of promise out that he wouldn’t end up stumbling out of here on his own again tonight. Aching, looking over his shoulder the whole way home like she’d have changed her mind.

A low groan rolled out of him as she dragged him towards the paint booth. His hands stiffly starting to help as she began to peel him out of his shirt. Chase stripped it off, had it tied around his waist almost immediately so he could catch at her. Hands rough from a life fighting that curse cupped her face, drawing her back in to him. A grin slanted at her, the laugh a sound stopped up in his throat again. ”I want a plea deal. I let you do this and we go out … no comic book shit, no party. Me and you, dinner somewhere. I want a date professor.” Not such a big price to pay, not for him slinking back to the apartment later, likely alone, paint spattered over every granite hewn line of him to draw the big brother ragging out of Mikey the minute he saw him slip in the front door.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 683