|
|
|
| news | the band | the comic | albums | events | store | bonus tracks | fan club | linkage |
| |
Historical Warfare
by Halo's Angel
"Does it make you uncomfortable?" L.L. asked, leaning on the doorway and watching J.L. polish his buttons.
"Vas?" J.L. wondered, undoing the latch on the brass cleaning guard snapped around his buttons and moving it down to the next set. "Oh, the costume, you mean?"
LL nodded. He was already in his own stage gear, buttons shined and his gig line as straight as he could manage to make it. But next to their German-born bassist, L.L. felt like the amazing southern hippy boy. He wasn't even sure why J.L. was bothering to shine his buttons, since they were already gleaming like small bright stars against the black gabardine. Under the lights he was going to look like he had fastened his cuffs out of sparks of fire.
"Well it's not exactly comfortable, if that's what you mean." J.L. slipped a finger in the stiff collar of his jacket, trying to loosen it. "It's a good thing I'm not singing."
L.L. shook his head. "I didn't mean comfortable, I just meant, you know." He blew at a stray tendril of hair, looking for words. "I wondered if your thought it might be in bad taste or something."
"Why would it bother me?" J.L. said carefully, to the buckle of his belt.
L.L. didn't answer, walking over to J.L.'s dresser and picking up the red satin armband. A black Culture Bats logo on a white field flashed up between his fingers. "Just," he said, and let it fall from his hand again, "You know it's a fact that the fangirls go nuts over a hint of the Third Reich."
"Well," J.L.'s mouth twisted in a smile of part amusement, part sarcasm. "I would be delusional if I said the Nazi theme was not one of the Japanese pop industry's most inexplicably cunning marketing techniques." He shrugged his shoulders as best he could in the constrictive uniform. "It sells, and it's not precisely historical, so I don't mind."
"That and the fact that once we got Twist in the boots, we weren't going to get him back out of them again." L.L. made a show of checking his buttons in the mirror, but his eyes were moving sideways, watching J.L. fasten the buckles on the wrists of his black kid gloves. "I was just wondering if it was why you carry it off better than all of us." J.L.'s eyes met L.L.'s in the mirror, and L.L. quickly focused on his own reflection, tugging at the hem of his jacket. "Some genetic racial trait, you think?"
The armband for J.L.'s uniform lay on his dresser, between his cologne and the comfortably bulky metal crumple of his favorite wristwatch. J.L. looked at it, gleaming there in the dim evening light slanting through the blinds, and thought about genetics. "Maybe. But there is no more warfare in my history than in yours, Herr Richard." His smile might have been forced, just a fraction, as he ran a gloved fingertip over the satin crease of the armband, and closed his hand around it.
"I wonder," L.L. said, lifting up the weight of his loose hair and then letting it fall again, as if dissatisfied with the chaos of it next to his ordered epaulettes. "Sometimes I feel like a real veteran. Oh, right." He realized J.L. was asking a question with his hands, and reached over to help him fasten the armband to his sleeve.
"It's not distasteful to wear confederate uniforms in the southern states, is it?" J.L. said. "I'm sure I've seen people do it."
"Hmmm," L.L. said, having trouble with the bottom snap on the band, "If you're a reenactor or something, I guess it's not, but decking out like this... I feel kinda like the KKK or something."
J.L. laughed under his breath, shaking his head. Of his bandmates, L.L. was the one who most often surprised him, coming not from a familiar country or the whitewashed version of America he had grown up reading about. "I hadn't thought of it that way. The Japanese, as a losing side themselves, have a real sympathetic side to lost causes, whether or not they were good causes in the first place. I'm sure I've read an article about it somewhere. Besides," he smiled as L.L. finally got the snap together. "The Klan have much more the toga and bedsheet look about them, don't they? Hardly any sense of style at all."
L.L. smiled at last, but the little worried line between his eyes didn't quite go away. "If you say so. I just, you know, didn't want you doing anything that you were uncomfortable with."
"Standing in front of thousands of screaming fangirls and trying to remember my riffs makes me distinctly uncomfortable," J.L. said, dryly. "At least in this I can feel like I'm playing some kind of part, but if Armistice ever decides we'd sell in a suit and tie look, I'd be a lost man."
That finally got the laugh, a real one, and not the muted sort of chuckle L.L. used in interviews. "Fair enough." His fingers smoothed the satin on the armband, and even through the layers of fabric J.L. could feel warmth from them. His voice was low, drowsy soft with his accent. "I think we all would be." He glanced sideways at J.L. through his hair, his eyes green glints that gave away nothing. J.L.'s collar felt suddenly too tight.
"Really?" he said, forcing himself to keep his tone light. "And why is that, Lawrence?"
