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aconflagrationofmyown · 1 year

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That lil house, between your legs, where all my dreams wait

A Sarge & lil Mama fic -the Proposal

Summary: Elvis informs a certain girl of his dreams that she’s gonna marry him…she’s got some concerns and conditions, one includes him making sure his babies will fit in her lil house

Warnings: Umm, the mild usual with this universe? Themes of breeding, housewife and innocence kink, ill informed consent regarding a pussy inspection and said pussy inspection and descriptions of a vagina (ok, it’s Elvis being a creep and looking up her skirt on her request, but made cute ok?) mentions of Gladys’ death

-February of ‘58 timeline change

“It’s been decided.” is the first thing out of his mouth that morning as he strides up to Elaine where she stands in the shade of her father’s porch.

She’d been over at Graceland all day yesterday and the evening, too, -most days here lately- trying to make him eat, trying to keep him company, trying to get him out of his mother’s closet. It had been in the reverse order of all that, but she had done it. She was the only human that Private Elvis Presley would take orders from, though he reckoned she didn’t guess that. Sweetly, softly, efficiently, she’d gotten him out and gotten him calmed down and gotten him fed. Probably would have put him to bed if he hadn't given her a weak smile and told her to run on now, he wanted to discuss something with her father.

And now he’s here on her porch, looking like maybe he did sleep after all, judging by the rumpled state of his usually pristine hair. It’s growing out a little since they shore him of his prized locks. She thinks he looks better this way, prettier and sweeter without the gel and the sulk. He looks older, too, the way his arms bulge from push-ups and bootcamp, highlighted by the way they bracket the porch posts as the heavy weight of his gaze flicks over her.

“What’s been decided?” Elaine asks him from the gloom of the porch, squinting at his looming silhouette as it’s outlined by the white, bright, February sun.

She’s unable to recall a single loose end regarding the funeral arrangements he had charged her to oversee. It’s over and down with. Miss Gladys is six feet below the sod in Graceland’s backyard and the fans and family have been hosted with impeccable hospitality by herself, the obituaries and memorials written, the flowers preserved as long as possible. Elaine noticed a few petals had started to fall from the Peace Lilly spray when she was over yesterday. She’d picked them up hastily, hoping he didn’t notice that even those were dying. The decisions are all over and done with, he’s due back to the army in a month. And she’s back to teach and produce at RCA.

“It’s been decided and don’t you go objectin, it’s for the best.” he repeats insistently, but his jittering leg gives away the bold act. He’s nervous, she realizes.

“What is it, Elvis?” she asks, voice soft and encouraging as it’s been all week.

“You’re gonna marry me,” he says, “talked it over with your daddy an’ everything, it’s settled. Graceland hasn’t got a mistress no more, and you belong there. Saw it all week, you’re perfect for it.”

He informs her -not asks, ask would imply some free will on her part- like it’s her required duty to the nation or something. Marry him. Like taxes or the draft.

“You outta your ever lovin mind?” she whispers, genuinely worried he’s snapped under the weight of his publically analyzed grief. She’s seen how useless Vernon has been in comforting him, she knows how lonely it gets when one’s mama isn’t there to comfort you for her dying on ya. Elaine really feels for him, she does.

He was there for her when it happened to her, so she’s been there for him. But she knows this can’t be more than a half baked idea.

“I’m dead serious.” he growls, his ferocity taking her aback, she shifts her weight from foot to foot and eyes him warily, “I told ya, it’s all settled, your daddy said yes, you ain’t got anythin to object to.”

“Don’t I just?!” she laughs, “Elvis, you’re just sayin this cause I’ve been with ya during these last few days, and you’re hurtin and you’re lonely and it’s understandable and I’ll be there for ya, always. But you just had a girl, and this’ll pass sure enough. You’re Elvis Presley, your life’ll go on after this. And, and I-well, I’ve been wanting to get married and I want babies and I’ve wanted it for awhile now. I’ve waited on ya to help me like ya promised but I won’t be played with, I won’t! Not even by you. Not even when you’re sore.”

“You want babies?” he asks, his voice low and a sweaty hand leaves the porch post and cups her cheek, calloused fingers digging into her scalp when she goes to pull away, “I’ll give ya babies.”

“I’m being serious, Elvis!” she complains, neck craned away from his assessment of her lips. She never jokes about children, and she won’t let him.

“So am I.” his soft, boyish face looks hopeful suddenly, and rather capable. “I’ll give ya babies, far more than most men could manage.”

“How?” she whispers, his persistent sobriety throwing her into confusion.

“How?” he repeats, copying her quiet tone, distantly hearing the faint squeak of the porch swing chains as the breeze lazily rocks it.

“Yes,” she hesitantly goes on, “how do you know you can? How does anyone know if they can?” It’s something that's bothered her for awhile now. The idea of marrying a man who fails to give her children like Mrs. Myers husband down the street. Five years married and no kids, it’s the talk of the neighborhood. Or those starlets who manage to never have a child and disfigure their waists, no matter the amount of masculine company they keep.

Elvis cocks his head to the side, a puzzled glimmer in his eyes as Elaine’s bashfully inquiring eyes plead with him to understand her burning curiosity. And when he does -fully understand her naïveté, that is- he feels his cock twitch beneath his belt.

“Wellll,” Elvis draws the word out and she is swaying towards him now, that boiling hunger to learn coiling her tight as she hangs on to his every syllable, “I’m pretty confident, it’s just a thing that a man can tell, ya see, it’s a guess, but an educated one. But, we could make sure.” he’s winging it at this point, and shaming his heavenly mother while he’s at it, but he can’t seem to stop himself, not now that he knows he’ll be her teacher and her claimer if he can just make her agree, “We could check and make certain I ain’t overpromisin’, make sure the furniture fits the house, if ya get my drift.”

She doesn’t get his drift. That’s plain to see by the quizzical furrow of her eyebrows and the gape of her plump mouth as she tries to make sense of his euphemisms. Clever and bright Elaine Phipps looking a bit dumb as she blinks up at him in the shade of her front porch makes him smirk wickedly.

“You want children?” she asks, instead of taking him up on his offer just now.

“Most certainly do, we talked bout this before, Elaine.”

“You were complainin bout Anita, back then. Anything to find fault with her, doesn’t mean ya like children.” she crosses her arms and it pushes up her girlish bosoms, pale and promising beneath her gingham check house dress. He’s gonna make those bigger, so plump they’ll spill over that merely adequate neckline.

“Look here you got it wrong, Anita and the rest, they were nice gals, yeah?” he concedes, but it’s just to launch his next explanation, “But they weren’t mama material, ya see? My mama, she told they weren’t fittin, and she told me you were. Just as all the twiggy boys and sleek doctors and the artists fellers ya hang round, they either want your money or they’ll only make decent beaux -but they ain’t gonna make good daddy’s. Mark my words.”

“And what, you don’t want my money?” she teases.

“Now, ‘Laney honey, I’m the one who makes ya your money.” he laughs, tweaking her nose with his fingers and she bats his hand away with a giggle. “And conversely ya own my voice, you’re on my label as a producer, right next to your ole man.”

“Speaking of,” she grows earnest, “ya know Sam Cooke? Signed onto RCA right after ya?”

“Yeah, what of ‘im?” he frowns, impatient this conversation has gotten derailed from its original purpose -to the topic of another man, and a swanky one at that, “You gonna marry him?” he balks.

“No, no! though if he asked…” she winks and he squeezes her waist in warning, feeling the soft flesh give under her girdle from his pressure. That’s how it’ll feel to hold onto her when she rides him.

“What bout him?”

“So, he’s gonna start another record company,” she looks so earnest and invested in the topic he has to let her go on, “one where the artists will have control and rights to their music! And he’ll stay at RCA in the meantime but he’s tryin’ to find supporters and other to join him, a few have already this first month. And, well -“

“What?” he asks again, and it makes her lashes flutter as she gets shy under his stare, “Ya want me to join?”

“Well yeah! Though I doubt Parker would let ya. But that isn’t what I was gonna tell ya.” she bites her lip, “My point is, the point is -that Sam has offered me to be a producer! I mean -Elvis! We’re talkin Cooke, Redding and Smokey and well Burke and- lord it would work for you! But the point is, I’m gonna be doin that, I’m thinkin of taking him up on it.”

“Now hang on a second.” he shakes her gently by his hold on her waist, “One minute you’re objectin to marryin me cause I’m ‘Elvis’ and you say that as if babies an’ me don’t go together like cookies and cream -and now here ya are all talkin bout hangin with cool cats and producin and climbin the laddeh. Which ya want honey? Thought you wanted to be a mama?”

“I’m just saying,” she stamps her foot in the little bit of floor space his crowding has given her on the porch, “You’re talkin bout marryin and Graceland havin a missus and meanwhile you’re gonna be gone across the ocean! How’s that make any sense? Ya don’t need a wife for that, I could be house sittin for ya just as well, while producin with Cooke in the meanwhile and when you get back, I’ve no doubt you’ll fall in with some starlet or other. See? There, fixed. Sensible plan now. And I agree to it, yer welcome.”

“Little girl, yer not hearin me at all.” he raps his knuckles against her oh so sensible yet silly head, her startled indignance the cutest thing he’s ever seen, “I want me a woman to marry before God, to give my children to, to raise those children to a right legacy, to help me make a change for good in all this mess. And I want that to be you.” he articulates the last sentence clearly and prods his index finger against her chest, like the finger of fate marking her out for this.

“Elvis i-“she shakes her head adamantly, and he thinks it must be a little hard for her to understand that his every daydream, every evening prayer, every midnight spill into the sheets these last two years have been about making a family outta her. But she will get the vision, she’s gotta. She has to. Or else. Else he’ll do somethin rash and unchristian if she doesn’t relent to bind herself to him before he goes back to Fort Hood.

Somethin real rash, like wring her neck or admit he’s a goddamn slave for her. Embarrass them both. She probably can tell, the way he’s gripping her and nearly salivating over such close proximity to her lips and body and everything. He has to remember his mama, has to remember how to treat the gal she pointed out to him in the manner befitting a new Mrs Presley.

“You want babies? Hmm?” he’s breathing in her exhales he’s so close, as she’s bowed backwards as he leans in, her little head almost bumping her fathers front door in an effort to keep their lips apart, “I’ll give ya babies. You wanna make good music? The best in music is holdin ya right now, baby. You wanna make a difference? I know ya do, ya want power and ya want security and money and ya want love, don’t ya? Way I see it, I’ll give ya that. Better and more of it than anyone. Sensible plan, ain’t that what ya called yours? Well, here’s one, damn sight more sensible than yours and tryin all this solo.”

Her pretty lips are puffing with each labored breath she takes to steady herself and her eyes track over his face intently, and he knows she weighing the pluses and the minuses, his fame verses money and his moods over his devotion and his appetites over his loyalty and anonymity over influence. The hands she has pressed to his chest to keep them apart soften with each passing moment.

“But -do ya even love me, Elvis?” she asks, a note of something very sad but a little hopeful lingering in her voice. Like she’s mourning the fact that she’s considering this for all the reasons that make her so wonderfully practical, but the girl in her can’t help but wish for a little romance.

A gust of a breeze whips her hair around her in a swirl of brushed out curls and her eyes sparkle even in the porch’s shade. He cups that precious, brave little face in his hands and presses her against the screen door, neighbors and street traffic be damned

“Oh honey,” he gushes then, cool demeanor abandoned and all that lovely passion she adores in him coming out at last, “I have for a long while now. And I can’t think of a stronger way of showin ya than to give you my babies. To make a life with you, give ya mama’s house and my name. Please say yes, Elaine. Please, please I need ya to say yes.”

“Oh Elvis,” she breathes, feeling him hold her and promise to her and want her is every bit as naturally compelling of obedience as that night of the funeral, but she never once imagined it as his wife, “I just don’t wanna be alone Elvis,” she tries to make him see her true fear, “I’m real honored by this but, but I’m so lonely and I want all this so I won’t be! And you’re gonna be gone. Gone to Germany and then gone to make music and movies and-“

“I’m gonna take ya with me! Always, always together, I swear!” he closes the distance and presses his lips to hers firmly despite her lack of response, “I need me a wife, Elaine,” he pants against her mouth and she can smell the spearmint of his gum, “I need a good woman, and you’re the one mama pointed out to me. Shouldn't of put it off so long but I-I was a fool. I need ya with me everywhere I go, don’t send me across the ocean without you! Don’t, you wouldn’t be so cruel, please baby, please!”

He’s not sure how it happens but he’s slumping down the length of her body, hands sliding along the gorgeous outline of her and suddenly he’s on his knees, painted boards hard against his knees, begging like a groom oughta, his face is pressed to her womb. This womb he’s got such plans for and such right to and he has to make her see that in his head they’ve been married for years already. “I’ve taken care of ya, haven’t I?” he begs her to remember, “You trust me to take care of ya, to love ya, to cherish you, don’t ya, Elaine?”

The kicker is she does. And she’s not sure why she worries more is needed. All she wants right now is to be needed, and the crying, grieving young man clinging to her right now needs her badly. She runs her fingers through his hair soothingly and likes the way that makes him shudder. “Will you always need me, Elvis? Really? Even when good times come round again?” she asks what really worries her.

He pulls his face away and looks up at her, lips puffy and his dark lashes clumped from tears, “Always, Elaine, always.”

“And you’ll give me Graceland?”

“Yeah, course baby, you’ll be my wife, it’ll be yours!”

“I mean...legally, you’ll give it legally.” she doesn’t ask this time, she’s stating conditions.

“I-I-if it matters so much, sure. What’s some more papers?” he laughs. “Why?” he adds with a flicker of dread.

“You won’t divorce me if I’ve got Miss Gladys’ house, will ya?” she explains and has the audacity to grin.

It hurts deeply that she still doesn’t get just how badly he wants her for all eternity. “Why you talkin bout divorce, honey?” he asks wounded.

“So many people get them.” she says mournfully, “And mostly entertainers.”

“That's cause they marry icy bimbos and are selfish bastards.” he states, rising up to his own two feet again, the topic back on safe ground -ground he has the upper hand in. “See, darlin, there’s plenty of men who want wives, and cause the wives want children they tell the poor girls they want kids, too. But they don’t, so once the wives have got the kids they move on. Real dastardly thing to do and more common than you realize. And with your money and your looks, you’ll have a line of such good for nothin bastards linin up with fake promises. You understandin me?”

“Yeah.” she swallows thickly, knowing he knows far more about all this than she does.

“So it’s important to marry someone ya trust, right?” he prods.

“Yeah.”

“More so than even someone ya love, dontchu think?”

“I suppose so.” she nods, care creasing her face, “You don’t mind that I don’t love ya Elvis?” she asks worriedly, “Because I am really fond of ya, and I enjoy you I just -I don’t think I love ya.”

“I’m willin to bet that’ll come.” he says solemnly, “And I’m willin to put in the work to make it grow. Just as I will our babies.”

Her face softens at the mention of the longed for babies. A smile even plays around her mouth, beginning to plump up her cheeks. “Will ya check, then?” she whispers.

“Check what?” he asks, absently thumbing the beautiful line of one of her collarbones.

“If it’ll work.” she blushes, ignorance both emboldening and shaming her all at once, “Make sure we can make babies for sure, you and I.”

“Gotta do that before you say yes?” he laughs, disbelieving and feral at the prospect.

“Yes, it’s important to me, Elvis.” she remonstrates against his humor. “Most important thing of all.”

“A-a-alright, I-I-I’ll check.” his mouth runs dry at the prospect of seeing, smelling, maybe even wetting his fingers in that place he’s wrung himself dry imagining night after night and morning after morning. And the fact she’s asking, offering -under ill informed pretenses as it is. “Can’t do it out here.” he whispers, the depravity of his taking advantage like this actually taking a toll on his bravado.

“Come in then,” she whispers in turn, though from a different motivation, “but be quiet, daddy’s still sleeping, ya kept him up so late.”

She opens the creaky screen door with painstakingly slow care, and the large wooden one, too, with its familiar stained glass windows. It is cool and dark without a lamp on or blind raised inside their den, she’d barely gotten dressed and come downstairs to start breakfast when she heard his car peel out in the front drive.

She spins around just short of the coffee table, her circle skirt swirling and swooshing tantalizingly, no stockings on yet as she wasn’t prepared for guests.

“Where should I….” she trails off as she surveys the different flat spots upon which to perch for this examination, her devout ignorance of the socially condemned nature of it all giving her a chipper confidence that Elvis finds throbbingly attractive in an unschooled virgin.

His voice sounds gravelly and about three octaves deeper than usual when he croaks out, “Anywhere's fine -how bout here…” he picks her up by her waist to sit her on the high top, Oriental imported side table, a gift her father gave her mother as an anniversary present.

It’s taller than the couch and it lets her legs dangle apart naturally. He could easily take himself out and slide right into her at this level. It makes him dizzy when he hears her shaky exhale as he seats her, belying a real, deep seated nervousness on her part that he’ll find some abnormality with her that will crush her dreams. The fact he’s certain she’s not as nervous over a red blooded boy lifting her skirt and looking at her bare cunt makes him so painfully hungry to devour her that he has to gnaw on his bottom lip to keep from groaning. -And taking advantage of what’s not yet his. For his mama's sake, for his mama's dream of this, he’s gotta keep ahold of himself and refrain from anything God might find fault with. For them to be punished with barrenness because Elvis couldn’t hold back before the proper time would be too cruel. He can’t do that to Elaine or himself. He’s gonna be the man in her life, has already been so for awhile now, and he’s gotta do right by her. He thinks this even as he gives her lips another peck and sinks to his knees to give her pussy an inspection that is as futile as it is arousing.

He rubs at her thighs over her dress soothingly, though by her quick breaths he suspects she’d rather he hurry and give a verdict. Her eyes that have been turned towards the staircase, making certain father is still asleep, drop to his face expectantly.

“Here I -let me, I should probably-“ she says determinedly and suddenly she’s pulling at her skirt, the thin fabric sliding from beneath his palms as she lifts it and then he’s holding onto warm flesh instead as she gathers the fabric to her waist.

He chokes on his own spit at her innocent brazenness and has to glance away for a moment from the blood stirring sight of graceful thighs bracketing plain white panties, a wet patch visible on the crotch and a few stray wiry curls sneaking out from the seams at her groin.

“You ok?” she asks, and the genuine concern in his voice tells him that the agonizing need he feels is visible on his face.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re just so goddamn pretty.” he admits, truth the only thing he can manage to blurt and it serves him well.

She looks relieved and gives him a pleased smile and chooses to spread her legs wider. So wide in fact that she has her heels propped on the sideboard beside her hips. Who needs stirrups for an examination when a girl can bend like that? Bend…oh god he can’t wait to bend and bury and dump inside her…

Elvis has never wanted to dive face first into a muff so bad in all his life. The wedding is gonna have to be next week. He can’t wait longer than that, he doubts he’ll sleep a wink until he knows what she tastes like.

