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mauserfrau · 4 years

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Mau's Very Silly Headcanon Post

Since I have two pieces of fiction going live this weekend and they’re both going to be late due to butting into each other XD.

I did another one here and there’s going to be some overlap, but less bodily function stuff in this one (mostly spit) (also some vague references to medical trauma).

A lot of this is small potatoes because I didn’t want to spoil anything. How Phaseleech actually works ends up being a plot point in what I have pending, so I actually can’t just come out and say what’s going on. That said, I’m sure there are people here who want to know what’s on my mind, but who don’t want to sit through 50K words with half a dozen squick warnings.

That said: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau

Questions welcome, about this, anything else I think about Borderlands, what exactly is in Chapter 13 of Satellite, if it’s true the one flashback actually happened to Mom...

Both

-Look, the only thing I did that’s appreciably off-canon is let them have emotions. Maybe I drove into left field with what those emotions were, but that’s really all anybody’s got to do to fix this situation. Go with the deity of your choice.

-If I was headed for a Gearbox ending, it would be for the scrapped one, not the one we got. See this and this other thing.

>>>I would still have written the twins as having something resembling a meaningful relationship regardless of whether that turned out romantic or not. As things went and are, them as a couple was something I knew how to write and my mom shipped them (no, I’m not kidding).

-I’m not going for a canon ending. Mercy, did I find a thread I could snap and take the whole sweater out.

-Both had blue siren markings when they were born; Troy’s turned red after they were separated.

--Which was a complicated mess-- they were upside-down verses each other and had several secondary adhesions, the most notable of which was Tyreen’s face to Troy’s thigh.

---Leda never 100% recovered from the emotional or physical trauma, but she put on a brave face for the last sevenish years of her life.

---Troy’s tissue loss was severe and left him with a notable pit in his upper right side.

---Tyreen also has heavy scarring running from her right armpit to her right hip. It’s not as complex, but it is very visible. Missing a fair amount of intestine compared to the average human, but this has apparently never bothered her beyond the fact that visiting the toilet when you don’t eat is not fun.

-Semi-identical twins. Have 82.5% of their genes in common. LSS, neither one is a parasite. They’re two sperm plus one egg and they didn’t divide right.

--Ms. Phaseleech* didn’t know any better. #oops

--If you get them relaxed enough, they will indeed curl up together in their “fish” position.

-Tyreen is the one who would wail first if separated from her brother when they were very small, but they don’t like being apart even as adults.

-Both very well-read, used to recite The Odyssey to congregants instead of scripture (‘cause they didn’t have any scripture).

-Good to excellent hunters. Depends what they’re hunting and if they’re together. Prefer to go barefoot if there’s no one else around.

-The circumstances surrounding Leda’s death are appreciably worse than fanon baseline to the point I don’t think I ought to leave them lying around in a Tumblr post.

-Both have wavy hair if they don’t iron the daylights out of it.

-Prefer to be on the road and around people, even if a fair amount of those people are going to end up dinner.

-Get weirdly soft-hearted around kids, especially little boys with a similar complexion to their own.

-Do they have any concept that they’re horrible people? Yes, but it’s very academic and not something that motivates them. You’d be way more likely to hear them frame themselves as hedonists, which also explains their worldview to a certain extent.

~*~

Troy

-Skinnier than most other Troys. You could put him in a room with every fandom Troy and sort them by muscle mass, you’d find him at the bottom end, partying like this was an accomplishment.

-Has an X-linked connective tissue disorder which is more extensive than he lets on. He really should not do about 90% of the stunts he does because of the vascular involvement.

-Made a categorical decision to treat the associated pain with a lot of cannabis and massage. Has a distinct resin and honey body butter smell because of this.

--Also, if you get him off-hours, there’s going to be a fair amount of “but why are we here, man?” discussion.

-Has a kink in his upper back. His spine tilts to his right. Not super noticeable, but if you were on massage duty, you’d realize something felt out of place.

-Used to get catastrophic nosebleeds, though these have lessened in frequency and severity over the years.

-After a certain point, has a permanent latching socket port installed on his right side, allowing him to switch arms out as he likes.

--Because he has a selection of eccentric ones. What? It’s a challenge to learn to use non-human aspects like claws or feathers or forty joints in a tentacle.

--Still flounces around without one if nobody of consequence is watching and generally won’t sleep with one in.

-The insides of his ear gauges are messy and don’t even get him started on changing the jewelry on any, erm, other piercings he might have. (Nipples and one off-center PA. That was QUITE enough after what it took for his tattoos to cooperate.)

-Will frame any illness or off-day as a migraine, which he does get.

-Had really bad teeth before his mouth mods. After that, has none of his natural teeth remaining. Primarily uses his exceptional bite radius to annoy others, show off, eat sandwiches in a disturbing fashion and do unspeakable things in bed. They’re for show. They’re not functional in any serious way.