L.L. didn't answer, but the grip on J.L.'s arm became suddenly too tight as L.L. pulled him forward, boots scraping protest on the floor, their mouths meeting in an unexpected kiss. J.L. knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he shouldn't give in, but L.L. tasted of clove smoke and Southern Comfort, his just washed hair still slightly damp, heavy and smelling faintly of apples as it fell against J.L.'s cheek. He let out the breath he was holding and buried his gloved hands in the honey weight of L.L.'s hair, their buttons and belt buckles clinking brassy protest between the press of their bodies.
The uniform, already confining, became almost sweetly constrictive as L.L.'s hands moved from the carefully tailored small of J.L.'s back to the curve of his ass in the tight black pants, pressing him up against his dresser. J.L. made a faint noise of need as L.L.'s hipbone ground pleasantly between his legs, breaking off the kiss with a gasp. "We haven't got time, Mein Freunde--"
"Time enough," L.L. answered, fingers forcing every perfect shiny button back through its buttonhole, pushing J.L.'s jacket open and pulling his shirt free of the heavy black belt. "Unless you want me to leave you like this?" His hand slipped into the open front of J.L.'s pants, and folded his kidskin fingers around the hard curve of his bandmate's cock.
J.L moaned, reaching back to brace himself on the edge of the dresser. "Junge will come calling for us--"
"Not just yet, he won't," L.L. went to his knees, raking his hair back with one hand. "And I don't think he'd mind seeing you like this, J.L."
"Nein--" J.L. began, in agreement or protest even he wasn't sure, as L.L. leaned forward and drew the whole flushed aching length of J.L.'s cock into his mouth. J.L. tilted his head back against his dresser mirror, tugging his glove off with his teeth and tangling his bare hand in L.L.'s cool hair. "Nnn gott... ser gut, Lawrence..."
L.L. hastily fumbled his own belt free with a clang as it hit the floor, and J.L. glanced down in time to see L.L.'s gloved fist close around his own sex. The edge of the dresser creaked as J.L. gripped it harder, rocking his hips up into the yielding mouth taking him in. Motion on the far side of the room startled him, but it was only the mirror on the back of his closed door, giving him an unexpected view of the two of them there, black uniforms disheveled, armbands gleaming crimson in the sunset light. J.L. felt his face go hot as he saw himself, glasses forgotten on the bed, his sleek hair falling over one eye, making him look like someone else. L.L. moaned around the cock filling his mouth, his hips snapping into the motion of his hand. J.L. turned his eyes to L.L. but the image of his brother's face lingered, like a reflection still in the mirror. "Good boy," he said, voice rough with what he knew was coming. "Show me." L.L. made a soft helpless noise between J.L.'s legs and came into his hand, spattering his glove and the perfect black polish of J.L.'s boots.
J.L. felt the rush coming and did nothing to stop it, letting it pull him under as he followed, Augustine's face lingering in his mind, L.L. swallowing him greedily. When J.L. shook himself a moment later he realized that the room had gone dim purple with oncoming night, and L.L.'s tongue was moving over the ankle strap of his boot, licking it clean. He shivered, wondering if somewhere in his own fantasy he had told L.L. to do it. "Nein, L.L., you don't have to--"
L.L. sat up, smiling, and drug a hand across his swollen lips. "I wanted to," he said. He looked up at J.L. and ran his palms lovingly up the stripes on the sides of J.L.'s pants. "Call it a latent fetish of mine."
"Errgnnft." J.L. said, elegantly, and pushed himself upright against the dresser. "You might have warned me."
L.L. arched an eyebrow. "And given you time to come up with an excuse? No way." He rose stiffly, legs tired from kneeling on the hard floor, and touched J.L.'s face, moving close to kiss him. "Thanks," he said, and he tasted now like salt and sex, sated and lazy. He fastened his pants, smoothing the fabric, and pulled the sunglasses from the breast pocket of his uniform. "I've been thinking about that since we picked up the costumes." His fingers danced up the front of J.L.'s shirt, redoing buttons as the German bassist watched him. "I guess I have to agree with fans on this one."
"Well," J.L. said, finishing the last of the buttons on his jacket, his fingers intercepting L.L.'s, tilting his head to brush their lips together. "Remind me to thank them."
The knock on the door startled them both apart, guilty, but the door did not open. "Limo's here! Let's go already!"
"Be right down L.J.!" L.L. called back in answer, and reached for the monocle in its case on the dresser, and the lens and chain slithered into J.L.'s hand. "Let's go knock 'em dead then."
J.L. watched L.L. go, as casual as if he had just dropped in to deliver a message and then gone on his way again. "I think you already have," He said to himself, catching up his discarded glove and following. But he did not turn back to either of the mirrors in his room, unwilling to let his reflected eyes watch him go.
copyright © 2004 teaux teaux records, inc., armistice productions. website design by j.j. kitty site creations. to report any site errors, broken links, etc, e-mail webguru at twisteaux.com. privacy policy.
