Chapter Text
“To be loved, feelings must be rationed. To love, the doors of hysteria, fantasy, and madness may be flung open.”― Anton Szandor Lavey
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Alright, listen up. This is the plot of The Exorcist if you happen to be reading this from under a rock: This priest is on this archaeological dig in Iraq where they uncover this Mesopotamian artifact depicting a horse-hung demon named Pazuzu. This unleashes the demon who then possesses a little girl named Regan and makes her say and do all kinds of filthy rubbish that truly scandalized your mum in the 70’s.
Murdoc was seven when he saw it, sneaking past morons literally protesting it and into the theater with his brother. He proceeded to repeat, “Shove it up your ass, you faggot!” and “Let Jesus fuck you, let Jesus fuck you!” every change he got when his father was out of earshot for the next year.
He had always fancied himself a sort of sex god. That’s what he told himself when he’d lost his virginity just one year later to an older woman. He just had the pheromones, the bollocks, the swagger, the natural magnitude. But there was a major gap in this sexual resume and most of it was about the time he was lugging around his own vegetative assault victim. He’d never admit it out loud, but this chastity belt of human baggage was the real sex god and would put Murdoc’s pretending to shame. It all became real when that creature shambled into his life. Ghouls, demons, magic. Everything Murdoc has encountered or sought out himself could have been explained away with coincidence or drugs or psychosis but him, he made it all real.
He found out in court his name was Stuart. Not a very good name for a sex god but a perfect name for the invalid he was in the first few months Murdoc knew him. Braindead entirely, it seemed, zombified. No speech or significant movement. His consciousness trapped deep inside a pretty blue head. Murdoc could only imagine the kind of person he’d be once he emerged like a butterfly from a chrysalis.
Murdoc didn’t realize you couldn’t rush that sort of thing back then. That you were meant to hang them delicately from a branch to sway in the wind and let them incubate in their own time. If Stuart had really been a pupating insect, the abuse Murdoc put him through would rotted him from the inside before he could stretch his wings. Maybe it did, in a way. He’ll never know now. He can’t change the past.
When Stu’s skull was thrown from Murdoc’s recklessly driven car it cracked against the pavement like wood, opening it again for him to reemerge like a butterfly. No, like a sex god. Standing and looming like a brand new cryptid in the rain, blood pouring from his bludgeoned crown. He could walk now. He could talk now. Animated like Galatea or... or Pinocchio, for those of you that need a less cultured reference.
His big black souless eyes filled with blood and life and Murdoc realized he’d just spent the last few months consumed by him. Possessing him like an object and being possessed in return like Regan, turning sicker with it by the day, as green as pea soup. The suggestion that Stuart could be exorcised from his life compelled him to spew curses and threats. Satan help him, this creature is his and he’ll conduct any intricate ritual he has to to keep it that way.
But the blue muse is packing his bag now. Murdoc is sitting up in his bed in his bedsit, watching him. It’s tense and awkward and he can feel that but it was always awkward and Murdoc got used to pushing through it.
“Can’t imagine you have anywhere to be.” Murdoc finally comments and Stuart pauses, like he’s going to offer some retort, but then goes back to his task of sorting out his clothes in the drawer from Murdoc’s. The arrangement had been unorthodox no matter how you tried to justify it. Community service in the form of keeping a vegetable entertained on the off chance he was capable of being entertained. His body was meant to be stored at home, with his parents, but eventually, Murdoc decided that was too tedious, lugging a body into hacks and having to explain himself every time... so he just... didn’t. Stuart’s parents never reached out to complain. “I changed your fucking catheter bag for the last 3 months, the least you could do is talk-”
“No one asked you to do that!” Stuart snaps, face sploshed red with rage and embarrassment; blood rushing with life after it had been so still for so long, “Tosser!”
“Oi!” Murdoc jerks up off the bed, “You watch it, or your heads gonna run out of space for bloody dents!”
Stuart shrinks. He stares down at the ground, waiting to be hit. Murdoc wonders if he sensed all those times he hit his worthless ragdoll body for the fun of it. Just to connect their skin, brief and hard. He also wonders if he could see him all those times he didn’t hit him. That time he just stared with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and contemplated dragging his knuckles soft across Stuart’s pink ivory skin.
“Seriously.” Murdoc settles back toward the bed, “Where do you have to go?”
Stuart eyes him dubiously, but answers, “I’m gonna stay with my mum for a while... till me head’s right.”