-Doesn’t have great control of said mouth mods in the heat of passion or if you get him laughing hard enough. Hope you like spit!

-Still has rather heinous-looking feet, but he’s concerned about losing his calluses if he has them fixed. You’d be more likely to see him open on an operating table than barefoot in public.

-Always wants to be the little spoon. You’re a tink? You’re a third his size? So what. He wants to be the little spoon. Just give in.

-Genuinely likes tea, especially flower-based tea. Favorite foods include grits, polenta, tamales, campfire beefy rice, beef and broccoli layered onto somebody else’s leftover noodles, beef curry, beef sandwiches soaked in jus, steak tips on day-old fries and look just give him a sloppy plate of starch and dead cow if you need him to shut up.

-Drinks vodka so cold and over-filtered it tastes like water, then follows it up with extra greasy, burnt-to-hell texas toast while talking about his mother.

-Lactose intolerant. Please do not feed the rat child pizza. Or chipped beef on toast. No, not even if he begs.

~*~

Tyreen

-Abnormally acute senses, especially hearing/smell and including a form of intuition which targets where things she can leech exist nearby. She’s only aware of any of this in the context of it being different from how Troy’s senses work. She knows where to get food. Don’t most people?

-Doesn’t perceive herself as 100% human. The Leech is part of her and she likes herself. Mama said she was perfect. The details are whatever. You got a problem here? Well, that’s easy to fix…

-Would have been sorted as a tomboy growing up, but had no companions to do so. As is, prefers the company of masculine individuals, loves showing people up in a boyish fashion and is absolutely going to tune you out if you start talking to her about the topic.

-Reeks. You might smell something “off” with her around in a meeting room, but get her sweaty or worked up and forget it. It’s not even a human smell. Petrichor and spray paint, menstrual blood and chlorine, dead leaves and solvent. It’s chemical, it’s uncannily biological. It’s really not OK. She can’t smell it and Troy’s used to it.

-Doesn’t shave. Has fluffy armpits that don’t match her dye job and a rather spectacular bush that extends onto her upper thighs. Does pluck here brows and the witch hairs on her chin, but otherwise, you know what, nah.

-Heavily tattooed, but this is limited to her torso. The viewing of said tattoos, as well as her scars, is a ritual in her particular CoV.

--Not that she cares about being naked. A body is a body. You people are so uptight.

-Will reflexively guard her lower stomach before anything else and sometimes in error. Do not call her on this. You will piss her off.

-Has an eye-shaped siren marking, but it’s on her left shoulder blade and she tends to forget it’s there. More aware of the “pointer mark” underneath her navel.

-Poor tolerance for any drugs.

-Can only ingest salt, sucrose and 80 proof or better clear alcohol without retching.

--Which is to say she doesn’t eat “people food”.

--Fatty or high-fiber foods tend to make her ill faster. She could possibly keep tofu or chicken breast down for an hour or more, but it’s still not going to end well.

--Can and does eat cinder toffee because it’s one of the few things she can chew and digest. Konpeito is nice too, but sometimes the dye upsets her stomach.

--Milk, maybe. Human works better.

-Enjoys swimming or long baths.

-Ambidextrous. Was either born that way or picked up doing certain things left-handed because that’s what her brother had to work with and she had to show him how to do stuff somehow.

-Good with a forearm-mounted crossbow. Either hand is fine.

-Used to drool precipitously when she leeched something “good”. Mostly has a handle on this by the time the CoV gets to be a thing. Mostly.

-Deeply immature love language which might include her actually asking to play with her prospective partner and a good bit of bullying.

-SHE IS NOT SHY ABOUT HER NEEDS AND KINKS. THE HELL WITH YOU. YOU’RE MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING. HOW DARE YOU. DO YOU WANT TO BE SKAG BAIT ON THE NEXT LIVESCREAM. UGH. #nottsundereatall

~*~

* The Leech IDed herself as, erm, herself in some stuff I’m not sure I’ll ever post but ANYWAY.

#borderlands 3 #headcanon post #calypso twins #troy calypso #tyreen calypso

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pandorasvalley-rpg · 3 years

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… … YUN HAESEONG

27. the hacker. black star affiliate.

biography.

“they call me a menace they say that I’m cursed but somethin' about me is makin' 'em jealous so listen and learn”

01. born and raised in the city of dust, he was just a child way too fascinated with technology; only son of a nameless couple, he never had any bright prospects for the future - but he went against all odds and twisted the stars in his own favor, slowly succumbing to a life of crime.

02. stripped of his old name and identity, he created himself a persona that couldn’t be torn down; that’s how yun haeseong was born, a broker of information, a spy, cunning, impertinent, quick, with connections in just the right places to get him to the city of iron, where he could achieve the things he worked so hard for.

