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blue_bells» Title: The Tragedy in the Vial
» Fandom: Warehouse 13
» Warnings: Spoilers for Season 2 finale
» Pairing(s)/Characters: Pete/Joshua, Claudia
» Summary: There's one row of artefacts with broken displays and Joshua's too green to heed Pete's warning.
» A/N: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
afiawri under the Five Acts meme (clothed sex, outdoors, marked in public).
They had been stocktaking to avoid Claudia and Artie’s latest storm.
Since Myka left, Joshua’s been lingering at Pete’s side as though he’d found an ally he could trust and Pete slapped a hand on his shoulder because in a climate typically dominated by the clash of wills between Artie, Claudia and Myka? He understood. Now that it was just Claudia and Artie shouting each other down in that office, it was even worse.
Pete and Joshua were two aisles down from the Dark Vault and Joshua was cursing under his breath because they were working in the vicinity of an artefact acting like a small sun and neither of them could find it.
“Come on, I have a vat of neutralizer with your name on it,” Joshua leans back on the ladder, reading the labels of the top shelf.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, Pete squints at his partner of the day and rolls up his sleeves.
“Hey, can you tell Claudia there’s a whole row of artefacts down here with broken displays? None of them are working,” Pete says.
“The electronics are probably overheating because of that artefact. Claudia will want to address that –“ Joshua looks down at Pete from his ladder, “But don’t tell her ‘til I’m gone or she’ll crash my morning REM to share her plans for dual-cooling systems.”
Pete sighs, hands on his hips as he considers the row of display-less artefacts.
“She’s your only sister, Joshua. She’s just trying to spend time with you, go easy on her.”
“I know….” Joshua’s voice strangles like there’s something else he wants to say, but then he shakes his head and comes down the ladder, grabbing a pitcher from the shelf with broken artefact displays.
Pete startles, wary.
“Whoa, you better put that back—“
Joshua jumps to the ground, pewter pitcher bouncing against his thigh and he looks at Pete impatiently.
“Pete, we’re dying here. There’s a tap of filtered water one aisle down – look.”
Joshua unflaps a metal foil neutralizer bag from his pocket and slips the pitcher inside. It doesn’t quite fit, but Pete feels much better when the familiar purple sparks fly. He nods with a sigh and waves off Joshua’s expression of ‘well?’ He could really use the drink, too.
Pete turns back to consider the aisles of artefacts while Joshua jogs off, but all he can really think about is how wetly his shirt is clinging to him and he’s regretting his choice that morning for thick cotton. The warehouse was usually a cold place to work and if he knew he was going to be working next to a sun, or reactor, or whatever it was, he would have come to work in nothing but board shorts.
He grins, thinking about the look Myka would have given him at his beach in the desert look. He wishes he’d done it before she left.
Thankfully, Joshua returns with the full pitcher before those thoughts can go much further and he nods gratefully when Joshua lets him have the first drink straight from the pitcher.
The water feels like it’s been chilled and it’s so, so good.
He licks his lips, passing the pitcher back to Joshua who all but throws his head back and a thin line of water escapes the corner of his mouth, running down his chin, neck and into his shirt that’s already dark with sweat. Pete thinks it used to be some shade of green.
He waves Joshua off when offered the pitcher again because he’s already feeling a lot better.
In fact, he feels fantastic. The tension at the back of his head is easing, he didn’t even realise it had been there and it feels like it could have mounted into a headache. The knot at his lower back from the bad football throw earlier in the week is unwinding and the weariness in his muscles from the persistent artefact heat is leaking away.
Pete raises a suspicious eyebrow at the pitcher when Joshua lowers it from his lips.
“Are you sure that thing’s been neutralized?” Pete asks, unable to keep the wariness out of his voice because when artefacts looked good, it usually meant extremely bad things were still to come.
“… Yeah.”
Joshua looks into the pitcher and back to Pete. He blinks, startled and Pete leaps from suspicion to worry.
