Classically trained author, the manual said. And I grabbed those three little words in my teeth and ran off with them and wound up somewhere over here, because I love Roland like nobody's business and wanted to spend a few hours conjecturing about what he was like before the sun went black.

Warnings:
Sex and violence and violent sex and sexy violence. Seriously, this story is pretty goddamned filthy. No actual porn, per se, but a lot of sexual activity taking place just out of sight.
Salty language. As, uh, might be obvious from the title of the story.
Original character ahoy. GAH NO THE ANTI-CHRIST. ... possibly literally, you don't know, it's Shin Megami Tensei.
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      "Whom," the apparition said in a cool voice that sliced across his bluster like a knife. "Technically." For a ghost, he had a beautiful smile.

      When Marcus finally cracked open one bleary eye, squinting against the harsh morning sunlight, he could hear the sound of typing.

      It was the heavy mechanical clacking of Roland's ridiculous antique manual typewriter, too, which meant that Roland was writing something new, double-spacing every line with a ponderous double thump on the carriage return key in preparation for his obsessive red-penning later. Marcus groaned a little and shut his eyes again. He should have known.

      Wincing in anticipation Marcus rolled slowly up and out of bed, bracing one hand against the wall until his head and belly settled. As hangovers went, pretty mild. In an hour, with the help of a long hot shower and a handful of aspirin, he might even feel human again. Possibly not the best of states for a lawyer, but it was the one he preferred.

      Picking his way carefully through the minefield that was the bedroom floor (his underwear, Roland's, the book Roland had been reading with its newly torn cover and broken spine, the empty bottle and both glasses, two--no--three condom wrappers in a circle around the trashcan, Roland's ripped and probably unsalvageable pajama pants) Marcus dragged himself toward the bathroom, stopping only to peek around the edge of the door into the main room.

      Roland was hunched bare-chested and intent over his typewriter, his normally neat short hair standing up in startled white-blond spikes, his glasses perched low on his nose. He was wearing Marcus' pajama pants (no surprise there, they'd probably been closer to hand than his own when he woke up with the inspiration to write) and a scattering of bruises, disturbingly dark against Roland's pale skin. A half-empty tumbler of Scotch rested forgotten by his left hand, the ice half-melted.

      They used to fight about that in the earlier days of their relationship, or whatever this was, and Marcus was still obscurely disturbed by the sight of it. It wasn't even quite eight in the morning, for God's sake! But Roland refused to write without his 'liquid inspiration'. Generations of writers had done it before him, Roland had snapped, and in any case he wouldn't even consider changing a successful habit of long standing just for Marcus' sake, who did Marcus think he was, anyway? In the end Marcus had given in, mostly because he didn't care enough to keep fighting about it. Who did he think he was? He wasn't Roland's mother or his keeper, that much he knew.

      Roland paused in his sporadic typing and ran his fingers through his hair, standing it all on end again. The four bruises on the side of his throat were small and roundish. Fingerprints. Marcus knew there was a matching fifth bruise on the other side--

      --"Asshole," he'd snarled, and he'd grabbed the scruff of Roland's neck in one hand and shaken him hard enough to send his glasses flying before shoving him to the bed, pinning him face-down on the mattress and putting a knee in the small of his back, and Roland was laughing, scornful and condescending and muffled by his faceful of pillow, he wanted this, he goaded Marcus to it every time, and all Marcus had to do to prove it was rip Roland's pajama pants off and listen to that barbed laugh turn into a throaty groan of anticipation--

      --Marcus sighed and shut his eyes for a moment, leaning his forehead against the cool wood of the door's frame. "Morning, Hemingway."

      Roland grunted and didn't look up. Clack bang. Marcus waited another ten seconds and then dragged on, into the bathroom.

      "I'm sorry, officer," Marcus said for the fifth or sixth time, shifting uncomfortably from bare foot to bare foot, far too aware of the erection shoving angrily at the front of his boxers. His right arm was hidden behind the door; there was a ring of bitemarks on his right shoulder that he wasn't too keen on letting the policemen see. "I didn't know how noisy we were being. We'll, uh, try to keep it down."

      "See that you do," one of the policemen said, but he was smiling, and Marcus could almost hear what he was thinking--lucky bastard, gettin' some pussy tonight!--a misapprehension that Marcus was happy to let him keep. "We'll go have a word with your neighbor now, let him know we spoke to you."

      Marcus exhaled noisily and closed his eyes for a moment. "Yessir. Thank you, sir."

      "No problem," the policeman said, and touched his fingers to the brim of his hat, the grin widening. "You enjoy the rest of your evening, now. But not too much."

      "I'll try," Marcus said, and twitched out half a smile before shutting the door and relocking it.