“Too old to live with your mum.” is what he says. What he’s thinking is, ‘She doesn’t give a shit about you. She never came to see you once.’ but if a man ever said that to him, he wouldn’t hesitate to punch him square in the face and Murdoc’s not sure how many more impacts his septum can take before it caves in.
“I’m 19, and it doesn’t matter how old I am, I’ve just had fucking brain damage.” He quietly adds a ‘twat’ under his breath as he rips up a shirt from the drawer and holds it out to the side to examine the graphic printed on it. An iconic red tongue protruding from red lips. Stuart tosses it in his duffle bag.
“That’s mine, dullard.” Murdoc growls.
Stuart glares down at it and picks it up again, examining it for distinguishing marks. He makes a discomforted, scrunched up face. Seeing him so expressive is frankly, unnerving. “I don’t believe you.” Stuart declares, “Name five songs.”
“Name five Rolling Stone’s songs?! Name five songs from the only thing to ever come out of Dartford worth a shit?”
“Go on.” He nods, impatiently.
Murdoc rolls his eyes and starts counting on his fingers, “Sympathy for the Devil. Paint it, Black. Under My Thumb. Beast of Burden and... and Satisfaction.”
Stuart hesitates and then looks down sullen at the shirt in his hands, “... It’s ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.’”
Murdoc squints, irritated by the feeling of endearment buried like spurs under his skin, “Just keep the fucking shirt, Stu.” It’s overwhelming and it’s taking everything not to show it, laying the hate on thick just to mask it. He’s mesmerizing in motion, weird, gaunt, creepy, fascinating. 2D considers the t-shirt offer and takes it, tossing it into his duffle bag, bending down to zip it, and tosses it over his shoulder.
Stuart makes his way for the flat’s front door and Murdoc’s chest swells with unexplainable panic. He stands up straight and starts to follow. Stuart makes it a few steps into the hallway before Murdoc calls after him, “‘Ay, how about you come to my band's show this weekend?” It’s a blurted idea, a nonsequitur. An excuse to plant him somewhere specific, where Murdoc would be. He knew where he lived but he wasn’t about to stalk him... if he didn’t have to. “Since you like the Rolling Stones, I mean.”
Stuart turns around and at least five different expressions play across his scrapped up face, each of them only reading to Murdoc as some unique variation on the confused or upset classics. Faces of Stupid, Murdoc would title the complication. “Where at?” He asks, slightly flinching back as soon as he does like he didn't really mean to.
“Here in Sussex. In a sort of Goth joint called Poe’s.”
The bag on his shoulder slumps down an inch, “Do you... sound like the Rolling Stones?”
“Huh! Erm-” Murdoc fumbles, because they don’t, not at all. They sound more like Marilyn Manson if the fop had nads and a healthy sense of irony. “Better, even.” He puts on his most charismatic grins.
They stand in silence for another moment, probably felt longer than it was, before 2D flashes his missing front tooth and pips as he turns on his heels, “Cheers.” He walks out of sight, around the corner, toward the lift and all Murdoc can do is stand there and choose to believe he’ll spot that blue hair in a crowd of wild, cheering fans that Saturday.
Clearly, his powers of manifestation far out-class all mortal men because he does, in fact, spot blue hair in the crowd. The crowd of subdued, self-absorbed pub-goers that don’t seem the least bit interested in his band baring there fucking souls for them like they always do at every live gig. At the moment, Murdoc is just droning on the name ‘Dracula’ over and over and then saying ‘Everybody! Party Time!’ as if the music is about to suddenly become more upbeat and dance-y, but doesn’t... Which is really quite clever and subversive to anyone on Murdoc’s levels.
When the set is over, typically Murdoc would stand there and take in the scant applauds or throw a fit if it were too scant, but this night he slings his bass off his shoulder and pierces single minded through the bar to where the dim mood lights bounce off blue and make it glow like those little plastic stars on children’s bedroom ceilings.
Stuart is sitting at a tall round table and turns as Murdoc approaches, calm recognition flashes in his black-out eyes.
“Hey, uh-” Murdoc fumbles the greeting. ‘Mate’ doesn’t feel right. ‘Stuart’ doesn’t either.
“This is ‘im.” Stuart gestures as he turns to a woman also sitting at the table that Murdoc hadn’t noticed before.
