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believerindaydreams · 3 years

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Like the last one but with more Benny/Arcade fucking :) Arcade POV.

You have to admit, Benny Gecko's greed rubs off.

Before the Legion camp, before the courier, you wouldn't have dreamed of anything like this home for yourself. Pushing forty and still helping out at the Mormon Fort, when most doctors stay a few years before fleeing back to the security of the NCR, their conviction ebbed away in the face of frontier realities.

You'd stayed, because you hadn't had anywhere else to go; and because you thought you hadn't deserved better.

Marilyn had certainly done her best to prove that one.

But saving another life meant saving your own; and Benny is securely self-confident in ways that defy belief, smart enough to upend the Mojave, too stupid to be afraid of you. Somehow. For everything that you are, or could be.

Right now he's snoring with his head against your breastbone, as though he dreams you're safe.

"Benny, wake up. It isn't getting any warmer out here."

He keeps right on sleeping, and you shiver some in the twilight- no way of telling how late it is, even in North Vegas the light of the Strip will drown out the stars all night. There's a moon, but vague childhood memory doesn't help much there.

(Orion tried to drill that info into you, in case you ever needed it. Judah had been the one to catch the leather belt, leaving you afraid but untouched.)

You hug your lover closer, and the memory trickles away again.

It's not so bad being out here, at that. Cold makes your lover all the sweeter to hold, and the deprivation of hunger is muted by the knowledge that there's more than enough if you wanted, inside. Indulging in sentiment is a wildly different beast than real deprivation. The lab coat you wear so proudly will cover two, applied properly-

"Mmfth? Arcade, where the hell are we?"

"Besides your new swimming pool."

Benny grunts, stands up to stretch a kink out of his back. "Ugh. Wake me up next time, willya? Cool cats may sleep in alleys, but I'll settle for a bed."

So you go inside, where the rocket stove has built up a delicious warmth, going straight to the bone marrow; and that's good too.

Benny heads straight for the liquor cabinet, chuckles at the selection, settles for a beer- maybe that means something, maybe in forty years time you'll know all the tells like that. Desire quivering in your blood like drunkenness. The prospect of having a future to grow old in.

"I'll stock that up. The upstairs bartender at the Gomorrah keeps a few bottles of pre-war wines to grease the skids."

"Are they really?"

"I mean, I wouldn't lay money on that. But it isn't your average NCR two-buck rotgut at least."

He grins and twists the bottle cap off with practiced delicacy, pockets it and drinks while looking around with sharp practiced eyes. Assessing, appreciating, but something more mellow there too, a look that hasn't been his since the Tops turned into New Vegas' bureaucratic ground zero. He's spent too long protecting it, imaging ways it could be taken away, for him to be entirely comfortable there again.

You take an ice-cold Nuka from the fridge, and a rum, and start downing a sweet mixer. Here, maybe, it'll be different. Outside it's just Fiend territory, and the two of you know how to handle those. Even without the power armor left fragmented in the Divide.

Thoughts fragmenting a little, the liquor hitting fast. If you'd come to rely on that armor, believed in it as part of your identity, maybe the loss would have come harder; but you're not the same as your tools. It kept you safe when it mattered.

Benny is still hunting around the place, quick avid eyes hunting for secrets- he switches lights on and off, opens all the cupboard doors, chortles at the secret passage to the cellar workshop. "Finally, a place with enough storage space. Not bad."

He raises the beer to his lips, drinks; you succumb to temptation and kiss foam off his lips extemporaneously.

Lovers make poor confidants, you can hear yourself saying to the courier. This is harder than it looks. It's like playacting a romance, a performance soap bubble guaranteed to vanish with the sunrise.

And people are so very fragile in the Mojave. You press against the thin fabric of that ridiculous lucky suit, hoping that physical evidence will assuage you where sense and sensibility haven't.

"If you're going to be like that," Benny says, between applications of the bottle. "Let's find the bed. A place like this, I imagine it's a good one."

"Up the stairs to the left." Too much practice in disaster, to lose your tongue just because of a firm fondle around your rear.

Benny laughs again, and guides you up the stairs as if he's the one who knows the place.

Bed is a luxurious queen size, done up in bedding that was washed this week and not last century, courtesy of the last functioning laundromat in Freeside. Abraxo's strong scent a trifle mollified, by the confounding mystery of an electric fireplace that tastes of woodsmoke.

"...sweet rads, Arcade, you really pulled out all the stops."

"There are shutters, if you want to see the Strip." Bulletproof security gives way to the neon splurge of distant light. Benny exclaims in pleasure, sticks his head out the window to drop cigarette ash onto a corrugated iron awning.

"Sorry. Dying for a smoke, I figure it's better now than interrupting us later."

"No worries." It still smells wrong, but after the Legion camp, soldiers glaring at Benny for defiling their measured sanctity with irreverent chems, it's the kind of wrong that brings comfort in its wake.

"Any ideas on how you want to- ah- christen the bed?"