03. he went into the underground, with a teenager’s most honest interest soaking up all the knowledge that he could get his hands on; his attention solely focused on technology, he quickly grew from a competent eavesdropper into a great hacker - but he got drunk on this newfound power and that made him careless. he left a trail - and the eye of the authorities turned on him, forcing him back into the shadows, into hiding.

04. he spent that time on researching the making of androids; fascinated by them and the possibilities that human augmentation could give, he started dreaming of a customized one that would give him the upper hand above everyone else - and no matter the cost, he had to get it.

05. that’s how he got affiliated with the black star: a favor for a favor. but he’s finally where he wanted to be all this time; all this took was way too much iron and way too much pain - nothing that wouldn’t be worth it in the long run.

file.

“cause i’m surrounded by cowards and i don’t give a fuck when i walk into battle and that's why i got all the power i’m where you wanna be”

BASICS.

FULL NAME: yun haeseong. NICKNAME: “the ghost”. AGE: twenty-seven. BIRTH DATE: data not available. BIRTH PLACE: city of dust. GENDER: nonbinary. PRONOUNS: he/him ORIENTATION: bisexual. OCCUPATION: hacker, information broker.

FAMILY.

PARENTS: data not available. SIBLINGS: data not available. PET(S): none.

PHYSICAL.

FACE CLAIM: lim jino. EYE COLOR: black. HAIR COLOR: black. HAIR STYLE: mid-length, sides shaved, disheveled. HEIGHT: 6’3” (192 cm). TATTOOS + PIERCINGS: heavily tattooed, the most notable ones are on his neck, face, chest and hands. multiple piercings in his ears, one in his nose. NOTABLE PHYSICAL TRAITS: a bunch of scars scattered on his whole body, the iron skeleton of his augmented piece down his spine.

MENTAL.

AILMENTS: mild insomnia, post-augmentation pains. INTELLIGENCE: high. witty, quick, manipulative. LIKES: working on new augmentations for himself, alcohol, holding the power in his hands. DISLIKES: stupid people, complications in his plans, post-augmentation pains. DISPOSITION: cold, sarcastic. strong sense of self-preservation. charismatic, easily connects with other people.

ABILITIES.

FAVORED WEAPON(S): handguns. WEAPON SKILLS: 9/10. above average, trained by an ex-soldier. COMBAT SKILLS: 4/10. below average, his augmentation makes him sensitive to hits. THREAT LEVEL: 7/10. dangerous to those who have something to hide; a moderate threat in physical fights.

headcanons.

“ain’t no one ahead of me all of my enemies made a decision it's better to follow me i make no apologies”

05. rumors say he has some assets located in the lady love; probably because he spends a lot of time there, mostly sitting around in a corner in the company of some droids and shady figures - some say his apprentices, but he never confirmed nor denied that part.

01. he’s fluent in both english and mandarin; also knows kurdish and arabic to a certain extent, but definitely understands more than he can say in either of those. in his free time he’s working on an extension to his augmentation that would make it easier for him to pick up new skills - mostly in the language department.

02. he never picked a side in the war, considering it a waste of time and resources; although he works for every single side available, depending on who offers more for his services. despite his affiliation to the black star, he somehow managed to also stay on neutral ground, of which he’s fairly proud of.

03. except augmentations, his second biggest field of interest is magic; he’d like to get his hands on a magical artifact to do research on it and understand its’ ways - and if there was a mage willing to teach him more about the whole thing, he’d surely strike a deal that would benefit both of them.

04. his closest companion is an android he created years ago, when he was forced into hiding; it’s working on an experimental code created by him and serves both as his bodyguard and a security getaway if things ever went south for him again.

augmentation.

“in a world riddled with conflict hate that you need me wanna destroy me but you can’t you're gonna deploy me in the end better believe that i'ma be me 'til the death of me”

01. he’s the only and proud owner of an augmentation enhancing his hacking hardware; he spent almost six years researching cybernetic and android technologies, medicine and hardware building to create the appropriate augmentation - and also convincing the right people that it has a chance to work out and won’t kill him in the long run.

02. it consists of dozens of implants built into his spine, skull and also his left hand, allowing him to hack and steal data merely by touching the hardware he plans to steal from. Since he uses the best technology available, the process rarely takes more than a few minutes, even at high amounts of data downloaded.

03. since the technology is highly experimental, it’s also unstable; he frequently has to go back to the person who installed it for minor fixes and changes of the burnt out pieces - since he’s still not fully in control of the power of the whole augmentation. over-using it also causes him heavy headaches, hence he’s trying to use it cautiously, doing the most of his hacking jobs still in a stationary way.

04. in the future he’d like to expand it to a whole, better working system, allowing him to never be forced to use a stationary computer again; but every attempt failed miserably until now, having him hospitalized twice on intensive care.