“What is it?” Pete asks, already reaching out to take the pitcher from him. His fingers close around the pewter lip, Joshua’s grip still on the handle and Pete’s vision narrows to a single focus.
It’s not like in the Mills-and-Boon novels where the world fades behind a cotton wool curtain and you start seeing everything in blurred, rosy hues.
Pete feels like someone shoved their hand against his throat, squeezing tight and in that momentary shock, the only thing he sees is Joshua, slack-jawed and immobile. Pete sways, finding his feet again as the white fades from his peripheral vision, but he can’t find his equilibrium, he’s being dragged like there’s a chain at the center of his chest and the world’s tipped, like there’s a vacuum in the aisle and it’s drawing him inexorably forward.
To Joshua.
All the lightness in Pete’s body evaporates because one look at Joshua’s face (he looks stricken, pained and Pete feels so guilty) and he can’t breathe, he has to get to him because the air won’t be so thin over there and he doesn’t realise Joshua already has his hands on him until Pete feels knuckles curling in his shirt collar.
“What--? What the?” Joshua gasps, eyes wide in fear and a confusion Pete echoes.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry….” Pete shakes his head, he’s not sure why he’s apologising, but he can feel the fever flush of Joshua through his clothes and the frantic ache hits him with an urgency that feels like a physical blow between his ribs. He just wants to get closer, he needs to get closer. He needs Joshua.
Joshua’s fingers are grasping at Pete’s shoulders, his chest, they can’t stop moving and Pete groans when Joshua moulds against him, face falling against Pete’s neck. Pete feels tongue and teeth beneath his jaw and then Joshua latches on with an interest that will definitely leave a mark.
There’s a full-body shudder as Pete pushes his hands up Joshua’s back, fingers digging into the valley of Joshua’s spine through his shirt. Joshua curls with a groan, leaning his forehead against Pete’s and Pete can’t stop apologising.
He feels Joshua frown, catches the edge of his scowl and why does that hurt so much?
“Shh, stop it,” Joshua pleads, desperately.
Pete doesn’t hear him correctly and reels at the sudden vice around his heart. He tries to back away, managing to pry his hands from their tangle in Joshua’s hair, but then Joshua makes a noise that turns his knees to jelly and later, he’ll be secretly grateful that Joshua was the one who bridged the last divide and yanked him back, crushing their mouths together.
Joshua smells like sweat and dust and old pages, but he tastes of that morning’s grapefruit and the mint gum he chews and Pete wants to taste all of him.
Joshua wraps around him, sliding against Pete with a keening moan like he’s trying to climb inside his clothes, beneath his skin. He gasps and Pete’s tongue slides in, the kiss is deep and wet and there’s a yearning that frightens him, but the warning is a quiet thrum beneath the frantic need that’s only building.
The whole aisle shakes with a startled shriek of metal and glass when Pete slams Joshua against the shelf, feels and hears his grunt of pain. Pete’s hands are pushing down, grasping him through his pants and Pete swallows Joshua’s groan as hands wind in his hair, around his shoulders. Pete’s running on auto-pilot under some higher directive, body shivering as he grinds down when Joshua bucks up, his hand caught between them and now Joshua’s hands are on his ass, pulling him closer, mouth moving over Pete’s and –
There's a squeak of shoes skidding to an abrupt stop on the cement.
“Holy mother of—!”
Joshua’s fingers only pull Pete in tighter and his eyes are shut when he draws away with a wet sound, leaning their foreheads together.
“Go away, Claudia,” Joshua growls.
Pete, for his part, is in no better state and can’t even pull his hands back, groaning when Joshua rolls, slow and hard against him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go.
There’s a shocked, sputtering noise growing closer and then Claudia’s tennis shoes squeak again like she’s spun on the cement behind them.
“Is this Brangäne’s vial?” Claudia sounds lost somewhere between horror and reluctant interest.