"Take me down and roll me out, cupcake, I don't mind how this swings. Your picnic, baby, your show."

Wow, offers the part of your brain that's rapidly succumbing to the effect of alcohol on an empty stomach. What a remarkably unhelpful statement.

Benny has one foot poised on a priceless rifle cabinet and his greased hair is fluttering slightly from the window breeze, and the whole picture does things to your circulatory system that under normal circumstances would have you reaching for a stimpak. "In that case, I'll just...start by undressing."

"Oh, a stripping routine?" Benny puffs out effortlessly, classier than anyone with his attire and general disposition should be allowed to look. "Right on, sugarlips."

For the love of water, he's taking a simple mechanical prelude to the actual fucking as if it's the sexiest thing in the Wasteland.

Only, the way his eyes follow you as you strip off the familiar filthy coat and undo shirt cuffs suggests it is. Off with the belt and packs, away with the shirt-

He rests two fingers on your shoulder, so lightly you wouldn't feel him if it wasn't bare. "You sure this is something you want to do right now, cupcake? All that booze?"

"Get in bed and find out." In as close an imitation of his incomprehensible slang as you can manage. It's not very good.

He stubs the cigarette out against the shutter, falls dramatically against the bed. "Go ahead and strip me then."

It's part and parcel of being a doctor that you can't do this simply, without a radio station in your head tuned to medical evaluation even as you slide off jacket and trousers, every inch of that lucky suit laid neatly on a chair. Scars here, unexplained tattoo there, the marks of a hard life in the Mojave laid out in history made flesh. It is very susceptible and very beautiful at once, heart-wringing for the wounds scabbed over and soothing for its persistence. Sex is always the balance between the purifying and the ludicrous, your busy mind likes to sate itself on diagnostic while the rest of you is caught up in passion. Just the way you're built. It doesn't hurt any.

Benny's a goddamn pillow princess and lazy in bed, but he helps remove your trousers this time, the two of you stripping each other to bare skin. His hands find your cock, already growing interested; you find his and find it to be disappointingly inert.

"Something wrong?"

" Hell, I'm probably just done in after that batch in the garden. Tell you what, a little Buffout, a little juicer, I should be right with you."

"...not like that." You will, possibly, never be able to tell when he lies, but this doesn't stack up to prior experience. Experiences. "What's wrong? Am I rushing you?"

"No, I don't think- maybe," Benny admits, chagrin written over his face. "This house, everything- it's too much. Fuck, this'll take some getting used to. Seven years running the Tops and I still think of a place like this as a luxury for my betters, you dig?" He squeezes lightly with one hand, strokes along your ribcage with the other.

"You don't have any betters." Sensation be damned when there's a philosophical point to be made. Difficult as that may be in his practiced grasp. "You deserve this as much as- ah- any one in the Mojave-"

"Whoa, kitten, you'll be bad for my limitless ego. It's just a matter of getting used to it, okay? We have time, we'll get there. But meanwhile I have a bottlecap says you need a special delivery even if I don't."

It takes a moment to disentangle thoughts of Marilyn from standard Vegas slang, and then another to try to muster a functional argument, and then there aren't any more moments, because your chronic patience does not carry through to the bedchamber and Benny knows that, hurrying you along until you're blacking out to bliss-

how long it is before you're cognizant again, you aren't sure. Long enough that Benny has had time to clean you off, that's thoughtful.

"I can't possibly let that go unreciprocated."

"Don't worry about it, cupcake. Keeping score is for teenagers."

"...if you can't get it up in the house, why not outside?" That has to be the alcohol talking. Or Benny's boyfriend. Or both.

"You mean a rematch by the pool? Not a bad idea from the fertile delta of Arcade's idea garden, I'll drink to that."

...whatever that means. Too many stairs to negotiate going back down. "I mean right here. On the bedroom awning."

"The one made of cast iron? With a clear line of sight for anyone prancing down the street? Two feet across to a hard fall on concrete?"

"...um."

Benny grins, grabs a fluffy pillow. "Baby, you know how to activate my danger kink like nothing else. Lead on, Macbeth."

He means Macduff, but never mind, the thought's there.

Intellectual quibbling can take a back seat to some extremely serious fucking, for once in a way.

#fallout new vegas #orange

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nefarioussdotcom-blog · 4 years

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A Skater’s Guide To The Island of The Gods

Author: Beau Badinski

Bali, Indonesia. Island of the Gods. The place conjures images of palm trees, hollow left-handers stacked to the horizon, black sandy beaches, bikinis, pig on a stick and bowls of something soupy and hot served from the back of a motorbike on the road side.

The surfing scene is ripe, everyone knows it. Where I live, on the Bukit Peninsula down south, just on this tiny section of the island, there are 9 world class surf breaks. A total surf Mecca. What a lot of people don’t know though, and probably would never guess with all the pot holes, no sidewalks and cracked concrete— is that the island also has a bangin’ skate scene, with almost as many bowls and parks as there are waves.