“Can you tell like this?” her soft voice reminds him he gave her a fucking excuse for this perverted cock tease torture and he reels through the options of backing out now or pushing this a little further. “Or do you need to move these?” she voices the second option for him, the barrier of her panties implied if not mentioned.

“Yeah, gotta look at the lil house.” his voice comes out wavering and wrecked, “Lemme just-“ he tentatively raises his hands to her precious place and hooks his fingers to the cotton panties and pulls them to the side.

She’s so goddamn pink. Glistening and swollen like she’s been freshly teased. Something about him excites her, without her even knowing. Her curls are sopping wet, they slick up his fingers as he holds her apart, and in their strands they’re trapping the most delicious essence he’s ever smelled in his entire life. She hasn’t shaved, she hasn’t primped, she hasn’t stretched herself out, she’s exactly as God made her and he’s the first man to see it.

It causes him to whimper, long and gut wrenched, his whole throat throbbing as he wiggles on the floor.

“Oh…Jesus.” he wheezes.

“What?” she demands peering down at him, and she’s the authoritative one here, now that he’s all but humping the floor in his delicious misery of viewing Elaine Phipps’ perfect, unused cunt. “Will it work? Is something wrong?”

“No no no.” he garbles out, one hand slipping from her slick folds and gravitating to his own lap out of natural instinct, crushing his twitching bulge into submission, “You’re perfect, Elaine, absolutely perfect.” he wants to cry, maybe because he's so horny, maybe because he loves her so damn much. He’s really not sure, nothing makes sense except that he was meant to live inside that perfect little haven of hers that is honest to God trickling before his very eyes. His thumb involuntarily swipes up and spread it to her clit, making her buck towards his attentions.

“It’s achey, Elvis, it’s always achey.” she informs him, “Does that mean anything? Is it wrong?”

And he knows she means wrong as in humanly abnormal, not morally incorrect. He’ll never let her know anyone would think differently. As long as he possibly can he’ll keep her eager and unabashed.

“Nah honey, nah that’s a good sign.” he breathes heavily, still stroking that dribbling, untried place, “Means you’re fertile, means you’re ready for a baby. It’ll keep achin till ya have one in ya.”

“Oh.” her mouth rounds childishly and she nods as if this were a sudden epiphany.

“We should give ya a baby, then, shouldn’t we?” he prods now that he’s got her attention and her arousal.

“I’spose so.” she agrees, tentative, her lip drawn between her teeth, still contemplating this marital bargain with the fabric of her hem crushed in her palms. “Your babies’ll fit?” she asks once more for good measure.

His babies. She’s no idea it’s his cock she should anticipate. “Yeah, perfect fit. Don’t think anyone else’s would.”

“Oh….good.” she lets out a massive sigh of relief she has been holding in for most of her teenage years.

“Gotta marry me, first.” he reminds, swirling his thumb faster and she keens a little before remembering her father upstairs, “I can’t go round givin babies to someone who ain’t my wife, ya know.”

“Alright.” she agrees to marry him in a soft whisper, her hand coming to cover his own tenderly as it works between her legs, stalling his distracting movements.

“What’s that?” he asks again, breathless with hope.

“I’ll marry ya Elvis, if you’re sure we’ll work.”

“I’m sure.” he swears, watching the way her pink hole flutters, “I’ll give ya a baby and fix the ache, darlin. Won’t have to fret over anything again your whole life.”

The floorboards upstairs creak and Elvis nearly yelps in shock, so far gone was he in their own little world he’d forgotten that he’s got her spread bare in her father’s den. He stands up abruptly and pulls her skirt down gently, making her proper again.

Wedding night. He’s gotta wait till the wedding night before trying anything, or even explaining the mechanics of it, he thinks. He doesn’t wanna spook her, and he wants to have her stuck with him before he drops that final little detail about the necessity of a man going inside and blowing his load in order for the miracle of life to occur.

Yeah, that’s not something you tell a skittish little girl who just barely agreed to marry you for your mansion and security.

He’s pulled from this scheming by the feel of her arms winding around his neck, drawing him forward gently and to the immense relief of his battered heart he realizes she is about to kiss him. It’s a sweet kiss, gentle and tentative and growing in surety as she decides she likes it, and it’s the loveliest one he’s ever had, made so by the relief that she must care for him somehow, even if it’s no match for the insane obsession he harbors for her. It’ll do, it’s a seed he can water and grow.

“You’ll stay for breakfast?” she asks him as they pull away, drowsy and a little cross eyed from how long they’ve smooched.

“Love ta.” he murmurs, pulling her off the table and drawing her close so he’s holding her to him, swaying gently and savoring the feeling of his soon to be wife as she nestles into his chest.

Father comes down shortly after.

“It’s settled, sir.” Elvis informs him, a respectful title tacked on to a declaration that leaves no room for argument from either of you, “She’s agreed. And I’m the happiest of men.”

Most fathers might tell him, “congratulations” or “welcome to the family” or if it were someone besides Elvis Presley they might venture a “be true to her.”

Father says not a word, all advice and remonstrance and conditions already expended on this headstrong young man the night before. He surveys the young people as they embrace with a genuine smile on his lips and a world of melancholy in his eyes. Elaine wonders if he is mourning the loss of his own bride, or mourning her future as Elvis’.

For Elvis, though, that day is remembered as the most joyful and blessed of days when he lucked out and snagged the loveliest creature living. And how he came to eat French toast and cantaloupe beside her father without having washed his hands.

#sarge and lil mama #most wholesome breeding kink you ever did see #proposal #elvis fanfiction #elvis fanfic #elvis imagine #elvis presley #elvis x you #Elvis one shot #mine #elvis x reader #Elvis x Elaine #elvis austin butler

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nerdinsandals · 10 months

Text

I bought a Kouhei/Conway settei ten years ago (that I proudly display framed in my little Conway Corner) but I think I never posted an actual scan of it! So I took the chance to go a bit beyond just scanning it and colored it following the guidelines from the other settei from the same listing so that it looked more ~official~ (I bought the one without shading because I like to be able to see the lines more clearly).

Also, I thought it'd be fun to try and translate the little bits of text on it! Bear in mind that my knowledge of Japanese is extremely basic and limited, so what you see here is the result of that + a little help from Google Translate, so it's most likely not 100% accurate.

And as an extra, I also made a color guide for him while I was coloring the settei so I could have all the colors in one place and ready to go for reference. I included some colors that weren't marked in the settei but were used in the anime as well, like the highlight color for his hair and the darker shading tone for his skin.

Some additional ramblings after the cut!

You may have noticed that I included a brown color for his eyes in the color guide. I always draw him with brown eyes, but I rarely mention that it's because he canonically has brown eyes!

You can see them clearly when the Ghost Girl hypnotizes him:

It's a small detail, but one that I like a lot. It provides a bit of warmth to his overall pretty cool palette (the only warmer tones in his design are his skin color and his eyes -when you can see the brown haha-).

As for the text on the settei itself, I have a few thoughts:

Even though settei are reference sheets, Conway's case is a curious one because... He rarely, if ever, is drawn exactly as he's represented in the reference sheet. The length of his hair, the thickness of his eyebrows and even the length of his pants fluctuate from episode to episode! The back part of his hair is noticeably longer in the settei compared to actual episodes overall. In the anime itself, the back is usually more or less as long as the front pieces that frame his face, or just a smidge longer. But, like I said, it fluctuates.

I hadn't noticed before that his glasses and eyebrows don't really show through the hair! I checked screenshots from all his episodes and this is consistent throughout (with only a couple exceptions). He must have pretty thick hair!

The "glasses are bigger" part. I assume it means that the outlined version makes the frames look a bit thinner than the actually are? Or at least that's how I perceive them when I compare the settei to the colored version! The colored glasses look much thicker. It's something I've noticed when drawing him myself, too. If I outline the frames and them fill them with color, they turn out looking so much thicker than I intended, so it's something to keep in mind when drawing glasses!

Apparently, his bracelet is a "germanium bracelet", so we could assume that it's made out of metal. But when you Google ゲルマニウムブレス, there's two possible results:

Metallic bracelets (so, made out of actual germanium, I suppose):

And silicone ones that are still somehow referred to as "germanium bracelets":

While the silicone one looks similar in shape to the one Conway actually wears, it's not identical, but it could just be because Pokémon designs (at least back then) used to be a lot simpler. Though I like the idea of it being metallic too! But I guess we'll never really know which one it's supposed to be.

The settei doesn't specify what material his choker (or rather, necklace) is made out of, but I found that there are also "germanium necklaces" that are metallic:

And silicone ones that are somehow still called "germanium necklaces". Though I personally would find anything silicone very uncomfortable to wear around your neck, haha.

And there are also metallic matching sets! This is my favorite option if I were to choose.

Does this mean that I'm going to draw these accessories as metallic every single time from now on?? Probably not haha, but it's interesting nonetheless!

#Conway Day #Pokemon Anime #Pokeani #Anipoke #Conway #Kouhei #my stuff #I'm talking Conway here #settei #the color guide is basically a reference for myself but hey. if you want it be my guest!

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gravitytrips · 2 months

Text

Scout and Soldier are besties I swear

Scout and Soldier were fighting again. It was playful and fun until Soldier said something he shouldn’t have.

“And your brothers should have just left you in the streets you ninny!”

The fight immediately stopped. Soldier instantly recognized his mistake, clapping both hands over his mouth. Scout froze, standing rigid.

Soldier tried to remedy his mistake.

“I’m sorry Scout I didn’t mean to say that. I swear on Colonel Scratch’s life that I didn’t mean for those words to leave my brain.”

Scout didn’t respond. He didn’t speak. He simply turned on his heels and ran.

He ran through the kitchen, across the living room, and out the door.

He kept running.

Down the road.

Through town.

Out into the desert.

After running far enough into the sandy wasteland that the town was no longer in sight, Scout collapsed to the dusty earth, sobbing.

The memory of his brothers beating him to a bloody pulp and leaving him in an alleyway to die pulled through his brain, pushing tears out of his eyes.

Scout cried through the night, only stopping when the emotions had exhausted him too much to stay awake. So there he slept, under the gray morning sky.

Scout awoke several hours later, the sun beating down on him. His skin was burnt and peeling. His lips were cracked and dry. It was midday. He had been played out for hours. Vultures circled above.

Scout stood, taking in his surroundings. Teufort was nowhere in sight.

“Aw crap”

Even for how weak Scout’s radiation-poisoned brain was, he could recognize that this situation was extremely dangerous.

He turned around a few times. His footprints from the previous night had been blown away by the desert wind.

So, he used the outline of his body in the sand to guess what direction he came from and started walking. His mind fogged. His vision blurred. His steps became stumbles.

The team wanted to go after Scout immediately, but after hearing what happened, they all decided that the boy needed some time alone.

What a mistake.

The next day, when they all awoke and there was no sign of Scout, panic began to set in. The Heavy, who had stayed up all night to wait for Scout was the most concerned.

They gathered supplies and set out to search for him.

About a mile into the desert they found him, collapsed in a small patch of cacti. He was unconscious. Severely sunburned. Dangerously dehydrated. And had several cactus thorns stuck in his skin.

Scout was barely breathing. There wasn’t enough time to carry him all the way back to base, so Medic quickly began ordering the group around so that he could keep Scout from dying.

When Scout had been moved to the shade of a nearby stone face, Medic began attempting to revive him. He pulled the thorns out of Scout’s chest, face, and arms and performed CPR.

Scout gasped loudly as his senses suddenly returned to him. Once his eyes focused, he recognized the face of Medic, who was right next to him. Worry etched the doctor’s features. Medic sat Scout up and brought a small cup of cool water to his lips. Scout would have taken the cup and drank it all in one gulp, only there were two problems. One was that Medic was telling him to drink slowly (and who had the balls to ago against what Medic commands?), and two was that Scout’s arms didn’t seem to work. So, Scout was stuck drinking the water at the pace that Medic tilted the cup at.

He suddenly tasted iron. Then, Scout realized that the water was hurting his cracked lips.

Once the cup was finished, the rim was lined with Scout’s blood.

The boy licked his lips.

Suddenly, a large figure appeared next to him. Heavy.

Scout barely heard Medic telling Heavy to pick Scout up so they could take him back to base.

In Scout’s mind, he was seven years old again, beaten senseless in an alleyway, helpless to save himself. He didn’t know how he managed to survive. There had been no one to save him then.

He was so happy that there were people he could rely on now

@aerowolf

#Fanfic #Back on the Scout angst train

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thecoziestbean · 5 months

Text

FANFIC ROUNDUP 2023

LIST OF FANWORKS

POSTED

The Venus of Valinor | Haladriel art heist au | E | 9/13 (wip)

Missed Connections | Haladriel ficlet | G | 2/2

meet me at the edge | Haladriel prairie gothic au | E | 4/? (wip) | dead dove

My Way or the Highway | Haladriel road trip au | E | one-shot

Hellbrand & Ghouladriel Week Drabbles | T | 8/8

Looking Glass | Haladriel horror au | E | one-shot | dead dove

Haladriel Winter Solstice Ficlets & Drabbles | M | 5/5

Yuletide fic to be revealed Jan 1!

For a total of 102,060 words. I'm blown away by this. I hadn't written for fun (outside of notes for d&d games) in over a decade before this past year. Haladriel truly has done wonders for my creativity.

UNPOSTED WIPS

run through the forest (settle before the sun) | BG3 Halsin x Reader dark fairy tale au | E | one-shot (??? - this keeps threatening to turn multi-chapter)

sharp as a razor, sweet as honeysuckle | Haladriel rodeo au | E | one-shot

skin i been through, dies behind me | Haladriel western au | E | one-shot

grow with a hunger | Haladriel arctic isolation horror au | E | multi-chapter dead dove

Untitled Haladriel Moulin Rouge au | E | multi-chapter dead dove

Untitled Haladriel newsroom exes au | E | multi-chapter romcom

TOTAL # OF COMPLETED WORKS/FANDOMS WRITTEN IN

6 completed works written in 2 fandoms

5 in LOTR: The Rings of Power for Haladriel

1 in [redacted until Jan 1]

OVERALL THOUGHTS

I sure do love a woman teetering on the precipice of something.

PERSONAL FAVORITE?

It's really hard to choose, but I think meet me at the edge. It started as a goofy little brainworm about what if Tevildo was a Black Phillip-esque figure trying to lure Galadriel away from the light, and here we are 40k later, and I think it's some of the best writing I've ever done. I love westerns, I love horror, I love stories about girlhood and womanhood and where the boundaries between the two are, and I especially love stories about women hanging on by their last thread and then saying fuck it and letting it all go.

MOST UNDERAPPRECIATED?

I guess maybe my little ficlet duology Missed Connections? I'm really proud of that strange little story. I wrote it for Haladriel Week last spring. It's inspired by the old Missed Connections ads that used to be in the paper (and I think are still on craigslist). Anyway, these two are set during the first age in Valinor, one each from Mairon and Artanis' perspectives. I keep thinking about expanding it to add new ones for each age. Maybe that's something I'll do in 2024.

MOST POPULAR?

Just by straight kudos, The Venus of Valinor.

STORY WITH THE SEXIEST MOMENT?

Eek! I don't know, I find it kind of hard to assess the sexiness of the smut you write yourself. It's probably something from meet me, though. The scene at the creek when Halbrand feeds Galadriel the peach still gets me a little flustered when I reread it:

The air grows heavy and still around them. She feels like she’s moving through honey as she leans forward and grabs his wrist in her slender hand, before lowering her lips to wrap around the slice of fruit in his fingers. His nostrils flare as he feeds the peach into her mouth. He drags the rough pads of his fingers across her tongue and then her lips, smearing juice in their wake. The salty tang of his skin mixes with the sweet bite slithering down her gullet to feed the twisting creature nestled deep in her belly.

Her breath catches in her throat when he brings his hand back to his mouth. He uses the flat of his tongue to lick up the last remnants of juice in one broad stroke, from his palm to the tips of his fingers, eyes grown dark in the deepening shade of the cottonwood.

“Delicious.”

MOST FUN STORY TO WRITE?

They're all the most fun to write at one point or another, otherwise I wouldn't be writing them! I've definitely been on a meet me kick lately though. The last couple of chapters are parts of the story I've been excited to get to since I first came up with the idea and started outlining it.

HARDEST?

I've found my writing habits are definitely influenced by what's going on in my real life. There have been some really rough patches this year, and during those times it was next to impossible to work on Venus. I just couldn't get into a romcom headspace, but it was a lot easier and more natural to write meet me during those times.

BIGGEST SURPRISE?

That the Haladriel brainrot is as strong now, if not stronger, than it was a year ago. I've had my share of hyperfixations, but this one's on another level. I really enjoyed writing my Yuletide fic for another fandom, and I'm enjoying dipping my toe into the BG3 waters (will probably even go for a full swim), but I still have so many ideas for Haladriel and I seem to have more every day.

DID YOU TAKE ANY RISKS IN WRITING THIS YEAR?

Becoming active in fandom! I’d always been more of a lurker, and I’ve never shared anything I created, so everything about writing and sharing my fic was a risk. And it was so worth it. This is the most creatively energized I’ve felt in years. I hadn't written for fun in over a decade before Haladriel, so I'll be forever grateful to this pairing for helping me shake off the cobwebs.

MOST UNINTENTIONALLY TELLING STORY?

Alas, I can't get into it because it hasn't been fully revealed but my Yuletide fic. I stumbled into some stuff writing that one that made me go, huh, ok, file that away to reflect on more closely at a later date.

FAVORITE LINES/SCENES?

The smut in Chapter 9 of Venus was so much fun to write, but I'm particularly proud of this: He wanted to see the golden Noldor heiress unleashed. He wanted to see her claiming – no taking – what she wanted. Not in service of others, not to protect her family’s reputation or to cover up the mistakes of fucking Fëanor Noldor, but in recognition of her own needs, her own power. Well, here she was: feral, greedy, free. A wild, unfettered creature demanding to be fucked. And who was he to deny to her?

I wrote a lot of drabbles this year, and some of my favorites are: Hungry Roots, The Eye in the Storm, and The Frozen Wood. I see these three as connected.

And honestly, the entirety of chapter 4 of meet me: the calf, the fights with her brothers and father, the scenes with Halbrand in the barn, the storm... 14k of smut and violence that were some of the heaviest lifting I've ever done and I'm so fucking proud of the end result.

MY FAVE PART OF FANDOM IN 2023

Finding and connecting with the Haladriel fandom. I’ve met some of the kindest, funniest, more creative people through it. We’ve taken some hits, but all in all, joining this fandom has truly been a highlight of my year.