05. the way his augmentation is built in also makes him sensitive to physical damage, at least until he figures out a way to stabilize the technology; after all damaging the right pieces could paralyze or even kill him. that’s why he also destroyed all the blueprints of it, storing everything just in his head - and on encrypted notes, scattered around various places in the whole valley.

#hacker #yun haeseong #scifi rp #original rp #skeleton rp #former

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allofthisnonsenseplease · 7 years

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GabexJack modern AU meet-cute featuring bodymod!tattooartist!Gabe.

I hadn’t seen that done, and thought it might be a cool idea. =)

Gabriel had just finished putting up his inks and sterilizing his equipment when he heard the front door open. After years of extra shifts at secondary jobs, sacrifice, and saving up, he had finally managed to open his own shop, Death Blossom Tattoos. He still wasn't used to being the only one on shift, though, and this wouldn't be the first time he'd forgotten to lock up after his last client.

“We're closed,” he called.

“Hello...?”

The voice that called from the front was rough—pack-a-day smoker who gargles with gravel, rough—but hesitant. Feeling every second of the long, long day that he'd been on his feet, Gabriel stripped off his gloves and flung them into the trash, then stepped out to send the man on his way. He didn't anticipate that it would take long. Being just over six feet tall and built like a pro-wrestler alone sufficed to make most people think twice about crossing him, but Gabriel had taken that canvas and run with it. His curly hair was shaved on the sides, just long enough on top to spike into a mohawk when he felt like bothering, and tipped in red. Steel glinted against his dark skin from multiple piercings: left eyebrow, bridge, septum on the right, and a labret winking like a ruby in a patch of hair below his lips. His ears sported rings and studs from top to bottom in steel, jet, and candy apple red acrylic, and the lobes were stretched around inch-wide gauges. Dark, tattooed clouds of red-tinged nebulae seemed to issue from the gauges opening his cheeks and exposing his teeth. Malevolent red eyes stared out of the deepest black of the ink as it bled back into the stubble on his skull. His tongue was forked. His sclera had been tattooed black, although he had foregone the red contacts today.

He fixed a neutral expression on his face, and turned the corner to get a look at whoever it was that had wandered into his shop so late at night. The sight almost—almost—made him falter a moment.

The guy was hot. Tall as Gabriel and absolutely ripped, dressed in dark jeans and a tight black polo that contrasted deliciously against the creamy latte color of his lightly tanned skin. The shirt clung to his pecs, shaping them out of shadows and soft edges, leaving his trim waist less defined. His hair was too bright, bottle-blond over darker eyebrows. Freckles dusted his nose and flushed cheeks. His pale eyes were wide, lips parted as he stared.

Gabriel licked his lips reflexively, then frowned, hoping the gesture had gone unnoticed. He stepped up to the man, close enough to smell the alcohol reek of his breath.

“We're closed,” he repeated shortly.

“Oh,” the man said. Then: “Shit.” He goggled at Gabriel a moment longer, taking in the tattoos and piercings and visible mods with drunken intensity and a vaguely worried expression. “I went to Hell.” He said it with a fatalistic sort of acceptance that made it hard for Gabriel not to laugh.

He must have been very drunk. Gabriel watched as he looked over each shoulder and made a wobbling turn to check behind himself. All the while, he was absentmindedly patting himself down as if searching for the feel of lost keys in pockets. Or trying to make sure he was still in one piece. When he turned back to Gabriel, wavering but still managing to remain upright, he looked downright bewildered.

“Did that car actually hit me?”

“Wouldn't know about that. But I can tell you that you aren't in Hell.”

“I'm not?”

“Nope.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I can also tell you that we're closed.”

“Um.” His gaze wandered uncertainly for a moment before returning to the general vicinity of Gabriel's face. “I'm lost.”

“Not my problem, Blondie.”

The man's shoulders sagged. His heavy brows drew in, his lips turned down at the corners, and he hung his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Gabriel felt like he'd kicked a puppy. Heaving a sigh, and hoping the drunk could take directions at least long enough to get lost someplace else, he asked: “Where are you trying to go?”

“Home.”

He waited a beat, just to see if a kernel of common sense might take root in the man's head. When it didn't, Gabriel crossed his arms and scowled. “If you want directions, then you have to tell me where you live.”

“In...an apartment complex. I just moved here. My name's Jack.”

He was staring at Gabriel's crossed arms, eyes wide. They were an unusual washed-out shade of blue, like pale sea glass. Gabriel pictured wave tattoos for him, a sleeve in the Japanese style, spotted with white camellias. Maybe with a fish, seeing as he apparently drank like one.

“You have....” Jack gestured unsteadily at Gabriel's arms, then looked up to meet his eyes once more. “There're...faces,” he said. “In your hands.”

“Subdermal implants,” Gabriel said by way of explanation. Uncrossing his arms, he held up one of his hands for Jack to take a closer look at the glowering, skull-like owl face rising up just beneath his skin.