Head to the west coast of Bali, an hour from the airport and you’ll hit Canggu. In Bahasa Indonesia, the letter C makes a Ch sound. Pronounced; chun-goo. Canggu. The Byron Bay of Bali.

Image Credit: Pretty Poison, Instagram

Pretty Poison, positioned in the middle of the infamous shortcut (the Canggu shortcut is a road running across, right through the middle of rice paddies, with a meter drop on either side of the narrow road. Cars, scooters and buffalo all end up victims of the shortcut) is somewhat the heart of the skate scene in the village of Canggu. It’s a bar with an empty pool with slicked up coping, a live music venue and a place to get up to no-good.

Tuesday nights at Pretty Poison are a skate jam. Beers, loud music, skating and skin stickers. Led Zeppelin and Motorhead. It feels like a backyard party. Skaters from the world over are here doing laps in the pool with the local boys, taking big slams, knocking into the shins of the spectators around the edges of the bowl. Good times.

Photo credit House of Canggu instagram

Just up the road, not 15 minutes scooter ride from Pretty Poison, you’ll hit House of Canggu, or HOC. Bar, food joint, coffee place and accommodation featuring a mini park and pool. The HOC park is small, as is their pool (essentially a wading pool). But, as anyone who’s seen alcohol and bodies of water combined will tell you; it’s best to keep it shallow.

The size ceases to matter though, with views like this. An evening skate with the sun dropping over the greenest of flurry green paddies, good company and some sexy people in the pool. Things could certainly be worse.

The park is a little interesting in the way that it’s modular. They move bits in and out, so depending on when you go, you might get a bright pink mini ramp, you might get a couple of wedges, a few rails and a box. Try your luck or check out their Instagram to see what’s up.

Photo credit Motion Skatepark Co.

Heading a little further out of Changgu, you’ll find this glorious place; Motion Skatepark. It reminds me of the hangar level in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2— except instead of being in the made up land of Mullet Falls, like it is in the game, Motion is bang in the tourist center of Kuta. Smooth concrete with wooden ramps, funboxes, gaps, a six set and rails galore.

This indoor beast is made by Motion Skatepark Co.—the crew behind many/most of Bali’s bowls and skating facilities from here to Ubud and as far as the neighboring island of Lombok and mainland Jakarta. These guys change up the park every year, which makes the entry fee of 30.000 IDR (around $3 AUD) ridiculously cheap for all day indoor skating. A wet season go-to. Here you can expect to see some the gnarliest skaters on the island.

Photo credit Amplitude Skatepark

Also made by the Motion Skatepark Co. is Amplitude Skatepark. It looks like the result of a crazy dream a skater had. ‘First, I’ll build a 9ft deep bowl! Then I’ll put a pump track with a million humps and bumps around it! I’ll finish this bad boy off with an L-shaped street skating section! It’ll be sick.’

That’s exactly what they did, and the park turned out oh so well. It really is a thing of beauty. A giant world class pump track entirely wrapped around the deepest bowl in Bali. Tranny from the pump track into the street skate section with stairs, rails, wedges, boxes and a mini half-pipe. Let’s go!

Amplitude skatepark hosts a bunch of skating and live music events, including International events sponsored by Thrasher and Red Bull. This place is a staple of the Balinese skate scene.

Though these three are my picks of the litter for places to skate in Bali, there are so many more. And me, not being a fan of secrets, will share all I know with ya! Here is a quick list of other bowls, pipes and parks in southern Bali, broken up into area.

Changgu area:

Deus ex Machina has a solid little concrete half pipe on the side of their shop. Go here to also check out handmade surfboards and motorcycles.

Konkrete store café and bar has a bowl. One of the many made by the Motion Skatepark Co. dudes. It’s nice and attracts a good crowd.

Kuta area:

Donkey skate park. An indoor wooden park with some nice rails, half pipes, ledges and kickers.

Bukit Peninsula area:

The outside corner just past Padang Padang surfbreak. They have a sweet bowl with various corner sizes and steel coping.

Balangan surf skate offers accommodation, food, beers and a skatepark. This place started with just the bowl, and things went from there.

Another bowl right near Balangan beach is the Bukit Bowl. A skatepark with a nice big bowl with pool coping and few other ramps and ledges around it. They also run a homestay here.

The Globe Bali skatepark is just after the airport as you’re coming onto the Bukit Peninsula. This park features a concrete coping bowl with a volcano shooting out of the middle, and a mini ramp with a hump. They also run a well-stocked skate shop on site.

There you have it—Bali is as nuts about skating as it is surfing. Grab your board and get down here! Though these are some of the great parks, I reckon there are some equally as rad street spots around, ripe for the skatin’. Get on the moto and have a hunt.

Have you been to Bali and dig the skate scene? Did I somehow miss a Bali skating essential? Skating is all about sharing the love. Share the love, let me know, drop us a comment below and spread the four wheeled love!

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