2024 WRITING AMBITIONS

Writing every day, or as close to as I can, even if it’s just a couple of sentences, so that writing is just a steady, regular part of my day to day life. I went over a decade without it, and never want to go back. I’m having way too much fun.

I’d also like to finish my two current big WIPs. I’ve got lots of other big, multi-chapter projects in mind, but I can only hold so much in my head at a time, so I want to clear a few things from my plate before I tackle a new big project.

2024 FICS ON THE IMMEDIATE HORIZON

Jan 1 - Yuletide fic reveal

BG3 Halsin x Reader dark fairy tale one-shot

The Venus of Valinor: Chapter 10

March - Haladriel Fic Exchange

Thanks to @liminal-zone for the format and inspo!

#cozy writes #fanfiction roundup #haladriel #meet me at the edge #the venus of valinor

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goofygoldengirl · 10 months

Text

Has anyone else watched Miraculous Ladybug and thought to themselves; you know for a show where the main protagonist and antagonist are into fashion, we could use a few stylish outfits. So here’s a long ramble where I brainstorm what Nathalie Sancoeur could also wear if the animation budget allowed for more outfits. Buckle up this will get long.

First off, let’s take a look at her main outfit:

A neatly put together business suit that’s both professional, practical, yet allows her to express her individuality, all points that are a plus for someone working for a fashion company.

We also see her main color scheme consists of: black, red, and purple, with main emphasis on red due to the streak in her hair, and the borders of her glasses. Nathalie is someone who looks good in darker shades. I cannot for the life of me see her wearing something like pastels. At the very least, a light color like sky blue would fit her well since it matches her eyes. Colors that sharply contrast with red such as deep pinks, yellow, or orange would be jarring on the eyes. So colors that I could see her in beyond the red,black, purple scheme are:

Gray

Forrest or Hunter Green

Navy Blue

Teal

Light Blue

White

Gold

Silver

I don’t think she’d choose shades of beige, tan, or brown due to wearing them often doing field work as an archaeologist.

Clothes

I imagine her business contract states that she has to get her work clothes from Gabriel’s brand, and that she has to be up to date with the latest trends. She’d probably have at least two other business suits in her closet that can easily be paired with different colored tops. Perhaps something like:

If you want to spice up her spice up her usual outfit, something you could do is to replace her slacks with a knee length pencil skirt. It is a timeless look, especially with the red turtleneck she wears:

Or if her suit color scheme is black, we could switch the turtleneck for a top like:

In the event that she has to attend a formal event/ party to promote Gabriel’s brand, I obviously would put her in a red dress:

Shoes & Accessories

Nathalie wears flats in the show. I’d guess she’s around 5’5 (165 cm) so using heels to add height wouldn’t be a huge concern, but a shoe with a touch of height and has support if she’s up on her feet all day can go a long way. I bet most of her shoes would black with the occasional off white pair:

In colder weather she might pair ankle length boots with her outfit:

For a more out there look, I can definitely see her wearing those pull up knee high boots that outline the shape of your leg. Goes great with a dress or a skirt.

As for jewelry, Nathalie wouldn’t want anything getting in the way as she works so no dangly earrings or bracelets. I can see her wearing pearl studs or the occasional necklace, but nothing more. I think story framing wise, it’s good to keep the jewelry to a minimum until she starts wearing the peacock miraculous.

Thanks for reading!

#miraculous ladybug #nathalie sancoeur #character design #brainstorming #fashion

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crtter · 1 year

Note

You can mimic the Osomatsu-san style??? If that's the case, do you mind sharing tips on how to do this? I'm digitally drawing a reference for my oc, but I'm really struggling with matching the art style.

I can! I really like trying and mimicking art styles, I post my art over at @tetedetele if you want to give it a look!

As for tips, I don’t know if they’re going to be very useful to you but here’s a few things I like to do:

Get lots of reference! I create these huge folders of pictures of a certain piece of media I’m interested in mimicking the art style of, separated by the kind of material it’s from. This is what my Osomatsu-kun / -san one looks like:

Of course, you don’t have to have this many, heh, but having good references is always useful! One trick I like to use to make the art very close to the original is color picking the color palette I’m going to use directly from the references I have.

Pick apart the art style! Try and pinpoint how the lines look, how the shading is done, the amount of detail it uses… for example, did you know that most Osomatsu-san characters have only five colors or less in the color palette of their clothing?

When you’ve done establishing what makes the art style you’re trying to mimic look the way it does, you can go and look for the best tools to mimic it! Keep in mind the variations in different instances of the art style for maximum accuracy. For example… the brush style used in the show itself is kind of jagged, looking kind of like it was drawn with an ink pen.

The brush typically used in merch and promo art, however, is more solid and the characters will be more in model.

And the art style used in Hesokuri Wars is even MORE solid, with a very thick outline!

And… that’s about it, I guess! I hope I’ve been able to help a little. Don’t worry if you’re not able to get it right at first, btw, these things get better with practice!

#osomatsu san #Iyami #Matsuno brothers #Hatabō #Chibita #Totoko #answers #misskuromichan

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tar-maitime · 5 months

Text

broken branches

Rating: T Characters: Fingon | Findekano, Maedhros | Maitimo Relationships: Maedhros/Fingon, fem!Maedhros/Fingon Additional: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Thangorodrim, Infertility

Fingon doesn’t know what’s going on.

Maedhros can bear most touch now. She accepts affection from her brothers, and touch from him if it is purely practical. She even lets the healers handle her without flinching. But as soon as he tries any kind of affection, even the smallest amount, in word or deed, she withdraws from him, pulling protectively into herself. And he doesn’t know why.

Oh, he has plenty of guesses, each more terrible than the last. They have so little understanding of anything like what Maedhros went through, of what it could do to a person. The only theories Fingon can dismiss with any kind of certainty are ones where she has somehow stopped loving him - he can feel in their marriage bond, much abused though it is, that she does. But she is keeping it, and her self, as far and separate from him as she can with her mental walls in the state they’re in.

Fingon has no clue what to do. But he’s not going to just let his wife slip away from him without a fight, not when he’s just gotten her back, and so he keeps trying. It’s what he always does. It’s all he can do.

He sits down beside Maedhros’ bed, plate of food in hand, and gently tucks a strand of chopped-short hair behind her ear. “Are you hungry, meldanya?” he asks quietly.

She twitches away from his touch. “Don’t,” she mutters. “Don’t call me that.”

“What would you prefer for me to call you, then?” Fingon asks with all the equanimity he can muster.

Maedhros won’t meet his eyes. “Not your love,” she says. “Not yours. You should have good things, not - not something damaged.”

“You are not a thing,” Fingon states firmly. “You’re not, Russë. You are my wife, and I love you, and your scars and wounds only matter as tokens of what you have survived to come back to me.”

Maedhros laughs, a scraping and bitter sound. “If only the scars were all! Not that that would not be enough to go on with. But no.” She reaches out suddenly and grips Fingon’s hand in hers, pressing it to a place low on her belly. He remembers seeing a great deal of scarring there, but had not thought anything of it in particular, not when confronted with so many injuries everywhere.

“I can’t bear children,” she hisses. “He took it from me, the lieutenant, damaged me so thoroughly there that I could never beget a child. I will spare you the details, but I assure you he outlined them thoroughly to me. It was early on, when I still had some slim hope I would get out, and he delighted in spoiling that, even though he never intended it to matter in the end.”

Fingon is unable to speak through the hundreds of shades of emotions coursing through him. He remembers, abruptly, Maedhros curled next to him not long after their wedding, talking of the many children she wanted to have once all the trouble had died down and her father’s banishment lifted. He had not thought about that in a long time; those were not the kind of plans that belonged on the ice.

“I am so, so sorry that happened to you,” he finally manages. “So sorry, Russë - but why in all Ea would you think I would cast you aside for that? How have you come by the impression that I only love and value you as a vessel for children?”

Maedhros ducks her head. “You don’t, Finno, of course you don’t,” she murmurs. “I know you’d still want me, but...you wanted children. We talked of it, in Valinor, would have planned a begetting if...and now we can’t have that. Finno, we can’t, and we wanted it so much.”

She folds in on herself, and Fingon moves before he can think, to sit beside her on the bed and hold her. For the first time since she gained full awareness, she doesn’t pull away, but turns further into him, weeping into his chest and shaking. He curls around her and presses his lips to her hair, letting his own tears fall even as he does his best to soothe her.

“Ssh, oh Russë, oh love, it’s all right, it’ll be all right. We’ll get through this.” And now more than ever, he’s going to help her one day eviscerate Morgoth’s lieutenant, but this isn’t the time to discuss that.

“I should let you go,” Maedhros whispers moments later. “Let you be with someone you can still have that with.”

Fingon tightens his arms around her just slightly. “You are my wife. We are married,” he reminds her. “There is no letting go here.”

“There could be.” Maedhros shifts to look up at him. “There was for Grandfather.”

A shudder runs through Fingon’s whole body before he’s even finished processing the words. “No,” he decrees, and runs his fingers up and down her back, as if that alone will keep her here with him. “There could never be anyone else for me, Russë. I am not Finwë; my choices could never be his. And you are not Miriel - your spirit burns too bright and strong for that. You can endure this, and I will help you, and we will manage together. And I will keep on loving you no matter what dreams of ours get left behind on the way.”

Maedhros shivers in his arms, but presses closer. For the first time in over thirty years, their marriage bond opens fully, and Fingon feels her grief and anger and pain wash over him. He lets her see into him, too, his own shock and sorrow and rage and above it all, his love for her.

They sit there like that for a long time, not moving, not talking really, just bearing the hurt together and continuing to breathe.

#silmarillion #maedhros #fingon #russingon #i'm sorry #cw: infertility #cw: injury #my stories #roots of my tree

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alena-reblobs · 1 year

Text

Trigun Bookclub Trimax Vol2 Part 1

Vol01: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Vol02: Part 1 | Part 2

Trimax: Vol01 Part 1 Vol01 Part 2 | Vol02 Part 1 Vol02 Part 2

My thoughts on Trimax Vol02! Not so much deep art or thoughts analysis in this one :)

I wonder if the name has any meaning to it? As far as I understood this is the mansion where Legato and his henchmen are hiding, so I wonder if there’s anything to that name. Now what I found just now was that there is a musician by that name who apparently made two songs, one called “My Only True Love” and “I’m Coming Back from Viet Nam”, but no chance to listen to them. Interesting, I guess.

Joke: Midvalley must be playing really bad if that’s his audience’s reaction

It’s also cool to note that Gauntlet is trying to warn the men about Legato, that they should get away! He might hold no sympathy for them but he also doesn’t wish for their ugly demise that’s inevitable when Legato steps in.

Oh this whole chapter is SO yucky and bleugh and evil but the most evil thing is this panel right here. Sometimes the horrors that aren’t shown are the most horrifying ones.

Vaaash ♥ Every time our boy is remotely smiling I want to pet his head and boop his nose and hold him close.

Maybe I’ve overlooked smth during my first two reads or misunderstood smth but dear ma’am, who are you?? My only theory is probably nonsense. Or maybe it’s just some extra being controlled by Legato to help him move around?

I couldn’t resist. I need to make fun of Legato every time I see him.

Nick looks really cute with these glasses. Also good for you, Wolfie, getting to drive such a pretty boy in your sidecar!

The killing game? I thought they were only meant to bring Vash neverending und unbearable suffering? (Though Vash can’t know that)

Lovely use of the soundwords again!!

And this one! Also cool how the swoooshing of the blade is indicated with this white space. Black outlining and then a light shading...hmhm (taking notes)

Aah I love it when one part of the face is covered in darkness, showing mostly the eye. It’s so looming and effective. Actually, now I do wonder if this is something that’s still used in nowadays mangas or not? I don’t read lots of mangas atm and only one other shounen, so I’m pretty out of the loop how manga style has evolved (of course everybody has their own style but in general, I think you can often see if a series is older or newer. I NEED to analyise what specifics do give that away because that’s pretty interesting)

I think this is the first time it’s kinda directly stated that Vash is not human, isn’t it? Just smth interesting to note I think.

Ooh we all know you’re also thinking about you and your own sinful existence, Wolfie.

I really like this page and especially the left panel! The ground is so utterly devoid of any details, apart from the sand clouds and the lines that the roller blades have left. I really enjoy how Nightow keeps mostly to lineart without using lots of shading in the clothes, that’s a thing he does mostly in the faces the enhance expressions as far as I could tell.

Gotta agree with Wolfwood on this, Vash is being a bit naive. He makes it sound so easy, so much so that it could be understood as an insult to all the suffering that Rai-Dei had to endure, to the way that his life is now. I mean it’s not the case but it does sound like Vash doesn’t want to know or hear about Rai-Dei’s crimes, by saying it “doesn’t matter”. All in all it is understandable that it only fuels Rai-Dei’s anger.

I love pages where it’s no sound, only little snippets of action taking place, with different perspectives.

#trigun #trigunbookclub #oh please note that I have no idea how old Legato is or what his zodiac sign is #I also couldn't be bothered to look that up #I'm just gonna make assumptions about him

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dragonmuse · 2 years

Note

hiii I'm on my *mumble*-th reread and I was wondering, does Izzy ever realise that the eye mural Lucius drew is Pete's eye (is it Pete's eye or did I misinterpret?), and does he have any kind of thoughts/ feelings about it? I just love any and all interactions between the three of them it makes my heart soft 🥺

(It IS Pete's eye! He wound up not making a direct appearance in this ficlet, sorry, but I hope it satisfies anyway)

The ladder was a short one, but watching Lucius on it was nerve-wracking anyway. He was balancing paints, brushes, water and a rag at the top, had not worn particularly useful shoes (they were sneakers, but the fashionable kind without much grip) and despite his usual fear of heights, apparently easily absorbed into the work to get careless.

“How long is this going to take?” Izzy asked, holding the ladder firmly.

“Mm, dunno. An hour maybe?” Lucius swept white into the eye, carefully outlining. The fresh paint was several shades brighter than the older grimier one. “Why? Got a hot date?”

“Yeah, with my cardiologist,” Izzy winced as Lucius leaned even farther forward, his free hand just barely grazing the top handle for support.

“You don’t have to be out here. Told you, I usually do this by myself.”

“That’s worse,” he grumbled.

Apparently every summer, Lucius did a brief touch up on the mural to keep the colors vivid. Occasionally he changed some details, adding some shadowing to the eyelashes one year and switching out orange eyeshadow for green when the orange paint faded too quickly. This year it was just a re-touch, the colors more prone to showing dirt getting gently washed and then revived.

This had all been a pleasant conversation over dinner the night before until Lucius dropped the bomb that he apparently did all this on his own.

“You’re too freaked out to get on the stepstool to get down the platters in the kitchen and you just hop up a ladder?” Izzy asked, his fork suspended between his mouth and the plate.

“I can’t explain how my head works,” Lucius shrugged. “When I started the mural, I’d planned it lower, you know? But then you couldn’t see it right and if I wanted it to look the way it was in my head, it had to be higher. So it’s higher and once a year, I put on my big boy pants and manage.”

“Someone hands you shit?” He guessed.

“No, I do it myself.”

Izzy had set down his fork and they’d had quite an argument after that.

The end result was Izzy was the one holding the ladder and handing Lucius things as required because “if you have such a big itch about it you, you do it”. He did have the itch and here he was.

After the initial fear though, it gained its own hypnosis. Izzy was beginning to think (yes and mostly thanks to Donna) that he was perhaps most attracted to people just being very good at what they did. Watching Lucius flick his brush over the brick in little precise strokes was beautiful. The way the lashes regained depth as he coaxed highlights back into place seemed nearly miraculous.

Izzy had never really given the eye much thought. It was a part of the Revenge in the same way as the gaudy chandeliers, the crystal stemware and the heavy brocade stage curtains. He’d known it was Lucius’ work, of course, but Izzy had seen Lucius sketch far more detailed and technically more difficult things on a bar napkin. The eye was cartoonish in a way little else that Lucius made was. It had vibrant color instead of his preferred grays and sepia. It didn’t arrive quietly, drawing attention with a tug at the sleeve, it screamed for people to look.

Privately, Izzy had decided he didn’t even like it very much and avoided looking at it for the first few months of his occasional visits. But it had been over a year now and he was watching the rebuilding process and now he wasn’t so sure about his original assessment.

Maybe it was the cuff wrapped around his wrist and anchoring him firmly to the earth or maybe it was generally being less depressed (yes, also thank you, Donna), but the colors no longer struck him as garish and perhaps the attention-grabbing was a feature, not a bug.

It was only as Lucius was adding in light blue highlights into the iris that realization struck.

“Can you give me a clean brush?” Lucius asked, hand extending down. Izzy put one into his palm. Seemed like enough of a pause that he could ask:

“Is this Pete’s eye?”

“Yep,” Lucius dipped the brush into a darker blue. He moved slowly. One might think languidly, but Izzy knew the care in it now. “He let me take an ungodly amount of pictures and then stare at him for hours. I think he liked the attention, honestly.”

“Does everyone know that?”

“I mean, you’d think,” Lucius snorted. “What other drag queen am I looking at that much? But people think it’s Leda all the time. She doesn’t even have blue eyes.”

“Seems like she should. Goes with the whole persona.”

“Maybe. Stede sucks at putting in contacts though and it’s not the kind of thing you can tell unless you’re really close anyway.”

“Bonnet knows?”

“Huh. I assumed so, but he never asked. Might think it’s just something I pulled out of my hat.”

Now that Izzy had seen it, he couldn’t unsee it. Pete’s eyes were just that shape, the lid folded up in just that way. The cartoonishness that he’d seen there disappeared all at once. It was the makeup that had fooled him, but here in the details of skin and cornea were very realistic roots.

“Good likeness,” he offered.

“Thanks. Should be. Eyes are so hard,” Lucius’ nose was inches away from the brick, practically kissing the wet paint. “Took me forever to get right.”

“You signed it somewhere?”

“Uh huh,” Lucius paused to grinned down at him. “Find where and I’ll come down for a break.”

Now that was tempting on several levels. Izzy turned his attention to the edges. Usually the LB would linger in corners where most artists would leave their mark, but clearly Lucius had hidden it somewhere or he wouldn’t have issued the challenge. He scanned the long lashes, the ombre of eyeshadow, the folds of the skin and the now freshly white eyes.

Then he caught it.

“You’re a sap,” Izzy accused.

“I’m allowed to be sappy about my husband,” Lucius cackled.

“You showed him?”

“Of course. It wouldn’t be much of a gesture if I hadn’t.”

In one of the darker shades of blue, Lucius had drawn his initials in just one shade darker nested in another, much smaller eye in the same shade. It was Lucius looking back at Pete, reflected and seen. The kind of thing you could only spot if you were nearly on top of the piece in broad daylight.