      Roland was just where he'd left him, a pale white blur sprawled out on the wrecked bed in the middle of the darkened bedroom. He hadn't so much as moved since Marcus got up to answer the door, arms crossed over his head, legs spread so wide that one foot rested on the floor. His lower lip was puffed and bleeding, and the angry red thumbprints in the hollows of his pelvis were already filling with black.

      "Officer Friendly says we should keep it down," Marcus said, his voice failing on the last word as it roughened and caught. God, he thought. God.

      "Fuck him," Roland said in a whiskey-blurred voice full of malice and dark glee, a rumble completely unlike his usual suave tenor. His shifting on the bed was a low susurrus of whispering sheets against bare skin. "Better yet, fuck me."

      The next morning the battered and wincing Roland turned out most of the first draft of what would eventually be The Fires Behind Us in an explosion of adrenalin and inspiration. The story was so good that just reading the unedited version made Marcus short of breath. It wasn't until six months later when it got short-listed for a Pulitzer that Marcus recognized the habit that Roland was forming around him, like an oyster forms a pearl around an irritant.

      The next time Roland baited him into a fight Marcus gave him a black eye and fucked him until he bled. Roland sold the resulting essay to The New Yorker.

      Four aspirin and two glasses of water later his hangover had receded growling into submission, and Marcus stood under the steaming-hot spray of the shower and let it wash the dried sweat away. Even under the roar of the water he could still hear the clatter of Roland's typewriter.

      "Fuck," he muttered into the water, bracing both hands against the tile for support.

      By the time he had showered and dressed he felt pretty good, all things considered, and not even the clawmarks he discovered on his wrists could dampen his mood too badly. Settling the knot of his tie against the collar of his shirt he wandered out into the main room, where Roland was still hunched over his typewriter. Bang clack bang bang bang.

      "Morning," Marcus said, checking his cuffs. Roland grunted again, scrubbing the back of his hand over his stubbly cheeks.

      Marcus waited, more or less patiently. Bang bang bang whh-chh wh-ch and Roland straightened up a bit, stretching his spine--half a blackened handprint slid out of the waistband of his borrowed pajama pants like a magic trick, curled just over his hip, and Marcus looked away politely. "Mnh. Morning," Roland said, his voice rough and distracted, Marcus' cue to wander over behind him and rest his chin on the top of Roland's head, to loop his arms loosely around Roland's neck. Roland still smelled like last night, like sweat and alcohol and sex. It was all wrong for this hour of the morning, but Marcus put up with it manfully.

      "What've you got?" he asked, nodding at the typewriter.

      "Ghosts," Roland said, resting a hand on Marcus' wrist. "Ghosts as a metaphor for a life lived online. I think it'll work."

      "Hope so," Marcus said, resisting the urge to peek over Roland's shoulder at the page in the typewriter and, despite everything, feeling the first stirrings of that same proud excitement that he always felt when Roland managed to shepherd a new piece into the world. He'd never had the first bit of artistic talent himself, but God, he loved dating it, despite the ever-present threat of artistic temperament to go with it. "Are you going to let me read it when I get home?"

      "Maybe," Roland said, sounding almost coy. He picked up his glass and tossed off a mouthful of watery Scotch, grimacing a bit. "Depends on what you bring me home for dinner."

      "Bitch," Marcus said comfortably.

      Roland snorted and reached up to thump his knuckles lightly against Marcus' shoulder. "Philistine."

      "Prima donna."

      "Asshole."

      "That's Asshole, Esquire to you," Marcus said, bringing an end to the old joke. "I'll be back around seven. Takeout?"

      "Indian," Roland specified, already turning back to his manuscript. Clack bang.

      "Indian," Marcus agreed magnanimously. "Careful if you go out today, weatherman says the Cuvier level is supposed to be pretty high."

      Roland grunted, no longer listening to him at all.

      "Is this all I'm fucking well good for?" Marcus had roared once, backing Roland into a corner and knocking the highball glass out of Roland's hand to shatter on the floor. Roland's cheek glowed bright pink where Marcus had slapped it, open-handed, and Roland's beautiful smile was twisted and sadistically amused. "Fighting you, fucking you, just so you'll have your fucking inspiration--"

      "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to," Roland had snapped back, quick and vicious like a razor, and the next morning he'd had to put a pillow on the seat of his chair but he'd written two chapters of what promised to be his first novel.

      Ever since he'd taken to affectionately referring to Marcus as 'my fucking muse', which Marcus accepted with varying levels of amusement and irritation.

      Leaving the bottle of sunscreen on the hall tree where even Roland couldn't possibly miss it, Marcus let himself out and loped down the stairs, putting on his hat just before he burst out into the vicious summer heat.

      Shading his eyes against the too-bright sunlight Marcus headed toward the bus stop, feeling pretty good. Sooner or later there'd come a time when he was tired of all this, but it wasn't going to be today, and he was looking forward to trading Indian takeout for the right to read over Roland's first draft this evening.

      Today was shaping up to be a good day.

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