He wasn't quite prepared, although maybe he should have been, for Jack to take his hand in both of his and hold it close to his face. Jack's hands were warm, fingers pleasantly rough with calluses, and his breath tickled over Gabriel's skin. He shifted his grip, one hand holding Gabriel's, the other moving to stroke hesitantly over the implant. His fingertips skated erratically over it, dipping clumsily into the recesses of the eyes. Jack looked up at him suddenly, eyes fever-bright in his flushed face.

“What's your name?”

“Gabriel.” He jerked his hand back more roughly than he needed to. “What apartment complex do you live in?”

“The one near the park.”

There were three parks in the city, all with several apartment complexes within a block or two. “That narrows it down to a couple dozen. Try again.”

“Over...Overlook?”

“Overwatch Apartments?” Gabriel asked, thinking: No, it couldn't be.

Jack lit up. “Yes! How do I get there?”

Small world. With a sigh, Gabriel waved him to the bench against the side wall. “Sit down. You live in the same complex as me. I'll take you there once I'm done closing up.” While Jack got settled, Gabriel took a moment to grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge behind the desk. “Here. Drink this. I think you need it.”

Jack took the bottle, staring first at it, then up at Gabriel. “You're not s'posed to drink the water in Hell. You get stuck there.”

Leaning down to look Jack in the eye, Gabriel reminded him, enunciating carefully: “You are not in Hell, Jack.”

“Oh. Okay.” He paused, water probably all but forgotten, and lifted a finger to point at Gabriel's face. “Your eyes are...kinda...black.”

“Tattoos.”

“Oh. Cool.”

It didn't take long to finish straightening up and close out the register. Gabriel locked the day's take in the safe, leaving the deposit for his future self to deal with. He herded Jack out the door, locked up, and led him down to the bus stop. Any thoughts he'd had about babysitting Jack being nothing but a pain flew out of his head when the bus pulled up and Jack lurched in front of him to get on first. Jack stood between him and the bus driver, a man who was neither unfamiliar with Gabriel nor drunk, and proceeded to reassure the driver that Gabriel was not, in fact, a devil, but was his friend and a very nice man. The driver shot Gabriel a look over Jack's shoulder. Gabriel was too busy shaking with repressed laughter to respond.

They took their seats at the back of the bus, and Jack explained in a halting, wandering monologue about how his new coworkers had dragged him out for a party, then disappeared one by one until he was alone in a bar in a part of town he didn't recognize. Not a great thing to do to a guy, Gabriel thought, but Jack was an adult and should have been able to fend for himself. He was just lucky that the person he had asked directions from could take him home, rather than just sending him on his way alone.

Jack was doubly lucky, as it turned out. He could barely keep his eyes open, even as he finished explaining how he'd gotten into his predicament. Long before they had reached their stop, he was slouching against Gabriel, head resting on his shoulder. The warmth was nice, the contact pleasant. Gabriel let him doze, wondering if Jack's freckles spread like a star chart across the rest of his skin; if he already had tattoos, or if he was a blank canvas; if he might someday let Gabriel leave his own mark. He wondered what sort of design would suit Jack best.

Their stop was only a block away from the complex, but Jack was too muddled by alcohol and exhaustion to wake up fully. He followed groggily along in Gabriel's wake, responding to questions in grunts and brief nods or shakes of his head. In the stairwell, he dug his keys out of his pocket and let Gabriel sort through them for the one with his apartment number barely legible in scratched black sharpie. Jack lived on the same floor, several doors down. Very small world, indeed.

When Gabriel stopped in front of Jack's door, he had just enough time to get it unlocked and open before Jack stumbled into him from behind. The warmth and weight of his body didn't linger, but the feel of his hand did. Gabriel held still as Jack rubbed a hand up and down his spine, tracing the bumps of small, rounded spikes.

“More like your hands?” Jack murmured. He sounded far more alert after their march up the stairs.

“Got it in one.”

“Do you have more tattoos?” Both hands were resting on Gabriel's back now, firm against his shoulder blades.

“Of course.”

“Can I see?”

Gabriel let himself be pushed into the apartment, reaching out to flip the light switch as automatically as if he were in his own home. Jack slipped past him, emptying his pockets of phone, wallet, and spare change onto the coffee table. When Gabriel handed back his keys, they joined the pile as well.

Jack turned back to look at him, shadows under his sea glass eyes, expectation making his expression eager, almost hungry. The air between them felt charged, and Jack's drunken intensity sent a shiver running over Gabriel's skin. Lips twisted in a crooked smile, he tugged off his hoodie, then his tank top. He grinned to see the way Jack caught his lower lip between his teeth as he stared.