“You said you’d take a break.”

“Coming down,” Lucius agreed and he clutched white knuckled at the ladder as he did as if the fear had rushed right back in as soon as he had to move from his perch. Izzy didn’t move, so Lucius landed in a cage of his arms. “Hello.”

“Hi.”

Hands, paint dappled, cupped his face and he was kissed slowly and tenderly. Izzy didn’t resist. He kissed back, all too aware that neon flecks would dot his cheeks and beard. Maybe his clothes too as they pressed together.

There were worse things.

Especially if they were traces from one of Izzy's newly favorite pieces.

#leda house and the kraken verse #ficlet #izzy hands #lucius black #pete black

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ravenvsfox · 2 years

Text

Rockband AU Chapter 13

You read that right folks! she's back with lucky 13!! after a short 2 year sojourn :) If any of you still care about this story I am shocked and amazed and GRATEFUL. I truly deeply hope you enjoy this penultimate chapter, ilysm

__________

Beneath the green glare of a neon lotus flower, and a wall-length poster of a sailor tied in bondage knots, Neil reclines in crunchy sterile sheets and polished leather. The artist has his hot latex hands bracketing his work, and his head ducked close to the whirring tattoo gun. Neil focuses on the neat crop of lines as they appear, breathing medicinal tang and warm cologne.

Despite the still-looming Moriyama threat, it finally seems worth it to undergo this final initiation ceremony. He doesn’t feel quite so much like he’s letting the people he cares about stake their claim on a dead man.

He’s been collecting all kinds of physical keepsakes lately: sharpie reminders on the palm of his hand, calluses from late-night bass lessons, pinks and purples from the graze of Andrew’s teeth, and now the promise of ink that will last long enough to fade in the sun.

Neil finds himself in a never-ending charitable mood since his friends brought him home, every conversation or gesture pre-weighed on a scale of immoveable gratitude. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to turn Nicky down when he promised he ‘knew a guy,’ and dragged Neil to a hole-in-the-wall tattoo shop.

It’s cool and bright inside, full of modern-looking black leather and silver light fixtures, hanging plants and polaroid collages of old clients. Nicky does most of the talking for them both, and the cheerful cadence of his laughter, shuffling of sketches, and testing buzz of the needle are all strangely comforting.

He lets himself be gathered onto the table and rolled up at the sleeves, shaved and wiped down and murmured to. He kind of likes the whole ritual of it, if not the prolonged closeness. The pain is fine and controlled—more like stitching a wound than creating one.

“It looks so goddamn cool,” Nicky gushes, craning to see the shading bleed into the outlines. “Andrew’s gonna lose his marbles.”

“I like it,” Neil says, watching the blood and ink be wiped gently away with a clean paper towel.

“Andrew is the boyfriend?” the artist asks.

Neil shrugs, and the artist has to tighten his rubber grip to keep things even.

Nicky rolls his eyes. “That’s a yes.”

“Ahh, one of those relationships,” he guesses.

Neil frowns. “No.” He’s not even sure what he’s disagreeing with exactly, but he doesn’t like the implication. This stranger has picked up the dangling ends of Neil’s silence and Nicky’s oversharing and knit a warped picture out of them. Neil and Andrew are something different to each other every time they’re together, there’s no way he could have pigeonholed them. “But I think he’ll probably hate that he wasn’t told.”

“Don’t say that,” Nicky groans. “Even his slipped kneecap didn’t save me from his wrath. And I don’t have the pain tolerance that you do.”

“No shit,” the artist says. “He’s sitting like a rock.”

“I’ve had some practice,” Neil says.

The artist’s eyes bounce down to Neil’s armbands and up again. “Oh yeah?” He swipes his thumb over a patch of raw skin thoughtfully, but doesn’t press for details. “Well, she’s almost done, anyway.”

“Finally,” Nicky yawns. “Rehearsal started half an hour ago.”

“Oh—I wouldn't recommend doing anything too strenuous today. I usually prescribe my clients a good old-fashioned nap.”

Neil opens his mouth to argue, but Nicky jostles his free shoulder. “You don’t have to worry, man. He’s our lead singer, so he basically sits there and looks pretty.”

“I doubt that,” he says, twitching a smile. The needle startles a muscle spasm out of Neil when it touches down on the inside of his bicep. “So would I have heard any of your guys’ stuff?”

“Uhhh, If you haven’t, then you’re about to,” Nicky says, fumbling for his iPod.

“Nicky,” Neil warns. “You can’t spring this shit on people who can't leave.”

“A captive audience is the best kind,” Nicky says cheerfully.

“Play me something,” the artist says gamely.

“See, he asked me! Just be glad I’m not making you throw a live performance, Neil.”

“What would possibly make you think you have the ability to make me do that?”

Nicky rolls his eyes. “I guess I don’t have the same persuasive power that Andrew does, right?”

Neil doesn’t bother to reply. He closes his eyes and rolls his neck. Ink sinks its teeth into his arm, and then their new single walks in and pulls up a chair.

I named myself, at the end of the world

dug it out of the fire, before the edges could curl

sang in the mirror, made sure someone would listen

it took an apocalypse for me to be christened

I think I’m going to be a person now

nothing can be worse than how

it felt to be nameless

I was nameless

this pyre is the wildest thing that’s never hurt me

there aren’t any bodies here—you only cut down trees

well, I’ll cut the moon free, give each of you a crater

I’ll live in the seconds after the light, next to the generator

this thing we have is nameless

What we have is nameless

I made myself, at the end of the world

I took a hammer to the shell, and I fought for the pearl

put my shadow back on with a needle and thread

I’m growing up again, this time I’m not already dead

Someone saved me here, in the middle of the game

and I swear, the way you say my name—

It’s like you invented it

“Not what I expected,” the artist says, not unkindly. He maneuvers Neil’s arm gingerly off the table to wrap it. “I’m not usually a rock fan, but you’ve definitely got pipes.”

“We’re versatile,” Nicky says slyly.

Neil remembers writing that song in bed, in the days after, with only half his vision to guide him to the page. Andrew would sigh in his sleep, or the microwave would beep, or Aaron and Nicky would argue over a video game, and Neil would sit through wave after wave of gratitude.

He still feels that hysterical relief all the time, an undercurrent that catches up to him in the quiet moments.

Music didn't come back to him easily after Baltimore. One last robbery from his father, who didn’t quite manage to cut Neil’s tongue from his mouth, but always found new ways to keep him voiceless. Neil might’ve snapped and thrashed his way out of freezing water, sure, but getting up from his knees on ice that wants to break is hardly any easier.

In their first rehearsal back, in the yellow days of pre-summer, Neil had sat at the piano looking sorry for himself until Andrew poked a drumstick into his ribs.

“Play,” he’d said.

Neil had shaken his head until he realized Andrew was asking him to play the drums.

“I can’t,” he’d said, bewildered.

“Can’t hit something with a stick? I thought that was one of the few skills you might have.”

“It won’t be any good.”

“My expectations are low.”

And just like that, they swapped spots.

Kevin had watched them with vague interest until Neil fulfilled his promise and sucked very badly—and then he’d taken an early lunch.

Andrew plonked on the same low note over and over again, watching him over the music stand, and Neil wailed on the kick-drum until his anxious pulse became a rhythm they could all deal with.

It was more like therapy than music, until Nicky started shredding over top, mimicking Kevin’s over-blown I’m-an-artist-and-this-is-my-craft expression, tongue between his teeth. Neil had laughed gratefully, smashed on the cymbal, and then they’d gotten to work.

His damaged tendons throbbed constantly in those early days, the left side of his vision swam, and his consonants slipped and fell on his swollen tongue. But it was good, in a weird way, to focus on those little aches and pains, to see them slacken and fade over time.

Or—it was, but after Andrew came home bruised and crawling from the Moriyama estate, Neil’s healing took a sharp left turn. He had framed Andrew’s mottled purple kneecap with his hands, and realized that his terror from before—when he was stupid enough to misread Lola’s countdown as the next phase of Riko’s threat—was still sharp to the touch.

And it had briefly grazed Andrew.

He knows Riko is still out there, resenting them. Neil is still defying his orders every moment that he stays where he is. And now Palmetto has badmouthed Riko to his own family, compromised Jean, and severely wounded his pride.

And now he knows intimately everything that can go wrong in a day. In a minute. Everything he builds can be unbuilt with the wave of a hand, that’s always been the risk for Neil.

He can’t dwell on it for too long. Like, medically, he can’t. He’s had a handful of panic attacks thinking about Matt punching Riko, or Andrew cruising up to his Nest while he was away. His vision blurs, his scars hurt, and he truly thinks he’s going to die from fear. The same fear that his mother taught him to trust like a weapon.

Andrew can usually pull him back with a hand in his hair. His friends intercept every stressor they can, calling for breaks in rehearsals when he starts to go quiet, showing up at the house with edibles and board games, texting him in a group chat so he doesn’t feel obligated to respond, but he can read their messages and know they’re there.

He hasn’t gotten the hang of relying on people, and he often does it wrong. He can tell, from Nicky’s wobbly disappointment, the nervous exchange of glances between Foxes, the impenetrable look on Andrew’s face which turned out, after all this time, to be worry. But he won’t leave again. He’s branded now.

The muscles in his arm jump and shift when the artist has wrapped him shoulder to elbow in sanoderm. It’s surreal, the ever-shifting landscape of his skin, the stinging humidity under the plastic film—these scars have a story he actually likes.

“Welcome to the monsters, officially,” Nicky says, jostling his tender shoulder accidentally-on-purpose while they square up at the counter. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” Neil says, half-shrugging. He reconsiders, as they jingle out of the store and into a clear, blue day. “But also sort of the same.”

Nicky hums in agreement. “They suit you.”

He’s talking about tattooed monsters, but Neil thinks inevitably of the Monsters; Nicky, Kevin, Aaron, and Andrew, who took him in and gave him the teeth and claws to fight back.

“I think so too.”

______

They arrive back at the studio, and Nicky walks ahead of him importantly, clearly wanting to be the herald that breaks the news of Neil’s transformation. Neil follows the eager slant of his back as he lopes toward rehearsal.

All eyes slide over to the pair of them, but as always, Andrew’s are the ones that stick. He’s rocking backwards on two chair legs, feet thrown up and crossed on the piano bench, and he catches sight of Neil’s hitched up sleeves instantly.

He rocks forward, and the front chair legs hit the floor with a clatter.

“Guess where we’ve been,” Nicky says.

“It’s a mystery,” Aaron replies sarcastically, and reaches over to flick Nicky right in the harpy.

“Congratulations,” Kevin says, pursing his lips in a way that Neil thinks is probably supposed to be a smile. “This was overdue."

Andrew stands, and pulls Neil to him by the wrist, and then the elbow. He frames the fresh ink between his thumbs. Distracted, Neil examines his bowed gold head, the swirl of his unkempt part, and is briefly overwhelmed by affection.

“Nicky thought I should go with the cyclops.”

“Nicky has famously poor taste.”

“Do you remember when you told me that Nathaniel was gone and that—nobody could touch me? And I said—”

“You said ‘not nobody,’” he interrupts. Then, with some impatience, “I’m not Odysseus.”

A flush of satisfaction, as there often is when he can catch Andrew in a conversation without any stakes.

“No,” he agrees, warmly. “I wouldn’t make the mistake of calling you nobody.”

Andrew acknowledges this with something akin to an eye-roll, but he brushes the pad of one curious finger down over rushing water and coiling hair, rendered in piercingly fresh, dark ink.

When he traces the slippery tail around the underside of Neil’s bicep, he shivers perilously closer. Amusement glints off of the stillness of Andrew’s face, a reflection in the dark.

“So you lure men to their deaths,” he murmurs, turning the tattoo this way and that, crinkling the plastic. “When you sing.” He doesn’t really say it like a question, or a joke.

There is a strange giddiness moving trippingly through Neil’s body, and he fights halfheartedly to keep it under control. “Occasionally.”

The siren is locked underwater, hand pressed firmly to the surface as if it’s something solid keeping her elbow locked and her buoyant body low in the seaweed. Her fanged mouth is open mid-croon, eyes closed in apparent ecstasy, and her long muscular tail is locked twice around the barbs of Neil’s scars, which have been transfigured into spiky sea treasure and coral.

She is androgynous, sleek. Her free hand is outstretched towards the place where somebody else’s squarish palm and reaching fingers have breached the surface of the pool.

It’s the slightest bit ambiguous, whether she’ll pull this anonymous sailor down, or let him hoist her ashore. She seems too lost in her song to look at her prey, yet he reaches dutifully down for her. Clutched between Andrew’s left and right, his yes and no, Neil’s siren is a maybe.

After an endless moment, Andrew turns his attention to Neil’s other rolled sleeve.

He makes a tutting noise, and reaches out to reveal Neil's other tattoo—a firebird huddled amongst scar kindling, with flames pouring off of its back and whipping into the night. Its expression is strikingly similar to the siren’s: tipped back, eyes closed, beak cracked with song.

Andrew cups the image of the phoenix, and its talons almost seem to prick his fingers.

“Because Neil was born,” Neil says, “in fire.”

“Twice,” Andrew says.

He tilts his head, thinking of his mother and father, the death of each other, consumed by flame. “Twice.”

“Not very monstrous,” Andrew says with finality, letting the sleeve drift back into place.

Neil shrugs. He reaches up as if to trace one of the gnarled necks of Andrew’s hydra, but leaves his hand floating just shy of his skin. “Neither are you.”

There’s an uncharacteristically generous beat of consideration, as if infected by Neil’s ambiguity, his lovely menagerie of maybes, and churning life cycles. It's the kind of moment where, if they were alone, Neil might put his mouth to Andrew's throat.

“So what do you think?” Nicky calls. He’s perched conspicuously at the drum kit, openly watching their conversation unfold.

“I think you should mind your business,” Andrew says.

“This is absolutely my business! I just spent like six hours making small talk with my ex, just for this moment. I even held Neil’s hand for you,” he says, mock-serious.

Andrew takes an irritated step towards his cousin, and Neil’s raised hand accidentally brushes his turning cheek.

“Can we focus?” Kevin asks, before the room has a chance to explode into squabbling. “End of the month concert. Foxes collaboration. Security at the venue.” He counts each item out on his fingers, aping leadership in a way that would ordinarily make Neil want to get up and leave. But between his new tattoos and Andrew’s subtle, probing approval, his good mood is lacquer, and everything else slides off of him.

“Don’t forget surviving the literal mafia,” Aaron says. “Is that on the agenda?”

“See number three,” Kevin grits. “Security at the venue.”

“Oh yeah, a mall cop should stop an armed psychopath with a grudge.”

“Aaron,” Kevin says. He seems to look for something leader-esque to say for a floundering moment, and settles on, “shut the fuck up. Play the guitar.”

“Pass,” Aaron says. Kevin starts to argue, but Aaron continues, “rehearsal ended twenty minutes ago, and I have a date.” He looks at Andrew, challenging him to bar him from leaving, but Andrew just stares back, chilly.

As Aaron packs up, slinging his soft guitar case around his shoulders, an awareness tickles in the back of Neil’s mind, like he’s groping for a memory that isn’t his.

Some things are lost on him since the day he buried Nathaniel for good. Some friendships seemed to redouble behind his back; some bonds have started to chafe unexpectedly. Neil brushes whispers away like cobwebs whenever he enters a room. He isn’t really sure how to ask about the gaps in his knowledge without rehashing the ugly details of his disappearing act.

“Say hi to Katelyn for us,” Nicky drawls. “And for the love of Christ, invite her to our show. She keeps hinting.”

“That,” Aaron says, “is really none of your business.”

“It’s so hard to be related to you clowns sometimes. If I can’t gossip about your love lives, what do I have, huh?”

“I don’t know about what you have, but you should get a life.” Aaron rolls Nicky’s stool out of his path in a way that’s almost affectionate, and Nicky yelps with laughter.

Andrew catches the stool with his boot, and stares, with his foot cocked on the wheels, until Nicky slinks over to his own instrument.

Kevin looks uncertain, gripping his bass too tightly with taped, callused fingers.

“Can we run one?” Neil asks, stepping through an entire root system of wires towards the piano. “I can stay late.”

Kevin’s brow smoothes, and he offers Neil a true smile. Some things are lost on Neil, definitely, but some things are easy in a way they never were before. He can offer more now, more attention, more time, more honesty. He can see past the mind-bending shape of his own fear.

“From the top.”

______

Later, Matt is noodling on his guitar in the early evening sunshine, and Neil is stretched out in socked feet on the living room carpet, crossed hands resting warm on his own stomach. They’re at the Foxes dorm, and they’ve been jukebox singing through Matt’s entire repertoire like this, in between turned pages and idle conversation.

“Can I ask you something?”

Neil cranes his head back to look at Matt upside down. “Ask.”

“Do you think you’re the happiest you could be?” he asks. His left hand is drooping from a soundless bar chord.

Neil knocks back onto his elbows. “Is this about Andrew again?”

“No,” Matt says immediately. “No, I just. Wonder sometimes. About all of us, I guess. Is it better to be with the sort of people who will always get it, but who we might be more likely to lose? Would Renee be happier in I dunno—Carnegie hall or something? Would Nicky be happier in Germany full-time?”

“I doubt it,” Neil says. “This is the life they found. None of us would have fought for it if it wasn’t important.”

“Yeah,” Matt hesitates. “Of course. But Neil—can I say something kind of fucked up?”

Neil's brow furrows. “At your own risk.”

“What, you gonna pull a knife on me?” Matt jokes, nudging Neil’s closest armband.

“Nah,” Neil says. “but maybe I’ll decide to finally go find this perfect happy life that I’ve been missing out on.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Matt says fondly. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that before.”

“I was on my best behaviour before.”

“That was your best? Goading the mob was—what—you minding your p’s and q’s? Trying to beat Kevin’s ass was like dinner at nana’s to you?” He laughs helplessly, and Neil hits him, upside down, in the shin. Matt doesn’t flinch, but he does put his guitar down as a barrier between them. “God, you monster. Okay, anyway. Don’t you dare take this personally, because it’s about all of us, okay?”

Neil sobers instantly. “Okay.”

Matt takes a deep breath. “So, when one of gets hurt, or goes missing—”

Neil’s expression wavers, like fire buffeted by sudden wind. Matt puts a hand briefly on the crown of Neil’s head, a brotherly gesture that has probably lived in him since birth.

“I have to see Dan take the hit. She’s tough for everyone, she always is, but I see—“ He searches for words, and his face looks too bright, like a sunny, humid sky before the storm seizes. “She pulls away from me, and I can tell that she’s trying to slow her fall, so it doesn’t hurt so bad, right. And I’m always like—why do we do this to each other?”