Pete has no idea what she’s talking about, but then she’s beside them, shaking the pitcher in her safe, gloved grip.
“Hey!” She barks at them, pinches Pete’s cheek and that earns her a dirty, dirty look. She blinks, taken aback for a moment, but she recovers and shoves the pitcher in his face. “There’s water in here, did you two idiots drink from this?”
Huh. He’d forgotten all about that. He doesn’t even remember dropping it.
Pete sighs, trying to clear his head for a single thought that isn’t Joshua and it’s a physically monumental effort.
“We were thirsty?” Pete finally manages, “But we neutralized it and—“
Claudia groans long and loud, rolling her eyes as she steps away and turns her back to them, for which Pete is infinitely grateful because when he looks back into Joshua’s face, the guy is smirking, dark and hungry. Pete groans relief as Joshua surges against him for another kiss, messy and consuming.
“Artie! Artie, you’ve got to help me,” Claudia’s urgently talking into her Fairnsworth. “Pete and Joshua drank out of Brangäne’s vial and they’re about to start procreating!”
Pete grins at the predictable, screeching What?? response, but he has no idea what they’re talking about. A vial? A pitcher?
All he knows is that Joshua’s against him and that’s everything he needs.
Hours later, he and Joshua will agree that it was all Claudia’s fault for not maintaining the artefact containment and cooling system better.
POST-SCRIPT NOTES:
The artefact in question, Brangäne’s vial, is based on the legend (tragedy) of Tristan and Isolde. Borrowing from Wagner's opera, when Isolde's maid Brangäne learns that Isolde intends to poison Tristan for bringing her to marry his uncle, Brangäne switches the poison in her vial for a love potion that Isolde and Tristan then drink. And so, the tragedy begins: it would make any two people who drank of it at the same time obsessively, wretchedly in love and is too powerful to be neutralized by a bag (a vat would have been better). The notion behind the name is that, like many artefacts, the 'vial' isn't actually a vial, but a pitcher, or a cup, i.e. the name isn't always accurate.
» Fandom: Warehouse 13
» Warnings: Spoilers for Season 2 finale
» Pairing(s)/Characters: Pete/Joshua, Claudia
» Summary: There's one row of artefacts with broken displays and Joshua's too green to heed Pete's warning.
» A/N: Written for
afiawri under the Five Acts meme (clothed sex, outdoors, marked in public).They had been stocktaking to avoid Claudia and Artie’s latest storm.
Since Myka left, Joshua’s been lingering at Pete’s side as though he’d found an ally he could trust and Pete slapped a hand on his shoulder because in a climate typically dominated by the clash of wills between Artie, Claudia and Myka? He understood. Now that it was just Claudia and Artie shouting each other down in that office, it was even worse.
Pete and Joshua were two aisles down from the Dark Vault and Joshua was cursing under his breath because they were working in the vicinity of an artefact acting like a small sun and neither of them could find it.
“Come on, I have a vat of neutralizer with your name on it,” Joshua leans back on the ladder, reading the labels of the top shelf.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, Pete squints at his partner of the day and rolls up his sleeves.
“Hey, can you tell Claudia there’s a whole row of artefacts down here with broken displays? None of them are working,” Pete says.
“The electronics are probably overheating because of that artefact. Claudia will want to address that –“ Joshua looks down at Pete from his ladder, “But don’t tell her ‘til I’m gone or she’ll crash my morning REM to share her plans for dual-cooling systems.”
Pete sighs, hands on his hips as he considers the row of display-less artefacts.
“She’s your only sister, Joshua. She’s just trying to spend time with you, go easy on her.”
“I know….” Joshua’s voice strangles like there’s something else he wants to say, but then he shakes his head and comes down the ladder, grabbing a pitcher from the shelf with broken artefact displays.
Pete startles, wary.
“Whoa, you better put that back—“
Joshua jumps to the ground, pewter pitcher bouncing against his thigh and he looks at Pete impatiently.