“Yeah, right, I ‘member.” She leans in, black sunglasses holding back her choppy bleached bangs. “You ‘member me, Murdoc? ‘S Crissy!” Murdoc guesses she’d be around Stuart's age but her heroin-chic features make her seem older, more mature. She’d visited him once shortly after the accident in Murdoc’s flat and just sort of ambled about saying, “Cor, blimey, swell digs. Real home-y” or something stupid like that, chatting him up. He would have slept with her if he found her even remotely attractive.
“Yeah, yeah. Crissy, right. So, what’d you think?” His eyes dart to Stuart, then to Crissy, to make it seem like the question is for the table and not Stuart specifically, though his gaze settles comfortably on him.
“I got into it once I stopped anticipating the Rolling Stones.” Crissy comments. “Like when you go to sip a tea but it’s actually a coffee so it tastes off, at first...”
Murdoc ignores her, waiting on Stuart’s answer, “Right, yeah, but once you know it’s tea, it’s nice.” He sort of smiles.
“It’s coffee, Stu.” She patiently corrects.
“Is it?” Stu inspects the nearly empty glass beer bottle on the table, “D’You think brain damage affects your taste buds?”
There’s this sort of bizarre aggression that sometimes overcomes humans and baffles scientists that is triggered by something being ‘too cute’. Not in a ‘it’s so cheesy, it disgust me.’ sort of way, more like a ‘I feel so disarmed and weakened by this defenseless creature, I want to crush it just to be rid of the burden of needing to protect it.’ You’re not a psychopath for wanting to step on a baby kitten and neither is Murdoc for the all times he’s been faced with Stuart’s disarming stupidity and felt fucking violent about it.
Crissy sighs, “Well, it definitely affects your brain.”
“Come get your ‘tar, Niccals! The next band’s gotta set up!” Rocky, the keyboardist, calls from the stage and Murdoc could have whirled around and scratched his eyes out.
“Back in a jif.” Murdoc stays composed and cuts through the bar and quickly stuffs his black, sticker-plastered bass in it’s carry bag. By the time he’s turned around Stuart and his date are out of their seats, closer to the stage and mingling. Well, Crissy is. Stuart is standing there looking awkward, hands shoved in his pockets, spacey gazing about.
“Hey, uh-” Murdoc will stick the greeting eventually. ‘Mate’ still doesn’t feel right. He should try ‘Sunshine’, maybe? No, that’s ridiculous.
“Oh me fookn God!” Crunch nearly trips trying to get out from behind the drum screen and over the various wires on the cramped, frowsy stage. “Dent woke up!”
“Huh?” Stuart folds in on himself a bit from practically being yelled out by a stranger. An intimidating one at that.
The drummer had met Stu before, when he was a vegetable and they called him by nothing but rude names based on that fact and the injury that caused it. “Dents.” Murdoc corrects, taking out a box of cigarettes and offering them, “At least two now. Right, Two Dents?” He shakes the box practically in his face, insistent.
Two Dents slides out a fag, “If you’re talkn about me head, it’s been banged up more then twice.”
Crunch starts boisterously laughing and Murdoc takes the moment to gesture Stuart away from the group, closer to the wall where it’s a bit more acceptable to puff a smoke, more isolated. Stu holds it to his lips while Murdoc lights it, after lighting his own.
“So Crissy’s a right knob, yeah?” He says around a smoky exhale and gestures at the cod blond across the room, chatting up his band.
Stuart laugh-coughs, but recovers quickly, “She’s alright. I wasn’t gonna come but I mentioned you and your invite and she wanted to have a butcher so...” A touch of melancholy plays across his face, “Before I thought we were gonna be a long term thing and I guess she did too or she wouldn’t have agreed to keep going with me when I called her but, I don’t know. Feels different now.”
Murdoc keeps making mental notes of the things he’s learning about the soul inhabiting his familiar vessel. Stu is the sort to get way too personal way too quickly.
“She’s...” Stu continues, “not exactly the girl you bring home to make your dad proud either.”
He gives an understanding grunt, “I’ve never had that issue. Bugger-all I did could ever make my dad proud. My advice: The sooner you give up, the sooner you’re free.” The self-humored grin sticks on Murdoc’s face as he watches 2D’s grow uncomfortable. Ah, so it’s only alright when he does it! Murdoc pivots, “The boys and I do a bit of charlie after the show. You can join if that's, you know, something you do.”
Dents looks across the bar and starts fidgeting nervously with the smoldering stick, rolling it between his fingers, “I’m- I’m supposed to be straight now. I was suppose to be getting straight before and then everything got out of me system over the course of, well, and-”
“Who says you’re ‘supposed to be straight’?” Murdoc curtly asks.