Neil eases the rest of the way down onto the carpet, eyes closing.

“And I do know why, man. Because we don’t have a choice. That’s what caring is. But still. I wonder if we could’ve spared each other some heartache.”

“I don’t know,” Neil whispers. “I think that might be my biggest fear.” Now that his old ones are burned to ash.

“Sorry,” Matt says, wincing. And then quieter, “it's mine too.”

“But I do know that the way you all fought for me, when it would have been so much easier to let me go—nobody else would’ve done that. And for me, there’s nothing, and nobody, that could mean more than that.” He shrugs, and opens his eyes to the ceiling. “I have to trust that it’s the same for everyone else.”

“It is,” Matt says fiercely. “For me, it is.”

“Okay. Okay, good.”

“But also,” Matt says, “anyone who knew you would’ve done that for you. You don’t just—let Neil Josten go.”

He tips back to look Matt squarely in the face again. “That hasn’t really been my experience.”

“It will be,” Matt says simply.

Neil sits up, back to the couch, his ribs jostling Matt’s leg. “So I guess, yeah. I’m the happiest I could be.”

“Until tomorrow,” Matt grins. “We’ve gotta keep one-upping our game.”

“Not if you keep instigating the most depressing imaginable conversations,” a voice says from the doorway. Allison, uncharacteristically casual in dark jeans, and behind her, Renee.

Neil can tell immediately from the look in her eyes that kind-faced Renee is absent, and there’s someone else driving.

“It’s called emotional maturity,” Matt says.

“Between you and Josten? I seriously doubt that,” Allison snarks.

Neil looks past them both, and says, testing—“Renee?” Her eyes clip in his direction, then down distractedly to the slender silver watch on her wrist.

“Sorry Neil, I don’t have time to talk.”

“What’s happening?”

Her lips purse, and she reaches for Allison. “Kengo Moriyama is dead. I just got the call.”

The hairs on the back of his neck curl up, and he starts to get to his feet. “From who?” And then, cold with realization. “Is Jean…”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Allison interrupts. “You’re not invited, public enemy number one. Just think helpful thoughts.” She strides past him, strung to Renee by the hand, chunky shoes clattering hard against the fake hardwood.

Neil starts to make for the door behind them, and Allison shoots him a warning look. “Goodbye,” she says pointedly.

“I can help.”

“Neil,” Dan calls, appearing from the kitchen. “They’ve got it. They’re resourceful as hell. You know how Renee gets.”

He doesn’t, really, but he doesn’t point it out.

“It’s my fault that Jean’s at risk,” Neil says. The front door closes hard behind his friends, and he turns in a frustrated circle, towards the door, then towards Dan, and back again.

“Jean knew how risky it was to help us,” Matt says. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s Riko’s fault, and no one else’s,” Dan says firmly.

“Well, maybe Kengo’s too, for dying,” Matt says.

“I know what Jean did for me, and what it cost. The least I could do is get him out.”

“Riko’s like a dog with a bone,” Dan says. “I’m not keen to offer up his other favourite chew-toy unless I want it destroyed. You wanna be destroyed?”

“What do you think?” he retorts.

“Neil,” Dan says, holding his eye. “Do you want to do that to us again?”

He looks away, feeling crumpled and warm with remorse. “No.”

“Self-sacrifice is fucked, man. I’m tired of it.” Now that he’s stopped his frenetic two-step between logic and instinct, she crosses the hall from the kitchen and collects both of his hands in her own. “Jean was okay enough to call. And he knows he has allies here because of you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you kind of bring people together.”

Neil shakes his head, blinking at Dan’s warm brown hands between his own scar-notched ones.

“You don’t give yourselves enough credit. Palmetto was a team before I got here.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dan shrugs, “but we weren’t really a family.”

He breathes out hard, and remembers that first dinner at Abby’s, when everyone was fighting, sharing food, and prying shamelessly into each other’s business. “You felt like one to me.”

Dan ropes him close enough that their foreheads clunk together, the pair of them warmed by the sunset through the living room windows. “Neil,” Dan’s voice trips, then rights itself. “I’m glad you didn’t leave.”

“I tried,” he reminds her. “None of you ever let me.”

“So maybe I’m a bit like a dog with a bone too.” She pulls away, and pats a little bit clumsy-on-purpose at his cheek. “You don’t ‘just let Neil Josten go,’ right?”

Matt winces. “You heard that?”

“I hear everything. It’s my job.” She goes to Matt, and he reaches up automatically to hold her, his face crushed against her sternum. “Also, idiot,” she says, gentler, “I’m the happiest I could be.”

“Yeah?” Matt says, looking up, the point of his chin pressed to her stomach. His eyes slip closed when she leans down to kiss the top of his head, and they stay that way.

Dan cards a hand through his spiky hair, and looks over at Neil. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m not really one to settle.”

“Me neither,” Neil shrugs. “I play with the best.”

______

When Renee and Allison haven’t come home four hours later, and the three of them have made their way anxiously through a Tupperware of spaghetti leftovers and two six-packs, Neil walks himself home. He needs the time to worry, systematically, about worst case scenarios.

Kengo dead, Riko unleashed, Tetsuji with Andrew’s name in a ledger somewhere, and Ichirou lording over it all. Something cataclysmic is happening to the Moriyama family, and it’s not going to happen without Neil in the blast zone, not anymore.

It’s been a long time since he’s had both a clear head and a sense of self-preservation at the same time, and frankly, it’s tiring.

He lets himself into the house after midnight, armbands damp with late-season humidity, fresh tattoos stinging, and finds himself profoundly dizzy in the sudden cool darkness.

He takes two floating steps and catches himself against the doorframe.

“Hey,” a voice snaps. Unexpectedly, it’s Aaron’s unimpressed expression that melts into his line of vision. “Eat something. I can smell your low blood sugar from here.” He smacks him on the nearest arm, between his tattoo and drooping armband, and Neil puts a belated hand out to bat him away.

“I’m fine,” he says irritably.

“Didn’t ask,” Aaron replies, already halfway out of the room.

“What happened to you?” Andrew asks, replacing Aaron in the doorway from the living room out into the hall—a maneuver which does nothing to help Neil’s dizziness. He focuses on the collar of Andrew’s white shirt, which is bleeding grey where his recently washed hair wasn’t dried properly.

Neil shakes his head. “Kengo is dead. And Riko's taking his anger out on whoever’s nearby.”

“I know. Not what I asked.”

He thinks backwards. “What happened to me?” Neil considers this like it’s a sort of abstract crossword clue. “I don’t know. I drank, a little.” He slouches to the chair closest to where Andrew’s standing, and sits heavily. “I’m not sure if I can keep choosing the things I want if they get other people killed in my place. I have to think about it. I really don’t know. Jean—I don’t—we don’t even know each other, really.”

Andrew watches him closely as he struggles to put his half-crisis into words.

“I should feel guilty, but mostly I feel bitter. Why would he compromise himself like that? What was his game? I doubt I would have done the same, would you?”

“Told the truth to save your life?” Andrew’s eyes are darker than dark, and his answer is obvious. When Neil says nothing, floundering, Andrew sighs. “Come here.”

He rolls out of the beanbag chair, and just barely manages to get his feet under him again. He steps up sort of accidentally into Andrew’s personal space, but Andrew just steadies him without complaint.

“Your coping mechanisms are bad.”

“It would be more surprising if they weren’t, I think,” he says, feeling exhaustion start to sap the energy from his body, joint by joint.

Andrew’s eyes roll in the dark, a quick fan of blond lashes, and then a hand is hauling Neil into the hall by the scruff of his shirt. He lets himself be dragged, grateful not to be holding the full brunt of his body and his thoughts.

The bathroom air is still post-shower thick when they open the door. Andrew props him up on the edge of the countertop. He picks hours-old sanoderm away from Neil’s new tattoos, tugging experimentally.

“Can I?”

“Sure,” Neil says easily, enjoying the cool mirror at his back, the wet swipe of the back of his head over steamed glass.

It’s bandaid-quick on the right arm, and the fresh air against his ink-muddy skin is a surprisingly potent relief. He hadn’t realized how much his arms had started to feel divorced from the rest of him. Andrew tosses the plastic into the sink, and peels the other bandage halfway free before Neil can register the belated ache of the first.

“You knew about Jean already,” Neil murmurs.

Andrew bows his head in acknowledgement, wetting a washcloth and squeezing it out over the mess in the sink. “Renee called me. Told me you might get it in your head that you should follow them into the Nest. I told her you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know how close I got,” Neil says.

“Oh, I don’t?” Andrew gives him a look so glacial it could burn. “You would not have gotten far with Dan and Matt there. They know better than to let you out of their sight nowadays.” He hands Neil the sudsy washcloth, and slouches against the counter next to him, tense, but warm and close.

“You went to the Nest alone,” Neil says tightly. “I don’t know why your odds were so much more favourable than the three of us together could’ve been.”

He dabs vaguely at his own tattoos with water from the still-running tap, enjoying the way the monsters press their faces up through soap bubbles, stark and clean.

“My name isn’t on Riko’s most wanted list.”

“Alone,” Neil reiterates. “You took a bat to a hornets' nest, and barely made it home with both your legs.”

“And you, what? Miss the thrill of dislocation?”

“I told you, I don’t want to put people out in front of me like a shield. I’ve tried that, it’s bullshit, and it’s pointless. I won’t let you take any more punches for me.”

“You don’t get to decide what we do for you,” Andrew says, in that conversation-ending way of his. He takes the cloth from Neil’s limp fingers, and starts wiping at the foggy blue stencil still staining his skin. He holds him steady by the ball of his arm, right before it slopes off into his shoulder.

From his side of the counter, Neil nudges his thigh outwards until it makes brief, exhilarating contact with Andrew’s.

“Don’t,” he says mildly, without looking away from Neil’s phoenix, and the sparks and freckles which slurry down his left arm.

“I can do that myself,” Neil offers, reaching for the tap, but Andrew catches his hand and deposits it back in his lap. He folds Neil’s sleeves back over the curve of each shoulder, then rolls both sets of armbands off, revealing his own pale old half moons, and then Neil’s coarse, still-pink bramble.

He thinks, as he often does, of the first time he saw Andrew’s scars, here in this bathroom. With hair dye drying dark between his fingers, and their eyes getting caught up in the mirror, Andrew had promised Neil that he could leave Ausreißer any time he wanted to.

Now he’s asking, in his own way, for him to stay.

Neil watches him smudge mild lotion over stinging raised lines, and he lifts his face until their noses nearly bump, bobbing canoes in still water. Andrew goes still, but he doesn’t move away.

“I wouldn’t have left you again,” Neil offers. “Not because of Dan or Matt. I just—couldn’t have done it.” Then, at the look in Andrew’s oil-lamp eyes, he’s the one who whispers, “yes or no?”

A slippery hand climbs from Neil’s shoulder to his neck, and Andrew guides him sideways until his wet bangs stick to Neil’s temple, his cheek, his collarbone. As they kiss, side by side against the mirror, monsters snaking up from their arms and necks, it feels crowded somehow—bigger than just the two of them.

They separate, barely. Andrew drags a thumb over Neil’s cheekbone, and says, “Jean Moreau was fine, without you trying to die for him. I would not have been,” he struggles to say, “if you had—”

“I know,” Neil says, painfully, thoughts eating their own tails too fast for him to identify any one. Something Dan said earlier bobs past, and he struggles to grab ahold of it. “I think—I think self-sacrifice is usually selfish.” It’s as much as he can muster. At some point in the past year he’s learned that love can’t just be about burning the body. It can’t be. It has to be about keeping something alive.

The shower light is on, but the overhead ones are still off, and there’s something comforting about the shadows, the full-bodied fluorescence tempered by muggy darkness. Andrew holds him consideringly, like he’s pinning up laundry, blinking into the uncertain light.

Neil lets himself be watched, close-up, cocking his head back to accept the full impact of Andrew’s unrepressed interest. His eyes keep returning to the black shape of their armbands, tangled together on the countertop.

“These mean something—” Andrew tells him, the loose grip on his neck sliding down towards Neil’s siren. His palm is an obvious fit over the small, matching sailor’s hand. “—more permanent than our contract."

“I’m aware,” he says. “The all-day session would be overkill if it washed off in the shower.”

“You’ll excuse my disbelief, considering your track record for not thinking things through.”

Neil catches a glimpse of his own scarred cheek in his peripheral vision.

“I used to have to overthink everything. It was paralyzing. Nothing ever felt like the right thing to do, even when it was the only way.” He doesn’t know why he says it. He regards Andrew’s stoic face. They always end up drawn together, in mirrors and grey places, telling secrets; it’s like a release valve they keep pressing by accident. “But decisions come more easily now. I trust my gut, since some lunatic bashed it in with a guitar.”

After a long moment, Andrew says, “sometimes I’m not sure whether we made you into a monster, or you made us tame.” He seems vaguely unsettled by the prospect. Domestication, after all these years of fighting to keep himself alive and apart.

It’s possibly the most candid thing Andrew’s ever said to him. The idea of being any kind of influence other than bad is foreign to Neil.

He’s overwhelmed, as he is more and more often these days, by something he doesn’t have the right name for. Being close to someone without alarm bells ringing; the ending of blood-pounding survival, and the beginning of something else. Tame, he considers, might not be far off.

______

It’s funny, how the wound starts to close while the blade is still skewered inside.

Jean, battered nearly beyond recognition, is ushered into Allison’s expensive little car out on the front lawn of the Nest. Or so the story goes. Neil never learns exactly what Renee said, what leverage she could possibly have had over his captors, or what she saw in Jean from the get-go, but she manages to pluck him from Evermore like a moulting feather.

The media erupts, of course. Blame is bandied vaguely in Neil’s direction after the grand reveal of his murky past, and the tabloids put bold red X’s between shady-looking Jean and tender, grieving Riko. It’s despicable, and Neil says so, on the rare occasion that the press asks for his opinion.

The Moriyamas find a replacement musician somewhere in the Nest, and Riko remains the face of the band, the voice that people remember, and uncontested number one. Fans mourn the imagined dynamic between Jean and Riko, wondering avidly in online forums what might have truly gone down between them, and slandering Ausreißer’s name. The rest of the world just inhales the drama like a stimulant, and buys the new album.

Renee often comes to rehearsal with fresh status reports on Jean, who is starting to heal, with Abby’s help, up in the Foxes guest room.

Last Neil heard, there was an indie band called Trojan Horse sniffing around Jean’s temporary door, and one of their vocalists was coordinating a contract from the middle of tour. His is the face on half the vinyl in Kevin’s room, and the voice he cites (incessantly) when he’s trying to get Neil to aim for a different, more melancholy tone.

Neil sometimes finds himself wide-awake by the glow of the computer in the basement, watching tour clips on the Trojan Horse website. It’s an unusually large ensemble, featuring the usual synth, drum kit, couple of guitars, and a bass, but also three alternate vocalists.

The singers fluctuate between their own instruments: occasional banjo, muted trumpet or melodica, tambourine, woodblocks, or strings. Jeremy Knox is usually front and centre, but he seems to like to coax smaller units out of his band, and their stages change all the time.

There’s a still photo of a hollering percussionist, and the singer with the trumpet is holding a microphone up to her face, while pointing at a sweaty, golden Jeremy with one of the fingers not curled around her instrument. The caption reads:

Al, Laila, and the Captain tearing it up in San Fran.

Neil reviews their rapport with a level of interest that one might reserve for conducting a job interview. He’s not sure what they’re going to do with grim, obtuse Jean, and his deferent performances. He’s always played second fiddle to Riko, and Neil’s not sure he truly has anything else in him.

Once, in the murky recovery days, Neil encounters Jeremy on his way down through the towering Foxes apartment complex. He’s buttoned up in red, and his hair is blonder than blond.

“Oh,” Jeremy says when he sees him, stopping short. “Neil Josten, no way! I’ve heard unbelievable things.”

He holds out a hand and Neil, cautiously, takes it. “You’re here for Jean?”

He smiles with absolutely all of his teeth. “Yeah, you know. Gotta give the sales pitch in person.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “How’d that work out for you?”

“Well, I hate to sign and tell, but it’s looking good.”

“Congratulations,” Neil says, “although I’m amazed you have any room in your line-up. Don’t you already have two guitarists?”

“You’ve done your research,” Jeremy says, clearly pleased. He leans himself halfway up against the wall by the elevator in a way that might be obnoxious on someone less charming. “I appreciate that. But Jean’s not playing guitar for us.”

“No?”

“Nope. We’re kind of hoping we can get him to sing.”

“Sing? I didn’t know—“ Colour moves over Jeremy’s face as he relishes good-naturedly in Neil’s surprise; he has the sort of skin-tone that goes ruddy pink at a moment’s notice. “I didn’t know anyone could find a use for four singers at once,” Neil finishes, changing course. “At this point I can’t tell if Trojan Horse is a band or a choir.”

Jeremy laughs. “You know, Neil, you’re not wrong. We’re going for musical chaos. Some artists are sensible, and some want to throw a four-piece quartet in the mix, just to see if they can.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

He shrugs. “I kind of thrive on logistical nightmares. Plus, I’ve heard Jean’s demos in the original French and they kick ass. You should listen, you might learn something,” he teases. It’s overly familiar in a way that Neil can’t quite bring himself to resent.

“I already speak French,” he deadpans.

Jeremy snorts. “Not quite what I meant, and I think you know it.”

In truth, Neil’s still buffering a little. It’s not what he expected out of Jean Moreau—who, to Neil’s knowledge, was never allowed to pick up a microphone at Riko’s side. But for whatever reason, it’s all he needed to hear in order to let go of whatever twisted debt he’s been harbouring. If Jean has a stage, he’ll be okay. That’s how it always works for Neil.

“I’ll listen to his new stuff,” Neil says. “I figure someone can only get better the farther away from Riko they get.”

Jeremy’s mouth twitches in appreciation. “You said it, not me. Hey, say hello to Kevin for me? I miss him at Trojan shows, he's my favourite groupie.” He says it with that same joyful quality as before—clearly a well-worn punchline.

“I’ll make sure to lead with that last part.”

"It'll be good for his ego." He gives him one last conspiratorial smile, and starts walking towards the stairwell.

“Hey—thanks for stepping up,” Neil says, and Jeremy stops with his hand on the doorknob. "One Evermore reject is more than enough for Ausreißer.”

“Hey, we’re happy to have him. I can never say no to a great voice,” he replies, bright-eyed. “Speaking of—let me know if you’re ever in the mood for a feature, okay?”

“One stray at a time,” Neil says, and Jeremy chuckles his way out onto the stairs.

“No promises!”

The next night, Jean is gone from the apartment, and his name is in headlines again.

Evermore ‘Murder' Claims its Latest Victim, Will Moreau Fly Solo?