Most of Gabriel's body was covered in tattoos. His chest featured a massive one done in red and black, glistening with white highlights. The edges were cracked and burned skin, dry as desert rock, peeling away from the curved lines of ribs, the rounded lump of a heart. More of the nebula-edged darkness congealed around the edges, dripping from just beneath his collarbone. Eyes opened up in the depths, iris and pupils livid red against the black. His right arm was tattooed with slashes that puckered red around the edges, weeping more of the watching darkness and exposing musculature, tendons, ligaments, and bone. A black barn owl perched on his left arm, talons just above his elbow, head on the curve of his shoulder. Its face was ghostly white, its eyes deep blue and dotted with stars. Feathers fell the length of his forearm, mingling with graceful curls of smoke, and morphing into shell casings by they time they reached his wrist.

He turned to show off his back, the column of subdermal implants like spikes down his spine, the twin shotguns, heavy and black, that stretched nearly from the crest of his shoulders to the curve of his lower back. They breathed smoke that coiled up his neck, darkening against his skull to mingle with the clouds that wrapped around over his temples and cheeks.

Facing away, he didn't see Jack move, didn't hear him step closer. The first warning he had was a breath of moving air against his skin, and then the heat of Jack's palm was back, far warmer without the barrier of clothing between them. Jack stroked down his back, thumb ticking against the sides of the implants, fingertips lingering just over the waistband of Gabriel's jeans as he pulled his hand back.

Gabriel turned and Jack took another step in, entranced by the tattoos, by the shape and planes of Gabriel's body half hidden beneath the lines of the ink. He watched as Jack reached up, slow as a dreamer, to set his palms against the flesh of Gabriel's chest and drag his touch down over the swell of pecs, the toned muscles of his stomach. Gabriel's nipples and navel were pierced, as well as parts further south. However, despite Jack's open show of fascination, he wasn't going to be seeing anything else. At least...not just yet. Gabriel had seen the heated look in his eyes from others before, often enough that he knew it wasn't only the tattoos that were arousing Jack's interest. Drunken one night stands held no appeal for him, but if Jack still looked at him like that when he was sober....

Gabriel definitely wouldn't mind feeling those plush pecs fill his hands, finding out what Jack's creamy skin tasted like, getting a good look at the bared canvas of his body. He wondered again if it would be blank, or if Jack already had some ink of his own. Something patriotic, maybe? He had something of a military air about him, something in the way he carried himself, even drunk. Some iconography from the service? A motto, maybe? Discoveries to be made later when Jack could think straight and they'd had a chance to get to know each other a little better.

“That's it for tonight,” Gabriel said, pulling his hoodie back on and stuffing his shirt into the pocket. “Lend me your phone for a sec.”

Jack blinked at him, a bit slow on the uptake, but handed it over without question. He watched as Gabriel took a selfie, grinning around his forked tongue, then saved his contact information and sent himself a message. Maybe Jack would want to forget the whole thing come the morning, but Gabriel wouldn't bet on that.

“I'll text you tomorrow. We can set up a day to get you better acquainted with the city, if you want.”

“Sure. Thank you.”

“My pleasure, neighbor.” Grinning and feeling well-rewarded for his good deed, Gabriel waved and left for his own apartment and his waiting bed.

-------------------

Jack woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, an unpleasantly roiling stomach, and a mouth that felt like he'd been chewing on dirty laundry. He groaned, realized that the vibration was making his head pound worse and his stomach threaten to revolt, and stopped. Blindly, he reached out and groped across the nightstand for his phone, wondering what time it was and half afraid to find out. When he peered blearily at the screen, he saw that he had a new message from....

“Not A Devil...? Who the—”

[good luck with that hangover jackie]

Memories trickled back in, slow at first, then in a rush. The bar. The empty, unfamiliar streets. The bright light of the tattoo parlor.

Gabriel.

“Oh, God...!”

He remembered an unfairly handsome man with more tattoos and body modifications than Jack had even realized existed. Had the whites of his eyes really been black? He squinted at the picture, saw that yes, they were, and yes, Gabriel was just as good-looking through the unforgiving fog of a hangover as he had been when Jack had been drunkenly mistaking him for a devil and later pawing him in the living room of his apartment.

Not the sort of first impression he would ever be able to live down.

“I'm in Hell,” he groaned into his pillows. “Never drinking again.”

His only consolation was the vague memory of having somehow earned a second chance. He must have done something right in that case, and whatever it was, he was glad it had worked. Jack definitely wanted to get to know that particular neighbor much better.

#cornfuck and the reaper #fanfiction #i'm actually really tempted to throw this into the tags but it doesn't really go anywhere so...#i dunno i just wanted bodymod!Gabe 'cause i thought it kinda worked as a stand-in for bodyhorror!Gabe

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abutterflyobsession · 7 years

Text

Doctor Who AU: Part 15

prelude/one/two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight/nine/ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen/ao3

“I do hope you appreciate how clever this setup is,” The syringe Roland had just pulled from Bog's arm was full of sickly orange fluid, a small screen on the side displaying some text. Whatever the text said did not satisfy Roland and he clicked his tongue in disappointment before continuing with his boasting,“I've fastforwarded the breakdown of your human DNA by five years now without you starving to death or even needing a shave. Well, no more in need of a shave than when we began.”