“Mum doesn’t want me on anything stronger then vicodin and Crissy hates ‘big pharma’ and chemicals and all that.”
“Christ, she really is a knob. Just break it off now. Want me to do it for you?”
“No! No... let’s just... D’you ‘ave Zan?”
Murdoc shakes his head, “Nah, not on me. I’ve got loads of different pills at the flat.”
Stu lets out a thoughtful, if not hesitant, hum.
The rest of the night was like that one scene in that book with the green light on the other side of the bay. Where they’re drunk and they get on an elevator and it feels like you lost the plot and next thing you know you're in bed in your underwear with the protagonist and a photographer looking at his photo album. Except no one’s in their underwear (which is rare form for Murdoc in his own flat) and he isn’t in bed with Stuart, and they’re looking at vinyl albums, not photo albums.
Stu tabs one at a time through a box beside him on the bed while Murdoc paces around the entire perimeter of his living space, ranting, “People don’t know what they want! They want the same things over and over, they want to be spoon fed, they want all the celebrity drivel that goes along with it. But that’s not music! That’s not fucking art! I’m telling you, Stu, I’m ahead of my time or - or simply above it all!”
“Oh, I’ve got this one!” He holds up Kate Bush’s Breathing, the woman laid out on the cover spreading her bat wings (surprisingly, not a euphemism).
Murdoc walks up and pulls out a Led Zeppelin album predictably featuring the Hindenburg, “What about them?”
He slides the Bush album back in it’s slot, “Know of them. They’re alright.”
“Really?” Murdoc grimaces. “AC/DC? You gotta love rock’s alphabet.”
Stuart shakes his head, “Same story, ‘eard of ‘em, but-”
“Christ! Jimi Hendricks?!” Stu shakes his head as Murdoc jumps a bit to sit on the raised mattress, the box of record between them, “Barry White?! Black Sabbath, the Brummies that invented the devil?! Nothing?!”
Dents keeps shaking his head as he smirks and asks, “What does the devil have to do with music?”
Murdoc’s brows turn up in exasperation (not that you could really tell under the bangs), putting it on a bit, voice going up octaves, “What does the devil have to do with music?! You really have to ask that? Satan has used music to seduce mankind since God launched it out of her snatch and let Kiss adopt it.” Murdoc pantomimes firing a newborn from between his legs. “And they say if you want real success in the business, you’ve got to go through him.”
Stu looks dubious, “Ian Dury didn’t need the devil.”
“Oh, is Ian Dury your handicapped hero, then, blockhead? ”
Stu visibly prickles. “Ian Dury has more talent in his pinky than you-”
“No, I’m getting the picture now.” Murdoc launches to his feet to find his bass, ready to show Dents just how much talent he has stored in his pinky compared to Ian fucking Dury, “Talking Heads?”
He settles with the question, “... Yeah, I like Talking Heads.”
“Magazine?”
Stu smiles, “Oh, yeah, they’re brilliant.”
Murdoc throws the strap over his shoulder, then walks up to the stolen Casio against the wall. He presses a few buttons cueing up a drumbeat. He steps back and gestures at the machine with a little bow like he’s presenting a musical offering. Then he puts his fingers to work. Distinct and twangy, 2D’s face lights up with recognition like Murdoc struck a match in him, heat at his finger tips.
They’re missing the guitar, but Suart fills in with the keys where he can. Murdoc shifts his focus between his own fingers playing across the thick strings and Stu’s, long and bony, clumsy to find the precise keys of a familiar tune, yet gliding like dancers on his instrument.
And then Murdoc nearly stops playing, because Stu does something he hadn’t asked for or expected.
He sings.
“Time flies. Time crawls. Like an insect. Up and down the walls. The light-” He presses a confident chord into the keys, “-pours out of me. The light pours out of me...”
He sings it like Howard Devoto should have sung it, applying a sweet melody where there wasn’t much to begin with. He sings like an angel mingling unholy with the rich, sinful bass that Murdoc’s now producing in a trance.
“The cold light of day. Pours out of me. Leaving me black. And so healthy. The light pours out of me...”
Everything Murdoc had been working toward. All the success that eluded him. Now it’s just in his grasp. In his bedsit. And light pours from him.
“It jerks out of me. Like blood. In this still life. Heart beats up love. The light pours out of me.
The light pours out...
Now. How to contain it.
𒀭𒈕𒈨