The Evermore Curse Strikes Again: Jeremy Knox to Pick up the Pieces

Music Industry Chess Game Continues: Moreau Trades Black Plumes for Red

He imagines Riko’s blood boiling, unable to control Jean’s image from afar, unable to cope with the Moriyama regime taking hits on every side, unable to stomach the idea that he might lose. For the first time in a long time, Neil’s satisfaction roars louder than his fear.

______

The moment he indulges in the feeling that everything might even itself out, Ichirou sends armed negotiators to Palmetto.

It’s less than a week before their return to the stage, and Kevin and Neil are walking back to the studio with lunch. A black town car pulls up to the curb next to them, and Kevin’s bag slips through his fingers, french fries spilling out into the street.

He takes a staggering step backwards. “Neil?” he says, sounding eerily like a kid who’s just lost his parents in a department store.

The passenger side window rolls down, and Tetsuji Moriyama regards them both, grimacing.

“Get in."

They exchange a tense, disbelieving look. Neil puts the food down gingerly on the curb, and takes Kevin by the shoulders. “Go.”

“But—“

“Now.”

Kevin seethes in his direction, but ducks into the backseat without any further argument. Neil goes around to the other side of the car, head spinning with that rare, crystal clear, gun-in-your-face focus. His only option is to tread lightly, and correctly. He gets inside.

As the car pulls out into sparse traffic, Tetsuji turns in his seat to look piercingly at Kevin.

“Master, I apologize,” Kevin starts, but Neil puts a crushing foot on top of his.

Tetsuji blinks. “Lord Ichirou sends his regrets. Neither of you are high enough on his priority list for in-person correspondence.”

“What correspondence are you delivering, exactly? If it’s so trivial.”

“You will not speak,” Tetsuji snaps. Neil swallows, heart hammering with rare humility. “I requested to come in Ichirou’s place. I tire of this game. My brother is dead, and you are a dangling thread from an era that can no longer exist.”

“We can get out of your way,” Kevin whispers.

“You will get out of our way,” he corrects. “I am figuring out how best to remove you. Ichirou would have you culled, and consider it fair payment for the trouble you’ve caused.”

“With all due respect—” None. “—the disintegration of our band will draw more attention than you probably want,” Neil says.

“You truly think Lord Ichirou cannot make you disappear, undetected and unmourned?”

“I know he could, but I also know that his brother has been making a mess that even Lord Ichirou may struggle to conceal.”

“So I have been told,” Tetsuji says. In front of him, between the gearshift and his seat, his hand twitches on a familiar cane—with a sizeable chip missing. “By another child,” he spits, “who spoke out of turn.”

Neil goes quiet, putting all of his focus into remaining immobile. Tetsuji turns stiffly to face the windshield, and they sit in uneasy silence as the car glides down a side-street and rolls to a stop.

“Do you feel that Riko is a liability, Kevin?” Even through the filter of the rearview mirror, Tetsuji's gaze cuts deeply, invasive as a medical procedure. But Kevin’s face is a slab of stone, and it seems impossible that his mouth could move. Neil wills him to say something usable, something that isn’t an ill-timed apology or wasted plea for freedom.

“He has been…” Kevin begins carefully, miraculously, “unsubtle about his interventions into Ausreißer’s affairs. The fans are watching closely.”

Neil blinks at the side of his face, eyes wide. Emboldened, he says, “Riko isn’t thinking about the game the way Ichirou is. He’s thinking about bloody revenge, and he will misstep sooner rather than later. He’s in an industry which thrives on scandal, and they will find it in the Nest.” He adds, lowly, “he shattered Kevin’s hand—”

Kevin shivers violently, and he presses his foot upwards into Neil’s.

“—and if you’ll excuse me, reacted to his father’s death by beating his bandmate senseless. The more he bullies talent out of Evermore, the more public sympathies will wear thin. His image is on the rocks, and the supremacy of the Moriyama empire may follow.”

“I fail to see how this is of any consequence to you. Your father ran in adjacent circles, but I have yet to be given a reason why his limited credibility should extend to his disloyal son.”

“I have a debt to pay,” Kevin says, wavering with weedy, undeveloped courage. “And my income will always be tied to Ausreißer. Neil—Nathaniel knows the world we come from well. He understands what it will take to repay you.”

“He bargains for you, as Minyard bargained for him. So many layers of defence. You must truly be a coward.”

“Maybe,” Kevin says, possibly trying to mimic Neil’s low, unshaken tone. “But Ausreißer’s sales have been on the rise. Nathaniel has proven to be an asset. I cannot return to Evermore in good conscience, in a position where my talents—talents you honed—can’t possibly be utilized. But I can do my best to ride out our success as it is, and donate our earnings back to you.”

“You are not the first men to beg me for their lives and call it negotiation.”

Kevin takes this critique with his head bowed. “I just want to settle my debt. You raised me, and any wealth I see in my lifetime belongs rightfully to you. Your investment doesn’t have to dry up because I’m playing under a new label.”

Neil seethes in painful silence. He realizes when Kevin’s jaw tics, and his eyes dart in Neil’s direction, that he’s been leaving white nail marks in the dark leather seat between them.

“Your impudent bandmate suggested a similar bargain. But Evermore has garnered notoriety that your pet project certainly has not.”

“Give us time,” Neil says evenly. “Between us, and Jean Moreau’s fresh contract, we can cover your losses and then some. Riko’s fame is unstable right now. His fans pity him, but the headlines are suspicious of his inability to share the stage. Unlike him, our negative press doesn’t reflect poorly on you, it only increases our visibility. We’re stronger and more profitable as allies than we are dead.”

Tetsuji turns again to face them both. “Do you understand what you are promising? Lord Ichirou will not take such a deal lightly, if he deigns to consent. He will not forget. You will not be released from his service. You will be held to a standard of performance for the rest of your careers, and if the whims of the public change and your value decreases, we will terminate you, Moreau, Minyard, and anyone else who you have implicated in this life-debt.”

“We understand,” Kevin says, whisper-thin.

“And if Lord Ichirou is unimpressed, as I can only imagine he will be, then I will kill you myself, today, and consider it a more immediate and satisfying payment.”

The driver has a sleek cellphone to his ear already, and he’s speaking precisely in Japanese. His eyes flit up to the rearview mirror and then indifferently to the alley they’re still cradled inside. Concrete and brickwork and big blue garbage bins, and criminals threatening criminals just behind tinted glass.

Neil waits, hand sweating into the leather, bones feeling dislocated from one another, bad eye squinting against phantom pain. He thinks stupidly of the food they left out in the street. He wonders if someone from Palmetto will come out to see the fries smashed flat by tire tracks and piece together what happened.

Tetsuji and the driver speak, briefly, and Neil hears just the shine off of the silken voice on the other end of the phone. Something cool and uninvested, and in between it all, their names: Wesninski. Moreau. Day. Minyard. Wymack. Knox. A shortlist of the indebted.

Neil feels a slice of awful regret when he hears Andrew’s name in amongst the damned; Ausreißer was always going to be implicated in this power struggle alongside Kevin, but Neil was marked when he challenged Riko that first time, and the Butcher’s history was dredged up. If Andrew hadn’t gone fishing for deals, maybe he wouldn’t have been so high on their priority list.

But then maybe Tetsuji wouldn’t have come himself, already primed for this arrangement. Round and round they go, protecting each other to the point of impracticality.

Tetsuji makes a ‘tsk’ing sound, taking the phone from the driver, and Neil sees his nearest hand—age-weathered and vaguely bruised around the knuckles—clenching into a fist on the console. He says something clipped, and then his expression changes entirely, and he nods as if chastised.

There are few more short words exchanged, and then Tetsuji claps the phone closed and deposits it in a cupholder.

“You are lucky, today,” he says, without looking at either of them.

Kevin slouches back into the seat, his impeccable posture warped by relief. Neil’s ears are ringing with disbelief so acute it’s physically unpleasant. His life has never been kind enough to offer him a first floor window in a house fire. It’s always fall from the twentieth storey or burn.

“80% of your earnings will be adequate, for as long as your record sales replicate what Day and Moreau might have achieved in direct service to Evermore. Lord Ichirou wishes, as I do, to square this away quickly; arrangements will be made to funnel royalties between our agencies. I assume you can broker such a deal with your father?”

Neil frowns, confused. “My—“

“Yes,” Kevin says hastily. “Palmetto has never been stingy with our cut of the revenue. I’m sure he—we can adjust our contracts accordingly.”

Neil’s universe reorients itself for the second time in a minute, some personal gravity flicking off and on and off again. “Jesus Christ,” he mouths, but Kevin is busily tensing and relaxing his hand on the door handle as if deciding whether or not he needs verbal permission to leave.

“Thank you,” Neil says, belatedly. He feels slow with unexpected victory. He feels like all the life he never thought he would live is rushing at him all at once. He can’t possibly believe their luck, it’s lunacy.

“You are dismissed,” Tetsuji says. “If one of you comes to the Nest again without being summoned, you will be executed.”

“Understood,” Neil says, unlocking his own door and prodding Kevin again to follow his lead.

“Thank you,” Kevin says, one leg out the door. “Thank you."

“Do not thank me,” Tetsuji says, turning to look at them one last time, hatred cooling in his eyes. “I would have had Riko discipline you as he saw fit. And then I would have taken my turn.”

Kevin wobbles out of the car, and Neil follows, trying to temper the full-body urge to sprint down the alleyway. The car engine turns over. He waits for Tetsuji’s window to roll down, for him to deliver some last threat or stipulation, but the car just grumbles to the end of the street and out of sight.

Kevin turns liquid; he falls back two stumbling steps out of sheer blind relief.

“Oh god.” He’s not quite crying, but his whole body is trembling and swaying like he is. He grabs blindly onto Neil’s shoulder, and Neil grabs back, bracing. “Am I free? Did that—am I actually free?”

“For now,” Neil says, struggling a little to hold them both upright. “As long as we make half-decent music, we’re assets to the main family. We’ll stay safe. Riko can’t touch any of us.”

“He can’t touch us,” Kevin echoes hoarsely, but he still looks cornered, searching frantically for an exit he’s already gone through.

“It’s going to be okay,” Neil says quietly.

Kevin shakes his head. “I can’t believe it.” He says can’t, but his darting eyes project shouldn’t. “There’s always a punishment for leaving the Nest.”

“You’re not part of the Nest anymore,” Neil says. Sometimes when he’s losing it like this he just needs someone to tell him something obvious, something irrefutable. “You’re not on Riko’s contract. You’re out, for good.”

Kevin digests this, still shaking his head. “How is that possible?” he whispers. “One conversation and I’m out? After all this time?”

“Something good had to happen to us eventually,” Neil says.

Kevin finally looks at him instead of through him, if only to gape disbelievingly. “Says who?”

“Says math. It’s a statistical certainty.”

“And yet look at us,” Kevin says sardonically, gesturing at the alley where they’ve been dropped, the latest in a string of depressingly habitual near-deaths.

“I'm looking," Neil says, exasperated. "We just bought back the rest of our lives. We won, for once. ”

“Yeah, well, I want a receipt.”

Neil rolls his eyes, instantly losing his sympathetic streak for this slightly less pathetic version of Kevin. He lets go of his shoulder, walking back towards the mouth of the alleyway and into the sunny open street. “Come on. Back to reality.”

As soon as they’re out, and Kevin’s gate is almost normal again, Neil asks, without looking at him, “when was I going to find out that Wymack is your father?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin flinches so hard he nearly trips. “It wasn’t your business.”

“Does he know?”

Kevin’s mouth twists. “I tried to tell him the day he signed me, but Neil, you don’t know the kind of heat that was on me back then. One wrong move and Ausreißer would’ve been done before it started.”

“Uh huh. And you had to protect the band, right?”

“Actually yes,” Kevin says fiercely, seeming to shock himself as much as Neil. “I didn’t know what the public would do with a confession like that. You know what it’s like as is, the accusations we get, the way news travels back to the Nest. You wouldn’t have told us about your father and I wouldn’t have told you about mine.”

“My father was the Butcher of Baltimore, Kevin. Yours fosters strays.” Neil looks to the shape of Palmetto, just another squat building against the mild blue horizon. “It’s never going to be the right time to say something, but it will be too late, eventually.”

Kevin shakes his head at the ground, but a flash of dark humour curls his mouth. “First I’ve got to tell him that we just tanked our profits forever.”

“Maybe he’d take it better from a long lost son.”

Kevin shoots him a look, and Neil turns his face into the sun to mask his smile.

They find their abandoned food exactly where they left it, cooling on the pavement. Neil shrugs, and crouches in the gutter to collect their bags, to Kevin’s disgust.

As Neil wrestles a wrapped sandwich back into its grease-damp bag, Kevin says, “you know Riko won’t let us go quietly.”

Neil examines a fry that’s been squashed into a fat, white streak on the pavement. “I know.”

______

When Neil’s days were (literally) numbered, every moment was measured against Lola’s countdown—a thousand small goodbyes, splinters of time he could only think of as memories even while they were happening to him.

The week before tour restarts is like one continuous arc into the unknown. He feels like he went hurtling over the edge of a cliff, found himself unexpectedly, thrillingly airborne, and now he’s waiting to see if he’ll touch down on the far side.

The prospect of performing without searching for his father’s face in the crowd is wildly gratifying, but even that small freedom is tempered by the possibility that Riko is just unhinged enough to take a swing at them in public.

Ausreißer and Foxes, together at one of their final, dwindling rehearsals, react to the details of their liberation from the Moriyamas with nearly uniform support.

Andrew spends most of his limited energy moderating Kevin’s post-adrenaline tremors (and his exhausting new resolve to succeed). He seems only mildly dismissive when Neil comes to him with a lifetime of Ausreißer on a platter, which is how Neil knows that his disinterest is mostly for show.

Wymack yells for a while, tells them that they should’ve come to him a long time ago, and that the paperwork hangover he’s about to have will last him until his early grave. He’s grey with anger, but Neil can tell that it’s only the thinnest layer on top of endless striations of worry.

He looks between Wymack’s pacing and Kevin’s furrowed, sullen silence, and wonders how the truth of their relationship could possibly have eluded him.

Jean is coarsely dismissive until they’ve faxed him all the signed, orderly details of their deal. In the silence crackling over the line, he makes a small, anguished noise that Neil will remember for the rest of his life. Kevin stays on the phone with Jean for a long time after that, murmuring in French.

Renee accepts the news with a beneficent smile, as if she orchestrated the deal herself; Aaron makes snide comments in Neil’s direction until Kevin interjects, to everyone’s surprise, that they would be down two band members if it wasn’t for Neil’s bargaining; Allison, meanwhile, insists on taking everybody out for drinks.

The dust is still settling, now that Palmetto's two worlds have collided.

Most days, they feel more like a single entity than two bands under the same label. Matt shows up to the monsters’ rehearsal and sits, rapt, in the booth; Wymack pulls Dan and Neil for biweekly meetings that devolve into late-night drinks; Nicky starts getting weekly sushi with Renee, and once, while they’re fine-tuning their feature and handing out solos, Neil sees a text flash up on Allison’s phone screen from Katelyn:

Thanks girl! Aaron never tells me about any of this lol. Thanks for the goss :)

He doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s unused to these new factions amongst them, the little alliances that come from spending non-stop time in the same rehearsal space.

He thinks it’s probably the sort of thing that happens in big families: taking sides, arguments for the sake of arguments, good-will with a secret agenda. He doesn’t take any of it for granted—being in each other’s business makes it feel like they’re never dealing with anything alone.

Plus, they’ve never played better than they do when they’re together.

They rehearse more than they need to for the one and a half songs they’ve co-written, but their combined mess is sort of irresistible. Renee usually plays dirty, stomping the kick drum like it owes her money; Neil and Andrew perform up front together, sharing a microphone like a cigarette; and one day, Kevin un-tapes his fingers and starts playing bass solos that sing like flaming arrows through the air.

Foxes is at the pinnacle of their career, and their sound has evolved, mutating and absorbing the monsters, absorbing the world. Their new album has the broadest appeal Neil’s ever heard from a pop group, fresh and complicated, operatic and catchy. Ausreißer’s song was scribbled into the sheet music as ‘to die quietly,’ and that’s the title that made it to the track-list.

It’s a song that sounds like a power struggle, and it’s also the most fun Neil’s ever had singing. Neil takes point, Kevin and Matt share harmonies, but there’s a fast-talking verse that’s all Andrew:

We don’t know how to die quietly,

fighting not to be who they thought we’d be

took pesticide to your family tree

and swallowed down all of my apathy

I wish you had never happened to me

now we’re at terminal velocity

Evermore we’ll be victims of gravity

or else hitting the ground is what sets us free.

Andrew’s been writing more lately, easy, like it doesn’t take anything out of him anymore. They both understand that their old deal is forfeit; Andrew writes about Neil, Neil writes about Andrew, they sing each other’s confessions, and they never talk about it.

Neil writes almost exclusively about finding a home, although he wouldn't say it outright: phoenix’s alighting on outstretched arms, sirens climbing the mizzen to join the pirates they’ve watched all their lives. He admires the rich colours of freedom on Kevin, the responsibility heaved from Andrew’s shoulders, the way they’ve only redoubled their grip on the things they actually want.

He still suspects that Riko must be mobilizing some kind of punishment for dodging his wrath, but he can’t find the chasm of dread that used to live inside him. It’s filled with something else now. When he faces Riko, it won’t be alone.

______

The kickoff to Ausreißer’s revived cross-country tour is in New York, on a Saturday in the middle of summer. After a brief rehearsal for their guest spot—a surprise encore designed to make their audience fully delirious—Foxes sets out to waste time in the city, getting good and day drunk while Kevin drills the monsters’ soundcheck into the ground.

It’s sweltering hot backstage, and Neil's been distracted all day, trapped in sense-memories of their last gig: the leaden zero in his pocket, the body crumpled in the dressing room, and Lola’s Halloween mask grin.

He’s also conscious of how different he looks now—his dark hair threaded with auburn, his eyelid split and mended, and his arms half hidden in black cotton and half flooded with ink and scar tissue. He doesn’t really care how he’s perceived, but he knows the band’s image will change, people will ask difficult questions, and he won’t be able to protect his friends from any of it.

He focuses on chord clusters, empty seats, and the whir of electric fans. He watches Kevin on the edge of the stage, one leg kicked up, playing Matt’s acid green electric guitar. Neil’s never seen him like this, straight-backed, laser-focused, and playing just for the sake of it.

“I’m tired just looking at him,” Nicky says, dropping down on the piano bench next to Neil so its legs creak.

“He has an exhausting effect on people.”

Nicky laughs, “yeah, just kind of an aura.” He pats the back of Neil’s neck. “So are you ready to take another stab at this tour thing? Oof, stab. Pretend I said something more sensitive.”