“Pete, we’re dying here. There’s a tap of filtered water one aisle down – look.”
Joshua unflaps a metal foil neutralizer bag from his pocket and slips the pitcher inside. It doesn’t quite fit, but Pete feels much better when the familiar purple sparks fly. He nods with a sigh and waves off Joshua’s expression of ‘well?’ He could really use the drink, too.
Pete turns back to consider the aisles of artefacts while Joshua jogs off, but all he can really think about is how wetly his shirt is clinging to him and he’s regretting his choice that morning for thick cotton. The warehouse was usually a cold place to work and if he knew he was going to be working next to a sun, or reactor, or whatever it was, he would have come to work in nothing but board shorts.
He grins, thinking about the look Myka would have given him at his beach in the desert look. He wishes he’d done it before she left.
Thankfully, Joshua returns with the full pitcher before those thoughts can go much further and he nods gratefully when Joshua lets him have the first drink straight from the pitcher.
The water feels like it’s been chilled and it’s so, so good.
He licks his lips, passing the pitcher back to Joshua who all but throws his head back and a thin line of water escapes the corner of his mouth, running down his chin, neck and into his shirt that’s already dark with sweat. Pete thinks it used to be some shade of green.
He waves Joshua off when offered the pitcher again because he’s already feeling a lot better.
In fact, he feels fantastic. The tension at the back of his head is easing, he didn’t even realise it had been there and it feels like it could have mounted into a headache. The knot at his lower back from the bad football throw earlier in the week is unwinding and the weariness in his muscles from the persistent artefact heat is leaking away.
Pete raises a suspicious eyebrow at the pitcher when Joshua lowers it from his lips.
“Are you sure that thing’s been neutralized?” Pete asks, unable to keep the wariness out of his voice because when artefacts looked good, it usually meant extremely bad things were still to come.
“… Yeah.”
Joshua looks into the pitcher and back to Pete. He blinks, startled and Pete leaps from suspicion to worry.
“What is it?” Pete asks, already reaching out to take the pitcher from him. His fingers close around the pewter lip, Joshua’s grip still on the handle and Pete’s vision narrows to a single focus.
It’s not like in the Mills-and-Boon novels where the world fades behind a cotton wool curtain and you start seeing everything in blurred, rosy hues.
Pete feels like someone shoved their hand against his throat, squeezing tight and in that momentary shock, the only thing he sees is Joshua, slack-jawed and immobile. Pete sways, finding his feet again as the white fades from his peripheral vision, but he can’t find his equilibrium, he’s being dragged like there’s a chain at the center of his chest and the world’s tipped, like there’s a vacuum in the aisle and it’s drawing him inexorably forward.
To Joshua.
All the lightness in Pete’s body evaporates because one look at Joshua’s face (he looks stricken, pained and Pete feels so guilty) and he can’t breathe, he has to get to him because the air won’t be so thin over there and he doesn’t realise Joshua already has his hands on him until Pete feels knuckles curling in his shirt collar.
“What--? What the?” Joshua gasps, eyes wide in fear and a confusion Pete echoes.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry….” Pete shakes his head, he’s not sure why he’s apologising, but he can feel the fever flush of Joshua through his clothes and the frantic ache hits him with an urgency that feels like a physical blow between his ribs. He just wants to get closer, he needs to get closer. He needs Joshua.
Joshua’s fingers are grasping at Pete’s shoulders, his chest, they can’t stop moving and Pete groans when Joshua moulds against him, face falling against Pete’s neck. Pete feels tongue and teeth beneath his jaw and then Joshua latches on with an interest that will definitely leave a mark.
There’s a full-body shudder as Pete pushes his hands up Joshua’s back, fingers digging into the valley of Joshua’s spine through his shirt. Joshua curls with a groan, leaning his forehead against Pete’s and Pete can’t stop apologising.
He feels Joshua frown, catches the edge of his scowl and why does that hurt so much?