“I'm agog.”

Bog's mouth was painfully dry and speaking reopened the deep cracks around his mouth, the taste of blood thick on his tongue. But he still made the effort to muster what sarcasm he could, just so he could see Roland's miffed expression.

“I could speed up the process,” Roland jabbed a finger into Bog's arm, right in the ripening bruise caused by half a dozen or more needle marks, “but that could kill you and we can't have that happening just yet.”

Each time a needle was stabbed into Bog's arm he could feel that it was getting harder for the needle to pierce the skin and find a vein. He could see deep, dry cracks laying open in his skin to reveal the damp, still soft texture of bark. Desperately thirsty and in extreme pain, Bog's mind focused on the ludicrous thought that it was a shame that all the work put into his tattoos would go to waste.

Maybe he was just trying to avoid thinking about how his body was being ripped apart and if he didn't die from it he would be some sort of freakish Ent for the rest of his life.

He'd just wanted to get his guitar and the necklace back.

And a stiff drink.

How had things even ended up like this.

He was mad at the Doctor for getting him into this. He would have put more effort into it if he didn't hear her berating Roland every time light and consciousness coincided.

Bog was having trouble keeping track of time. It was just a shuffling of dark and light and pain. Even the needles stuck in his arm blurred together.

At one point light brought with it a strange taste in the air and he had started coughing. There wasn't enough air, he couldn't force it into his lungs, all his effort only seizing up his throat. He had no idea how long he coughed, but he pulled something along his ribs during the convulsive fits. His arms and legs held in place, something in his shoulders separated as the fits of coughing shook his body.

“Congratulations!” Roland said sometime after the coughing began to fade, “You just switched over to breathing carbon dioxide!”

Bog just wheezed.

But he tried to do it in a scornful way.

The liquid in the syringe was dark amber, with a hint of red.

“Nearly there!” Roland said cheerfully.

A crash and a prolonged, wordless noise of complaint made Roland stop in the act of sealing Bog in again.

“Buttercup, look at this mess!”

The Doctor staggered into view, walking a little lopsided. But that might just have been Bog's vision wavering again.

“That's what happens when I hack your psychic interface and neutralize the signal keeping the wall solid,” the Doctor held out her sonic screwdriver, “shouldn't have let me hang onto this.”

There was white powder in her hair and all over her clothing, her face sprinkled with it, dark lips looking almost black in comparison. From Bog's vantage point he couldn't see her eyes, only the dark smudges of her eyeshadow, and to him she looked like a ghoulish apparition advancing on Roland trim personage.

“Aw, honeybunch, I'm going to have to replace that whole wall! Did you have to attack it on a molecular level? If you'd just switched off the program it would have reverted to cubes and we'd all be happier.”

“I felt spiteful.”

The room rippled and this time Bog was almost certain it wasn't just his eyes playing tricks on him. Everything moved too fast for him to keep track of the action, all he could see was the Doctor's small shape running, dodging walls that were trying to snatch her, jumping over a few of them. But she could only run so far within the confines of the room and she was slammed to the ground with the floor grabbed her by the ankle.

Roland was sauntering his way over to her, speaking in a chiding tone.

Then Dawn appeared.

Bog wondered if that should be startling. He was too busying being parched to be sure of anything.

The floor rose up to grab Dawn too, but Bog blinked and missed her capture.

Actually, he must have missed more than that, because the floor smoothed itself down again, white and empty. Only Roland remained, walking over to the spot where the Doctor should have been laying.

“No, this is fine, this is fine” Roland sounded a little shaken as he straightened his shirt and ran a hand through his hair, “Now that the ladies are gone we can have a nice talk while my TARDIS traces my sweetie. You know, just a couple of guys being guys. Talk about sports and protein and other manly things.”

Roland produced one of his innumerable syringes and stabbed Bog's arm with vicious force in order to get the needle to get though to a vein. It felt like being stabbed with a dull pencil, but it woke Bog up a little and he sight cleared in time to see the clear, dark amber of the blood sample.

Like tree sap.

The couldn't be healthy.

“Finally! You're cooked to perfection!”

“I had it handled!”

“You were about to get squashed!”

“You should have gotten Bog out of there first!”

“I was kind of in a rush!”

Sunny had answered the phone as requested but Roland's TARDIS had failed to appear. Dawn had appeared with her arms wrapped around her sister. The Doctor looked like a furious cat that had been picked up and cuddled against its wishes. She shoved Dawn off and immediately began shouting complaints about the rescue.

“I had a plan!” The Doctor raged.