“I’m ready,” Neil says, walking both hands through a quick, dextrous warm-up as proof.

“Good, because I just walked past our lineup, and it’s unprecedented.”

A spike of excitement that swerves hard towards panic. “Do any of them look like they might belong to the yakuza?”

Nicky snorts. “No Moriyamas in trenchcoats.” A fan blows his dark bangs up out of his face when it oscillates in their direction. His fingers are still tapping absently along Neil’s shoulders. It’s actually comforting, in this moment, to be crowded.

“Hey monsters,” Matt calls, picking his way out towards them with a trio of full glasses balanced between his hands. “Huddle up.” The girls follow him out on stage, each with two of their own drinks.

“They bear gifts!” Nicky crows, standing. “See, this is why we asked you guys to come.”

Allison rolls her eyes and hands him a glass. “We’re toasting.” She passes one of Matt’s remaining drinks to Aaron. “Pretend to have a gracious and optimistic outlook for a minute.”

Renee holds a glass out to Andrew at a questioning distance, and Neil is surprised to see him accept it. Kevin reaches up to take the last spare glass from Allison, and they congregate around him at the lip of the stage.

“We didn’t have champagne, so vodka tonics are going to have to do. Don’t make that face at me Minyard,” Dan warns. Neil glances at Andrew, then Aaron, and finds them sporting almost identically grim expressions. Dan holds her drink aloft. “This year has been fucked up.”

“Inspiring,” Aaron says, and Nicky flicks him in the ear.

“Actually, it’s been batshit insane, most of the time. I know we’re pretty different from each other, but we all have a history of losing shit that matters to us, and I kind of feel like we all dug our heels in this year, and decided enough was enough.

Wymack is always talking about giving out as many chances as we need, and I thought that was this rare, cool thing. But lately, with Neil joining us, and the rest of us kind of falling in line, I think we’ve all been giving out a lot of chances to each other too, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon.”

She pauses, thoughtful, licking her lower lip.

“I like that when it looked like we might lose one of our own, none of us would accept it. I like that we can fight together, and work together, even when you’re all pissing me off. I hope that this is the tour that you deserved, before everything went to hell. I hope you take this second chance and run with it. Cheers, to all of us monsters.”

“Here here,” Nicky says, eyes bright.

“Cheers,” Aaron agrees, quieter.

The rest of them chorus their agreement and knock glasses, sloshing vodka and laughing—and all nine of them drink together.

______

As soon as Nicky walks on stage, adoration rushing all around him like water, and says, “honeys, we’re home!” into the mic, they are.

He thought Foxes were at the top of their game, but when Kevin opens their first song with a nimble bass solo that lasts nearly ten minutes, Neil can’t help but stand aside and cheer alongside the rest of the fans.

The whole theatre is packed, the audience stacked up to the walls, barely held back from the stage where their feelings are being drawn up and administered back to them like a blood transfusion. Many of them are wearing armbands, holding up bobbing ‘We Love You Neil” signs, cheering and breaking to pieces trying to sing along.

Neil orbits his bandmates, ringed giants and blue-hot suns, staggering from microphone to microphone and feeling, as always, like he’s singing his way towards something. The shining thread in the maze is what Andrew wrote for him, and he’s almost, almost there.

With unexpected extra rehearsal time, physical therapy, and Foxes’ coaxing influence, every song hits the audience like it was dropped squarely from above.

He thought he’d played his last, best concert. He thought he’d taken his talent to the very edge and let go. But he knows now that he’ll never have enough, even if he lives sixty more years on stages like this, and dies at the end of a crescendo.

He keeps watching Andrew, tattoo clutched around his throat like the physical embodiment of his voice, relentless and multiple. He moves savagely to the music, leg bouncing, hands flying, the indifference in his face tempered by the physicality of the rest of him. He so obviously belongs here, setting the pace however he wants, dragging everyone after him without exerting any pressure at all.

Neil forgot how active Nicky is on stage, crouching down to bore deep into a solo, jumping up and down through a group chorus, coaxing Kevin into head-banging, or twirling Neil under his arm.

Beyond the reality that Kevin is playing better than he—or possibly anyone—ever has, he’s also exhilarated when he manages to push past his previous limits. His hands pretzel, the amps shake, and he laughs.

Even Aaron is getting into it, experimenting daintily with improv, sweaty hair raked back from his face, the sphinx on his forearm lounging over his streaking hands. Neil knows Katelyn is in the crowd, because Aaron keeps playing directly to her accidentally, rocking the headstock of his guitar out in her direction.

When Neil reaches for a screaming riff, and tears down all the curtains and walls with it, the responding roar is just as deafening. He plugs lyrics into Andrew’s microphone, and Andrew plays fills back at him, and it’s like they’re talking. Evermore couldn’t play like this if they tried, because they couldn’t feel like this if they tried.

By the time they invite Foxes out on stage, the room is already euphoric, exhausted, raging. Nicky asks if they’re emotionally stable enough for a surprise, and there’s immediate commotion, shouted no’s, drunken laughter.

Kevin calls, “hey, Foxes, do you mind coming out here?” and the crowd explodes, a high shock of disbelief spidering through the noise, like they’ve just been promised an onstage brawl.

Why would Foxes be guesting at an Ausreißer concert? What would that even sound like? Since when are our monsters capable of playing nice?

Allison strides onstage first, mini skirt swishing. She’s about six feet tall in high heels, hair twisted up above the crown of her head to make her look even taller. Renee is close behind, grungy in overalls and boots, her frothy rainbow tips swapped out for split-dye black and blue. Matt comes out with Dan on his back, already blowing kisses to the crowd.

The backstage crew hauls a second drum kit out on stage, piece by piece, and a ripple of excitement clamours for their attention. Renee sits opposite Andrew, each of them safe in their own set-up, drums spread out like an arsenal around them.

Allison cheers’s the neck of her bass with Kevin’s just to see him flinch away, holding his own instrument protectively. Dan sits at her keyboard, cracking her knuckles and winking at Neil, and Matt toggles the settings briefly, throwing his guitar on over his chest. He leans over to Dan’s microphone and says,

“Sorry to crash your concert.” Renee smashes the hi-hat as punctuation. “We’re here to play synth at you against your will.” The crowd hoots and yells.

“You may have heard of us—” Dan starts, leaving room for the inevitable tidal wave of sound. Her nose scrunches joyfully. “—from our Ausreißer fan-page?”

“Fan encounter gone too far,” Neil says, playing along.

“Yeah, they wouldn’t leave us alone until we let them onstage,” Nicky jokes. “Super embarrassing.”

“It’s our first time sharing the spotlight,” Allison says. “So if we start throwing punches, just let it happen.” She smacks Aaron in the bicep to demonstrate, and he flips her off.

Renee hits the snare to get everyone’s attention, and Andrew mirrors her, automatic. Jingly little adjustments, testing strums, and last minute tuning all cut out.

“This is the unofficial Palmetto anthem,” Renee announces. She nods at Andrew. “Try to keep up.”

No one counts anyone in, they just start double drumming at once, like they’re pulling the oars on either side of a boat, heaving in the same direction. Andrew deviates first, swapping between favoured counter-rhythms, and Renee shakes her head, grinning through it. Neil has always liked her best when she’s at a drum kit, hair wild, mask off.

Dan’s synth settles in like fog, and then the nastiest guitar line they’ve ever conceived of starts sliding all over the place—the full, resonant effect of the three of them. Kevin keeps everyone tied down to his irresistible bass-line; his sound is the dance floor they’re all spinning on.

Neil steps out into centre stage, and becomes the dark pupil in the eye of the spotlight.

He looks up to face his crowd, dragging the mic up to his mouth by its stem, and the first face he glimpses, out beyond the violet glare of the stage lights, is Riko Moriyama’s.

#I simply cannot look at this anymore :))))#the foxhole court #aftg #andreil #tfc fanfic #mine #rockband au #scars tw #I cannot. believe it's been two years #it was a pandemic and also I was getting a master's degree please forgive me

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wouldntyou-liketoknow · 8 months

Text

Day 7: Needles

(Disclaimer: three of the characters in this story belong to me. You can find more information about Azalea here. For more information about Caliban, go here. For more information about K.O., go here. For my personal headcanons on Murdock, who belongs to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe, go here. And if you’d like to learn more about the mob these guys all work for, go here.)

(Additional Note: I got some partial inspiration for this story from this lovely drawing by the extremely talented @rebar2042. Please go give them a follow and share their awesome art!!!)

(Trigger Warnings: descriptions of illegal business, physical violence, abduction, blood, syringes, poisonous substances, torture, implied dismemberment, implied cannibalism, implied murder, talk of death/dying, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Day 11 Day 12 Day 13

Unless you counted his tinted glasses, Murdock looked absolutely nothing like himself right now.

In the place of his currant-colored turtleneck and black overcoat was a pale button-up and a half-zipped fleece jacket that was the same shade as a cornflower, complete with a screen-printed logo (an orange circle outlined with white) to match the cap resting atop his head. His raven hair was hidden, tied-back and pulled-up, though some of his bangs peeked out from beneath the rim.

Murdock understood the importance of disguises; any hitman who didn’t was a moron who could look forward to a career that would last a couple years at most before ending in humiliation rather than mystery.

Yes, he was more attached to his usual work clothes, but he took satisfaction in that particular sentimentality being more fucked-up than one would probably expect. Aside from that and the business angle of things, costumes really were just a fun concept to play around with. Even now, as he pulled into the cul-de-sac and parked near the curb, the adrenaline that’d already been slithering around his lungs spiked when he glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror.

He hopped out, stepping around the decoy mail truck to hoist the back door up. After pulling out the dolly and loading a larger-than-average box onto it, he tucked a much smaller package and a clipboard under his arm and strolled up the driveway of the nearest house.

Murdock rolled his shoulders, taking a quick, deep breath. He went over the script in his head for what was probably the eighth time today, then reached out and rapped his knuckles against the front door.

Five seconds or so passed, and then the telltale sound of muffled footsteps approached from the other side.

Murdock put on a polite, well-rehearsed smile as the door was pulled open.

He immediately had to bite his tongue to keep that smile in place as he registered the man now hovering in the threshold.

He was the same height as Murdock, appearing a bit older. . .well, that was Murdock’s best guess, at least. The amount of tattoos on his skin was truly shocking. Only a few patches of his natural skin were left in between each of them.

For the most part, Murdock didn’t really have an opinion on tattoos. He was aware of how painful the process tended to be: therefore, when any of his victims happened to be inked, he tended to take that as something of a personal challenge for interrogation and the like. He knew it was best to avoid getting any himself, and he knew whatever body art anyone else decided to get was none of his business.

But he also knew how the lines between good body art and bad body art were not fine.

At all.

It seemed his latest target didn’t have that same understanding.

“Delivery for Mr. Abbott Tudye?” Murdock announced, willing his tone to sound lighter than usual.

“Right on time,” the target replied with a nod. Glancing at the larger package, he backed up a few paces, holding the door open. Murdock took the invitation, dragging the dolly along and leaning it against the nearest wall as the door was closed behind him.

“I’ll need—” Murdock cut himself off, just barely managing not to swear in surprise at the discovery that his target was among the ranks of people who’d gotten famous online for having actual pictures of faces permanently drawn on the backs of their heads.

The target turned to face him, casually raising an eyebrow.

Murdock cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, need a signature for both packages, please,” he amended, holding the clipboard aloft.

The target blinked at this, but simply shrugged and took the offering into his hands. “. . .Y’know you don’t have to keep that act up in here, right? Suppliers are the last people to tattle on in my book.” He then outstretched his free hand, patronizingly gesturing for Murdock to fork over the smaller package

“Look, those papers are part of the contract. I just want to be thorough” Murdock reported, giving up the box like a good little boy and biting back a grimace at the sight of the back of the target’s hand.

(Was that tattoo seriously supposed to be depicting a lion’s head? If so, then it was proof of miracles, because it would’ve made the damn Gripsholm Lion look natural!)

His sudden surge of disbelief and disappointment was quickly calmed by smugness. He could tell when he was being lied to, but that didn’t really bother him right now. The pack of lies he’d personally help to set up for this job were much more clever.

“Besides,” he added, ever-so-slightly raising his voice, “you can never really tell when there’s some extra eyes or ears around. Not until it’s too late, I mean.”

The target snorted, rolling his eyes and shaking his head with a smirk. “Okay, calm down with the conspiracy, buddy.” He walked past Murdock to set the clipboard and pen down on his coffee table, his focus now consumed by the package. He fished a small knife out of his pocket, pushing the blade toward the thick line of tape. “Since you bring up eyes and ears, though. . .have you heard anything about my trigger? It’s been a good while since I sent him out, and he hasn’t reported back to me at all.”

“I’m afraid not. I did try to ask around, though,” Murdock answered, his expression flickering.

On one hand, the target had his back to him yet again; Murdock knew he had acting skills, but just how little this guy thought things through almost made his performance way too easy.

On the other hand, the target turning his back to Murdock meant he had to look at that second stupid fucking face again.

Oh, well.

He kept speaking, making sure the sound of his voice drowned out the way he carefully dragged one of his own knives down the length of the larger package. “But I wouldn’t worry about it too much. We’ve all gotta lay low after a job, don’t we? Your guy is probably a lot closer than you realize.”

The larger package silently twitched. A pair of brown eyes glinted at Murdock through the sliver of space between cardboard folds. The hitman smirked, raising a hand to count down on his fingers and mouthing along.

Three. . .two. . .

The scream that tore through the air was at an octave usually reserved for fire alarms, but neither Murdock nor his accomplice flinched at it.

A small thump followed the distress call, which was now breaking apart into shorter wails as the target backed away from the box he’d just opened. Murdock copied those movements, making sure to stay behind him. The target turned around soon enough, of course, his face contorted in absolute horror at the fact that he’d gotten so close to a pale, dried-blood-covered human foot instead of the cocaine block he’d been expecting.

“Y-you. . !” The target cried, now charging forward, anger joining his fear. “What tHE FUCK IS—”

His words suddenly wilted into unintelligible sputters of pain. He’d been a mere inch from Murdock when a blurry shape came jettisoning out of the larger package to collide with his neck, forcing him to double over.

“Haven’t you heard to not blame the messanger?” A new voice inquired, sounding like a casual lacing of venom in sugar. A petite woman emerged from the package, holding an unusually large packing tape dispenser and narrowing her eyes at the target in a way that should’ve turned him to stone. “I mean, this whole thing was my idea, so. . .”

“I’m not denying that,” Murdock promised, jokingly doffing his delivery cap to Azalea.

Azalea, in turn, nodded, her expression shifting from composed fury to maniacal at lightspeed. The target tried to regain his bearings, tried to keep shouting, but she had other ideas. In a single, fluid movement, she stepped closer and bashed the tape dispenser against his nose. She repeated this action until the target was on the floor, and even then she kept swinging the strange choice of weapon up and down onto his head again, and again, and again, and again.

Murdock was prepared to step in, but his instincts told him that wouldn’t be necessary. His expression grew more curious than sinister as he watched his colleague convince the target that he could be a phrenologist’s dream come true. Sure, the tape dispenser had some solid weight to it, but. . .wow.

“Impressive,” Murdock mused once the target finally went still and Azalea finally paused for breath. “And I thought I’d end up having to knock him out.”

“What, am I supposed to just let you take all the credit?” Azalea huffed a laugh, rising to her feet to look up into her accomplice’s dark eyes. “This is a half-and-half job.”

“It sure is.” Murdock knelt down beside the target’s unconscious form, fishing a few zip-ties as well as a bundle of thick cloth out of his disguise jacket’s interior pockets. Once the target was properly bound and gagged, Murdock crammed him into the same package that Azalea had previously been hiding in, not being the least bit gentle. He held the panels closed so Azalea could reseal them (which was a bit awkward, since the tape dispenser was now broken due to being used as a makeshift hammer).

“I’m a little surprised Cal let me take this,” Murdock mentioned as he strolled across the target’s living room, leaning down to stuff the severed foot back into the small package.

Azalea shrugged. “Feet are mostly just skin and bones. Plus, from what he’s told me, they just sell better on some markets than others.”

“. . .I mean, do the connoisseurs of those ‘other markets’ really know if the feet they’re looking up are still attached to people?” Murdock pondered, cackling when Azalea rolled her eyes and lightly punched him in the side.

“I texted the cleaning crew while I was in there,” Azalea pronounced, nodding to the larger package and its new cargo. “They should be here in thirty minutes or so.”

“Great!” Murdock nodded, remembering that The Pentas Family’s chop-shop was in need of a new car. “And we’re still set on the site you picked out?”

At his cohort’s affirmative hum, he bared his teeth in a patented, dangerous grin. He grabbed the dolly’s handle, then gestured to the front door. “Shall we, then?”

Azalea’s smile was a bit more lively, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t frightening. “Let’s.”

___

Reilpi Woods was a quaint place. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from the Cove Port Inlets, stretching for miles and miles and miles; a good portion of it grew near the beaches and along the seaside cliffs. Sure, its title kind of sounded like the beginning of a drunk madman’s attempt at a prophecy, but it really was a nice place. A convenient place, too.

With how deep it went, it could be plausible for someone to, hypothetically, get lost on a camping trip and never come back. That also made up for many of the hardships that came with burying a body (after tricking the authorities into digging up untouched soil in a specific location with a false report, of course).

The branches on the majority of its trees intertwined with one another, forming more than enough of a shield from both the sun or the odd camera-equipped drone piloted by some background character whose life could potentially be changed for the worse.

The trees in question came in varying heights: some were as towering as houses, and others were short enough to be scaled quite easily.

Murdock had chosen a tree that seemed to be right in the middle of those categories. It didn’t take too much effort to aim and toss the long end of the rope coil over a thick, sturdy branch. He gave the line an experimental tug, just to be certain it was secure, then began pulling it hand-over-fist.

“HMPE. Nice,” Azalea complimented, watching her accomplice work as she retrieved the small, pink-stained wooden chest she’d previously hidden in the decoy mail truck’s glove compartment.

“I only work with the best,” Murdock replied cheerfully. “The hardware store had a great sale earlier this week.”

Once his and Azalea’s target had been hoisted a few inches, just able to stand upright with bound wrists suspended over his head, Murdock strode over to a smaller tree nearby, tying the end of the rope into a tight knot around its trunk.

When exactly the target had regained consciousness, neither of them could be sure. By the time he’d started making noise, they’d already driven a good, long way into the heart of the forest. He’d tried to start running as soon as Murdock reopened that package, only to collapse on his face about three seconds afterwards. Even now, strung up and shirtless, he apparently still thought there was some use in writhing. He kicked and swayed, eyes bulging, chest heaving. His attempts to hurl obscenities at his captors were well-muffled by the gag that’d been tied around his mouth.