“Shh, stop it,” Joshua pleads, desperately.
Pete doesn’t hear him correctly and reels at the sudden vice around his heart. He tries to back away, managing to pry his hands from their tangle in Joshua’s hair, but then Joshua makes a noise that turns his knees to jelly and later, he’ll be secretly grateful that Joshua was the one who bridged the last divide and yanked him back, crushing their mouths together.
Joshua smells like sweat and dust and old pages, but he tastes of that morning’s grapefruit and the mint gum he chews and Pete wants to taste all of him.
Joshua wraps around him, sliding against Pete with a keening moan like he’s trying to climb inside his clothes, beneath his skin. He gasps and Pete’s tongue slides in, the kiss is deep and wet and there’s a yearning that frightens him, but the warning is a quiet thrum beneath the frantic need that’s only building.
The whole aisle shakes with a startled shriek of metal and glass when Pete slams Joshua against the shelf, feels and hears his grunt of pain. Pete’s hands are pushing down, grasping him through his pants and Pete swallows Joshua’s groan as hands wind in his hair, around his shoulders. Pete’s running on auto-pilot under some higher directive, body shivering as he grinds down when Joshua bucks up, his hand caught between them and now Joshua’s hands are on his ass, pulling him closer, mouth moving over Pete’s and –
There's a squeak of shoes skidding to an abrupt stop on the cement.
“Holy mother of—!”
Joshua’s fingers only pull Pete in tighter and his eyes are shut when he draws away with a wet sound, leaning their foreheads together.
“Go away, Claudia,” Joshua growls.
Pete, for his part, is in no better state and can’t even pull his hands back, groaning when Joshua rolls, slow and hard against him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go.
There’s a shocked, sputtering noise growing closer and then Claudia’s tennis shoes squeak again like she’s spun on the cement behind them.
“Is this Brangäne’s vial?” Claudia sounds lost somewhere between horror and reluctant interest.
Pete has no idea what she’s talking about, but then she’s beside them, shaking the pitcher in her safe, gloved grip.
“Hey!” She barks at them, pinches Pete’s cheek and that earns her a dirty, dirty look. She blinks, taken aback for a moment, but she recovers and shoves the pitcher in his face. “There’s water in here, did you two idiots drink from this?”
Huh. He’d forgotten all about that. He doesn’t even remember dropping it.
Pete sighs, trying to clear his head for a single thought that isn’t Joshua and it’s a physically monumental effort.
“We were thirsty?” Pete finally manages, “But we neutralized it and—“
Claudia groans long and loud, rolling her eyes as she steps away and turns her back to them, for which Pete is infinitely grateful because when he looks back into Joshua’s face, the guy is smirking, dark and hungry. Pete groans relief as Joshua surges against him for another kiss, messy and consuming.
“Artie! Artie, you’ve got to help me,” Claudia’s urgently talking into her Fairnsworth. “Pete and Joshua drank out of Brangäne’s vial and they’re about to start procreating!”
Pete grins at the predictable, screeching What?? response, but he has no idea what they’re talking about. A vial? A pitcher?
All he knows is that Joshua’s against him and that’s everything he needs.
Hours later, he and Joshua will agree that it was all Claudia’s fault for not maintaining the artefact containment and cooling system better.
POST-SCRIPT NOTES:
The artefact in question, Brangäne’s vial, is based on the legend (tragedy) of Tristan and Isolde. Borrowing from Wagner's opera, when Isolde's maid Brangäne learns that Isolde intends to poison Tristan for bringing her to marry his uncle, Brangäne switches the poison in her vial for a love potion that Isolde and Tristan then drink. And so, the tragedy begins: it would make any two people who drank of it at the same time obsessively, wretchedly in love and is too powerful to be neutralized by a bag (a vat would have been better). The notion behind the name is that, like many artefacts, the 'vial' isn't actually a vial, but a pitcher, or a cup, i.e. the name isn't always accurate.