“If your plan was to get squashed like a ripe grape then it was going brilliantly.”

“I would have been fine! Now you've left Bog alone up there with Roland!”

“Then let's go back and get him!” Dawn began to tap on the vortex manipulator's keypad. After a moment she frowned and her fingers slowed, uncertain, “Um. Roland might have, well--”

“Moved?” the Doctor suggested pointedly, “Gosh! Do you think?”

“Not a problem! I'll just track the signal down again--”

“What signal?”

“The signal from your . . .” Dawn faltered, looking at what her sister was holding up, “. . . your sonic screwdriver . . .”

“This one? The one I am holding? That sonic screwdriver? Not another one that I don't know about? And why do you have the vortex manipulator? I'm checking the travel history on that later, you know, and I'd better not find any unauthorized jaunts!”

“Get a grip! I made a call and I stand by it! Now there are two of us, at liberty and not being chased by Roland's interior decorating. We stand a much better chance of finding Roland and saving Bog than if I left you up there!”

“You should have saved Bog! Because he's up there being tortured because I popped into his life! He doesn’t deserve this!”

“But I saved you, so let's just move on!”

“You shouldn't have!”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not important!”

The sisters had been pacing around the empty lot light boxers squaring off in the ring. Dawn stopped dead, looking like she had been slapped.

“Why would you even say that--” Dawn began, anger making her voice tremble.

“It's the truth,” the Doctor said, bringing her hand down sharply as if to press her claim more firmly into reality, “I've done things that can't be fixed, can't be made up for. You're upset because I lied to you? Wait until I start telling the truth because you're going to just love me then! I have destroyed so many things, so many people—I have brought down kingoms, burned down entire planets! Maybe I did it for the right reasons, maybe I did it to save someone, but that doesn't make any of it right. So when you have to make a choice between pulling me or an innocent man from the fire just remember that I am not the sister you remember, that there is blood on my hands . . . and let me burn.”

“You . . .” Dawn sniffed hard, her eyes sparkling with tears, “You are an idiot.”

The Doctor rocked back under the impact of Dawn slamming into her for a hug.

“Listen,” Dawn held her sister tight, ignoring her faint protest at being hugged, “I don't know what you've done, but you're my sister. You kept me safe for so long. I look into your eyes and see so much pain that I ache with it too. You're my sister and you are important.”

She shoved her sister away.

“So just shut up and start thinking about how to save Bog.”

Dawn turned on her heel, grabbed Sunny by the hand, and headed back to the TARDIS without waiting for an answer from her sister.

“You had to go and start all of this,” Roland sighed the sigh of a man who has long suffered under unfair circumstances, “Coming between me and my buttercup.”

“Start what? I don't even know you people!”

“Oh, to be so chronologically impaired!” Roland shook his head sadly, allowing his hair to bounce softly across his forehead, “It's amazing what a human—or a human mindset—can ignore. The effort I've put into averting all of this . . . and even so your time lines have been bouncing off each other, resisting my alterations.”

The process to accelerate Bog's transformation from human to Cheem was over, but the relief of it was short lived. It hurt even to breathe, his ribs stabbing and his lungs burning with each breath he drew. He was nearly wild with thirst and his concentration was shot. He just wanted to slide free of the wall and collapse on the floor, which looked cool and inviting. He did not want to continue to hang there, forced to look at the portraits of Roland decorating the room.

The only thing he wanted to look at less right now was a mirror.

“Time lines?”

“Oh, come now! You must remember meeting her at least once before!”

The memory of the night he had been drunk and fell into a bush floated through Bog's head. He remembered pink high tops and impatient purple fingernails tapping on a watch. And, of course, the guitar he had found next to him when he woke up and ended up keeping when no one else laid claim to it.

But that was years ago.

Of course, that didn't really matter if a time machine was involved.

“Perhaps the face is throwing you off,” Roland waved a hand in an elegant circle and the portraits slid along the walls, disappearing and being replaced with new ones, “It is so hard to keep track of the faces, isn't it?”

The new pictures were the ones Bog had seen in the store's display window. There was the one of the Doctor, directly across from Bog, and portraits of various other women one either side.

Bog was honestly surprised that Roland had been able to tear himself away from a mirror long enough to paint anyone else.

“Anybody seem familiar?”

Bog stared blankly at Roland.

“Hm. Don't you get it yet? These are all her. Every face she's worn. Honestly, you two are destined to meet and yet you know nothing about her! Meanwhile, I am attentive to every detail and yet--!”

Roland snatched the portrait of the Doctor off the wall and smashed it onto the floor, breaking apart its wooden frame. For a moment Roland's facade slipped again, his hair tussled and his teeth bared. He looked up at Bog with a look of complete hatred.

“And yet she always chooses you!”

#strange magic #spread the lofe #butterfly bog #potionless #doctor who au #strange magic doctor who au #my writing fanfic

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