Azalea dragged a collapsable table out of the trunk, unfolded it a few feet away from where the target stood, and set the aforementioned pink chest on top of it.

“So,” Murdock pronounced as he walked past her, carrying a long leather case he’d produced from under the driver’s seat. “How much time do you think you’ll need?”

Azalea hummed as she pried the little chest open: five empty syringes had been organized into a little pyramid, kept in balance by the line of five glass vials sitting right beside them. “Well, each dosage will need at least a few minutes to take effect. I already have some pretty good estimates, so maybe. . .twenty-five minutes? At most?”

“Yeah, that’ll be just fine.” Murdock nodded. “Becky’s a fast worker.”

Though Azalea didn’t pause as she pushed a needle into a rubber stopper, she still couldn’t help but chuckle.

Murdock refused to stop his movements as well. While opening up the leather case and lifting a shovel out, he raised an eyebrow at his colleague’s laughter. “What’s so funny?”

Azalea tilted her head, flicking at the now full syringe before setting it down to prepare one of the others. “You always give the others flack for naming their equipment, but you don’t have any room to talk.”

“Excuse you, I’ve got tons of room,” Murdock protested. “Becky is special. She’s been there for me ever since I started out.” He hugged the shovel close, some brief yet total adoration worming its way onto his face. He then spun Becky in his hands and brought her tip down into the soil about ten feet from where the target was hanging.

“Good for her,” Azalea replied. “Still, are you sure you’ll be done around the same time I am? I wouldn’t want to just keep you out here for hours.”

Slight hypocrite or not, Murdock did have a bit of a point. The blades of Becky’s cutting tip were ridged, implying that she was capable of slicing through more than just dirt. There were black grips along the socket and handle. She truly had a polish to her, one that would seem more appropriate on a blessed and/or cursed weapon of yore.

“Hours?” Murdock barked a sarcastic laugh, glancing back and forth between Azalea and the ground. He worked himself into a pattern of movement, the little pile of loose dirt beside him growing bit by bit. “Becky and I will race you, Aza!”

Azalea blinked, placing a hand on her hip. “That hole’s gonna have to be six feet deep, at least.”

“And it will be!” Murdock insisted. Nodding at the target, he added, “Plus, we’ll be putting him in vertically.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Azalea retorted. She fidgeted in place. “. . .Aren’t longer holes harder to dig out than wider holes?”

There was no response from Murdock this time. He just kept digging, though he peered up at her over his glasses. His eyes were just barely visible, but that expectant, daring look was obvious.

“Okay, then.” Azalea offered a polite shrug before turning on her heel and approaching the target.

The target snarled at her, raised a leg to try and kick her. But as she gracefully sidestepped out of the way, she saw how he finally seemed to notice what was now in her hand. His scowl wavered, his muffled insults came to an abrupt halt, the patches of skin unmarked by tattoos turned pale as the needle caught a stray beam of light peeking through the canopy above.

Azalea rolled the first syringe between her fingers, thoughtful as she paced around the soon-to-be sentient pincushion. She had the experience to know which areas were most sensitive to injections: hands, the soles of the feet, palates, that little groove between the upper lip and the nose.

She couldn’t really go for any of those areas right now, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Run-of-the-mill muscles could always make getting a shot more of a struggle than strictly necessary.

With that in mind, Azalea halted in her tracks just behind the target. He tried to turn himself around to keep facing her, but he wasn’t fast enough. He didn’t even have time to recoil as she stabbed the needle deep into his lumbar, effectively piercing the tattooed eye of a snake that had bent fangs and looked more drunk than menacing.

Azalea pressed the plunger down with enough force to almost risk crushing it. She held onto it for a few long seconds, just to be sure, then stepped back. The syringe stayed in place when she let go of it, well and truly stuck in the target’s skin.

Slowly but surely, a dark red bead rose up around where the needle met the syringe’s hub. And as it began to trickle down, leaving a thin, red streak to disrupt the tattoos below that embarrassing snake, the target started bellowing.

The cries were low at first, but they grew louder in no time, broken up by the target’s gasps for air. The skin around the injection site was already swelling—it couldn’t really be compared to an allergic reaction or the like, but it was still horribly noticeable.

From what Azalea had heard, Gila monster venom caused an intense burning sensation, as well as dizziness, a rapid heart rate, and sometimes even a decrease in blood pressure. Cases of being bitten by the lizard in question were rarely ever fatal, but that was just fine.

A dosage of something fatal would’ve been too good for the target.

About a week had passed since the incident.

That one spot on Azalea’s arm still ached and stung like no other, but she didn’t have to wrap a new set of bandages around it anymore. The dull red mark still stuck out against the rest of her skin, but it seemed to be getting a little smaller every day. Hell, by now it could’ve been mistaken for a simple scrape, as though Azalea just had a disagreement with the sidewalk pavement.

The tranquilizer gun fit shockingly well in the pocket of her vest. The weapon was a lot like Azalea, actually; it was small enough to underestimate, and it packed way more than enough of a punch to make whoever was doing the underestimating regret all the choices they’d made to get to that point.

Azalea didn’t need to use it very often—remember, her way of work was all about stealth and cunning and HAHA YOU FOOL, YOU’LL NEVER LOOK AT A COOKIE THE SAME WAY AGAIN BECAUSE YOU’RE DEAD NOW!—but ever since that fateful evening, she’d made a point to carry it every moment she wasn’t in the public eye. Once she and her peers all made sure that the threat was truly gone, she’d return it to that innocent-looking little safebox in her cabinet.

The Pentas Family wasn’t on total lockdown; just lying low for a bit. There’d been no complaints about The Boss’ orders, of course. Just like there was no doubting that they’d come out on top. But that impromptu emergency meeting had still been so tense. . .

Azalea gave the Gila monster venom about three minutes to work its magic. The target had yet to vomit, but the nausea in his eyes was painful just to look at.

She checked in on Becky and Murdock, who were still preparing the grave.

The mound of dirt had definitely grown, but the bottom of the hole was still very much shallow.

Murdock glanced up as his accomplice approached. He stayed just as silent as Becky, but the sheer amount of excited determination on his face spoke volumes.

Azalea didn’t really have anything to say either, so she just gave him a curt nod before retreating to start the next phase of the session.

Warrior wasp venom wasn’t lethal, but it could almost make you wish it was. The insect in question was aggressive and territorial, so encounters with it weren’t exactly uncommon in certain parts of South America.

Some victims likened the sting to boiling oil being poured over your skin. Others compared it to being chained down in front of an active volcano, right in the path of all that flowing lava. Perhaps no two victims could describe it in the exact same way?

Azalea wasn’t certain, and she probably never would be. It wasn’t like the target had a chance to give her a description.

Or. . .maybe he did, in a way.

Because just a moment after she stabbed the second syringe into his right deltoid, he confirmed the rumor that warrior wasp venom made people sound absolutely insane when they screamed.

Azalea lightly shook her head, drumming her nails against the box she was carrying in time with her footsteps. Aforementioned box was full of sweets, but unlike many of its predecessors, none of those sweets would end up killing whoever decided to help themself.

K.O. deserved a reward for being so quick and so efficient with the bullet graze, after all. Yes, he’d already gotten paid for taking on the last-minute assignments, but Azalea couldn’t just not thank him personally.

Due to his walnut allergy, K.O. had to be very, very careful about the treats he consumed. Anything involving chocolate was almost always too risky, but Azalea had plenty of recipes for different types of candy. She knew this gift wasn’t much, but she also knew that K.O. would still be happy with it.

As if on cue, K.O. popped up right as Azalea rounded the corner. He was halfway leaning through the door to his den, light streaming across the old platform. What a coincidence: Azalea hadn’t told him about her plan to stop by, but she’d still predicted that he’d be down here.

What she hadn’t predicted was for Caliban to be down here, too. Last she’d heard, her brother was running his own errands around town. But, sure enough, here he was, doubled-over and gritting his teeth as he trudged onto the old platform from the opposite direction.

That was what made Azalea stop short before she could call out to either of them.

Something was wrong.

Caliban always kept his back straight unless. . .

An awful type of energy slithered along Azalea’s neck as she quickened her pace, nearly dropping her cargo.

A panicked shout caught in her throat, making both Caliban and K.O. flinch as they finally looked over and realized she was here with wide eyes.

Even with the dark blue shade of the fabric, it was easy to see a stain blooming through the lower half of Caliban’s button-down.

Even in the dim lighting, it was easy to see how the hand Caliban pressed against his stomach was covered in glistening red.

Even through the immediate cacophony of questions on Azalea’s part and instructions on K.O.’s part, it was easy to hear droplets of blood plopping against concrete as they trickled out between Caliban’s fingers.

Yet another wasp’s venom was next on Azalea’s list for the session, so the syringe containing it would go in the target’s left deltoid. To compliment the other, see?

Not immediately, though.

“The guy you sent is dead,” Azalea announced, speaking to the target for the first time since she’d knocked him unconscious. Her voice was soft, and muffled, agonized, unintelligible groans were still leaking out of his mouth. But she knew that he could hear her.

“. . .Or, I’m pretty sure he is, at least. He was kept alive for a few days after his little stunt, but there’s no saving him now,” she continued.

Visible shivers had been wracking their way up and down the target’s body all this time. Azalea knew that they were involuntary, that they were just more side-effects of the poisons she’d given him so far.

Now, however, he froze in place.

Azalea smirked, practically able to see her words registering in his mind. “Nobody’s going to find either of you, y’know. Even if someone actually tries to look, they won’t get any leads.”

She resumed her pacing, never taking her eyes off the target, watching as his ragged breathing stuttered.

“I know, I know. Scenarios like that are pretty underwhelming, but that’s more on you for springing this on us the way you did.” Azalea shrugged as she passed the syringe from one hand to the other.

Her smile widened a bit. “Don’t worry, though! We’ll try to make things more interesting for your other cronies. I bet one of them will end up being found again and again for a month or so. It’ll have to happen in a different city, but that’s not too big of a problem.”

Tarantula hawks got their name from their frightening diet, but that most certainly wasn’t the only thing they were infamous for. By some terrifying miracle, their stings truly felt similar to an active hair dryer after it was dropped into someone’s bathtub. They were described as explosive

The toxin was apparently explosive enough to give the impression of electric currents literally tearing their way through your bloodstream.

“This is like a weird variation of sibling ESP,” K.O. blurted as he carefully prodded at the puncture site with gloved hands. “Really, I’m surprised some cosmic imbalance hasn’t been triggered.”

“Don’t remind me,” Azalea replied, wringing her hands. She’d just returned from washing them for the third time. The skin around her knuckles almost felt a little dry.

“Hey, if I had to be jumped, at least it was by an amateur,” Caliban mused, chewing his lip while staring at the ceiling. A good few minutes had passed since he'd stopped shaking and choking on air. It seemed the sheer awkwardness of having to lay across someone else’s workout equipment with his shirt half-unbuttoned was balancing out his stress.

“Good point,” K.O. agreed as he soaked yet another washcloth into the bucket of cold, clean water he’d brought from upstairs.“I don’t really work with knives, and I can still see how that idiot should’ve used a drill if he wanted to cause some real penetration.”

The resulting fit of snickers on Caliban’s part were so sudden and loud that he lurched forward. Said snickers automatically had to compete with the way Caliban sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth as K.O. swept the washcloth over the latest wound.

“. . .I should’ve seen that coming.” The mental image of a person’s guts getting all twisted around a drill bit wasn’t pretty, but Azalea still clicked her tongue and fondly rolled her eyes as she carried over a thick roll of gauze.“If Murdock isn’t around to make jokes like that, then someone else always will. Always.”

“We’ve all gotta do our part.” K.O. took the bandages, offering a proud, smug grin in return. “Okay, Cal: sit up slowly but don’t move your feet too much. And keep your arms above your stomach.”

Caliban was still giggling at the semi-dirty quip as he complied with the other mobster’s instructions. His face fell, however, as he looked down at the new gash on the left side of his abdomen. Sure, the bleeding had stopped, and sure, it was actively being hidden by layers of fresh heavy-duty bandages.

But even with the knowledge that it hadn’t gone deep enough to cause any serious infections, Azalea could tell that it hurt much more than Caliban was letting on. She sidled around K.O., careful to give him enough space as she stood beside her brother. She quietly rested one of her hands on his shoulder, trying to help him stay steady.

Despite the initial panic, things had moved nice and quickly. Time hadn’t even seemed to slow down and make everything feel worse for once.

It hadn’t exactly been pleasant to feel her brother’s blood spill onto her hands while K.O. rushed to get something more effective for applying pressure, but Azalea knew how much of a tough cookie he was. This wasn’t the first time Caliban had gotten stabbed; this wasn’t even the worst example out of all the other scars decorating his torso. If he could heal up from all those other cases, then this one would be a cakewalk. He was going to be fine.

Azalea stared into her brother’s eyes, hoping to somehow filter all those little reminders into his brain without speaking.

Caliban stared right back at her. And, judging by the way his features seemed to relax a bit more, her efforts were successful. “That’s the thing about stabbing,” he finally continued, the usual grin back on his face. “You have to know where just the right spots are if you want to be effective. Otherwise you’ll just make the rest of us look bad.”

“Well, I’m sure you can give that moron a proper demonstration once we track him down,” Azalea promised, madness flickering along her otherwise gentle expression.

The tired look returned to Caliban’s eyes. He let out a melodramatic sigh, shaking his head sulkily. “No, I really can’t.”

“Why not?” K.O. asked as he secured the last layer of padding.

“Because the guy was covered in tattoos!” Caliban threw his hands up in frustration, eyes growing wider and just a bit more wild than before. “And when I say covered, I mean COVERED! Ink like that just completely ruins the meat! Makes it taste horrible!” He made the mistake of ever-so-slightly stretching his stomach, which prompted him to grind his jaw, screw his eyes shut and fall back with yet another hiss.

“. . .So, you’re saying other types of ink could make people taste better?” K.O. wondered with a smirk.

“Yes, K.O. That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Caliban deadpanned, craning his neck to raise an eyebrow at his colleague, who held up his hands in mock surrender.

Azalea, meanwhile, kept drawing circles on Caliban’s shoulder, all the ideas on what to do to her brother’s attacker quickly forming a maze in her mind.

“. . .They weren’t even flattering tattoos,” Caliban murmured, gingerly folding his arms across his chest. “Seriously, there was a pinup girl on one of his arms and she looked like a random stranger just offered to share a toilet seat with her.”

“Did you seriously not see this coming?” Azalea inquired, halting right in front of the target. “That’s hard to believe.”

The fourth and final syringe was ready. It was almost as long as a pencil, wider than the three that had been used before it. Its needle was thicker, shinier, sharper, the meanest-looking thing in Azalea’s collection. But even if it wasn’t, that wouldn’t have mattered.

When you were handling a dosage of fresh, pure, unadulterated bullet ant venom—a substance that was infamous for literally being described as “walking over flaming charcoal with three-inch nails in your heels”—nothing really mattered.

“Turning the art festival into a gun range wasn’t enough, huh? You just couldn’t resist going after my brother yourself.”

The target’s head had been hanging. He must’ve been tired from shaking it side-to-side as if that would somehow convince his brain to magically alleviate the torment. But it suddenly jerked up like that of a marionette puppet.

Like a new, foreign weight had just settled around his shoulders, encouraging the tiny rivers of blood to keep trickling down his chest and back. Not chasing all the pain away, but somehow managing to distract him from it, if only for a moment. His bloodshot, watery eyes seemed to grow even wider than before as he stared at his torturer.

“What, couldn’t you tell?” A sarcastic chuckle bubbled up in Azalea’s throat. “I know he’s a lot taller than me, but still: isn’t the resemblance obvious?”

She pretended to mull the question over for a few long seconds, then snapped her fingers.

“Oh wait, that’s right! There really is no way you could’ve known about that.”

She rested her thumb on the syringe’s plunger. Her knuckles were turning white as she kept the barrel pinned between her index and middle finger.

“You probably didn’t even know I was there for your first little rendezvous. . .” she continued, drawing even nearer, now holding her little weapon aloft.

The target attempted to stagger back, attempted to turn his head away.

Azalea, in response, reached up and gripped his chin, digging her nails into the skin of his jaw as she forced him to face her. Her other hand was a blur, the syringe glinting hungrily.

“. . .Because you’re just a bottom-feeding coward.”

The needle sank into the target’s flesh; the left side of his abdomen, to be specific.

There was still half of the venom left in the syringe when the target started screaming. His legs gave out from under him as though his bones had dissolved into his blood. As his knees couldn’t touch the ground, he swayed to and fro in a very unnatural manner with such violent convulsions that he could’ve been mistaken for having a seizure.

He’d been screaming for the majority of the session, of course, but this scream was. . .something else. It was like nothing Azalea had ever heard before; and this wasn’t even the first time she’d used bullet ant venom.

Eh, what else could be expected from the brilliant, intense, undeniable crown queen of pain?

Even with the new ache in her ears, Azalea felt a smile etch its way across her face. It wasn’t calm just yet, but it would get there eventually. She’d reached her goal: there was no way in hell that this target wasn’t regretting his choice to screw around with her, Caliban, and the rest of their family.

“Looks like I’m done over here,” Azalea pronounced, wiping her hands as she turned to look at Murdock. “Sorry if all this noise has been bothering you.”

“Oh, not at all,” Murdock reassured, his voice suspiciously more chipper than tired.

Azalea was about to jokingly ask if he’d brought a second shovel along so she could help him finish digging out the grave.

She was about to. . .but she couldn’t.

Surprisingly enough, the way her jaw hit the ground didn’t disrupt the pile of dirt beside Murdock, which had transformed from an improvised molehill to a small mountain. It even seemed to be a couple inches taller than he was! The hole that’d been excavated was just wide enough to put an adult human in feet-first. It also seemed to go much, much deeper than six feet; a sunray was shining down into it, and yet the bottom was still shrouded in darkness!

“H-how—HOW—?!” Azalea stammered, glancing back and forth between Murdock and the pit.

“Like I said, Aza: Becky works fast,” Murdock explained without really explaining, smirking like a bastard as he rested his arms on his beloved shovel’s handle.

“AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGH!” The target tried to add.

Azalea blinked, slowly raising her hands to massage her temples and reminding herself that she and Murdock had someone to bury. There wasn’t time to question the potential reality-bending powers of some tactical shovel. “Fine, okay, whatever. Could you just bring him down, please?”

Murdock nodded. “My pleasure.” He cradled Becky in his arms one last time before setting her back down in her leather case and returning it to the decoy mail truck. After that, he made his way over to where he’d tied the line. Azalea followed him, orbiting around the target one last time before the rope went loose.

Just because those four syringes were empty didn’t mean she wanted to waste them, after all.

@rebar2042 @sammys-magical-au

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