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flatstarcarcosa · 1 year

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dinner plans

ship: need a bastard? content warnings: language, ig

*****

Reese shoves the door shut with their heel and drops their bag on the table. A metallic clank catches their attention, and they look down to find a .45 laying on the floor.

They let out an annoyed growl in the back of their throat as they bend down and pick it up. They check it over, finding the safety off, the mag full, and a round in the chamber.

“God fucking damn it, Tony!” they snap, ejecting the mag. “Your shitty fucking memory doesn’t override basic fucking firearm safety, why the fuck is there a hot gun sitting by my goddamn door?!”

“Hey-!” Tony calls, appearing from the kitchen entryway. “I think what you should be focused on is that I didn’t accidentally shoot the fucking Instacart driver.” He pauses, adding, “hence the gun on the table.”

Reese sighs, dropping the mag on the coffee table and engaging the safety on the gun. “Why would you have shot the Instacart driver?”

“I ordered some groceries,” he says, shrugging, “forgot I did it by the time it got here. Hence the gun.”

“Jesus christ,” Reese mumbles, pinching the bridge of their nose. They notice the spoon in his hand, and frown. “Why were you ordering groceries?”

Tony blinks, fumbling for words for a moment, and then points the spoon at them. “Better question: why are you home from work when the sun’s still up? Pharmacy don’t close til midnight.”

“I quit,” says Reese. They collapse, face first, onto the sofa.

“Oh.”

Silence.

“Soooo,” drawls Tony, “how’d that go?”

[Corner Pharmacy, 2 Hours Earlier]

The phones are ringing. There is no one to answer them.

Correction, there are people. And theoretically, the phones could be answered, if only the people present weren’t all preoccupied with four other tasks at the same time, each with varying levels of priority.

The droning of the phones and the wailing of the drive thru alarm have all blended together with the moderate tinnitus into a blanket of white noise Reese has, somehow, learned to block out entirely.

A woman stands in front of the counter attempting to continue her phone call while also expecting to be served, and they can’t help but notice that between her cellphone, purse, and jewelry, she’s walking around with more monetary worth than they have in their savings account.

They blink the thought away, attempting to repeat their sentence, only for her to interrupt them to continue her call. She glances at them, glares, and waggles her insurance card.

“Ma’am,” they say, “we still haven’t heard back from the doctors office.”

“But I’m already-” says the woman, adjusting her phone, “no, not you I’m at the pharmacy. I’m already here. Just refill it from the last one.”

“We cannot fill another prescription for that medication until we hear back from the doctor,” recites Reese, a well-practiced script that feels more like selecting a dialog choice than having a real conversation.

“But I’m already here,” the woman repeats. For emphasis, she flings her insurance card across the counter. “You’ve filled it before, and it’s Saturday, my doctor isn’t even open. I need that now.”

“I understand that, but legally we cannot just give you more medication until the doctor has authorized it,” they say.

“I’ll call you back,” the woman snaps into the phone, before slamming it down onto the counter. “You can’t just refuse to give me my medication.”

“I’m not refusing,” says Reese, “it’s not a matter of refusing anything, it’s a matter of legally not being able to-”

“I’m already here!” the woman snaps, voice raising. “I called before and said I was coming for it! It was supposed to be ready, and I’ve gotten it filled here before, so I’m not leaving until I get it!”

They’re clenching their jaw so hard that it hurts to open their mouth to speak. “You spoke to me earlier, and I told you then that we were waiting to hear from the doctor, and that you’d be notified when we heard back and got the prescription ready.”

“And it is Saturday,” the woman yells, stressing each word as if the issue is that Reese doesn’t understand the days of the week. “What are you not getting about that? What am I supposed to do, just be without the medicine until Monday?”

“If that’s how long it takes the doctor to get back to us, then yes,” says Reese. “Now, if you don’t mind, you’re holding up other people behind you.”

The woman lets out an affronted gasp. “Don’t you speak back to me like that, now you’re being fucking rude!”

A pop of white flashes in their vision.

“I’m not the one raising my voice and swearing,” they say.

“But you are being rude! You’re refusing me my medication, and now you’re telling me to just leave!”

“I didn’t say leave, I simply pointed out that you’re-”

“I know there’s people behind me, you fucking cunt!”

Another pop of white, and Reese slams their hands down on the counter. “I guess it takes one to know one, you entitled fucking bitch.”

“Where is your manager?!”

Someone from behind them shouts their name as Reese turns away from the counter.

“Man, fuck this,” they say. “Fuck this, and fuck you for never helping,” they add, pointing at a coworker coming around from a filling station, before gesturing to a different one, “and fuck you for always blaming me for the shit you never let me do, never getting fucking done! I fucking quit! I hope y’all drown in the goddamn F1s!”

[Reese’s Apartment, Now.]

Tony lets out a long whistle. “So, all things considered, coulda been worse,” he says.

Reese lets out a snort, muffled by the couch cushion, and drags themself into a sitting position. “I did clock out when I left, though,” they say, “don’t want them fucking up my hours that I was present by claiming they don’t have any records.”

“Now that’s covering your ass.”

They run their hands down their face, dropping their arms by their side, and frowning. “What smells like it’s on fire?”

“Fuck,” Tony darts back into the kitchen. The sound of clattering pan lids echoes out, along with the pattering of little feet.

Rufus appears from the entryway, tail wagging as he decrees whatever happenings in the kitchen are no longer as important as Reese being home early. He paws at their lap, and they give him neck scratches and greetings before finally getting up to see what in the hell is happening in the other room.

“Before you say shit,” says Tony, turning towards them from the stove, once again pointing the spoon at them, “you weren’t supposed’ta be back yet. I was gonna just leave this shit in the fridge and then the rest of it in the sink.”

“You...were going to make a mess while I wasn’t here, gorge yourself on whatever this is, and then also leave me the mess?” asks Reese, exhaustedly attempting to follow his logic.

“It’s fucking spaghetti,” he says, “an’...yeah, basically.”

Of course.

He can’t just make them dinner, and be normal about it. Making them dinner for when they get off work to be nice goes directly against his insistence that there’s no forward momentum to be had with him; it implies a level of existence to the relationship that he denies is possible to achieve.

Instead, he makes the food and covers it up as just having conveniently caused leftovers, leaving a mess in the kitchen for an added layer of plausibility.

The major flaw in the plan obviously being why he’d be making himself dinner in their apartment seems to have escaped him entirely.

“What are you burning?” they ask.

“Uh, the noodles, apparently,” he says, turning to look at one of the pots.

“My Taskmaster in christ, how do you fucking burn boiling noodles?”

“Oh, excuse me for not wanting to give my brain a hard reset just to absorb some Gordon Ramsay to make fucking spaghetti!”

“It’s noodles,” Reese protests, “not a fucking filet mignon with a reverse sear and a finishing sauce, for fucks sake!“

Silence.

“That actually sounds way better, though,” mumbles Tony.

“Yeah,” sighs Reese, “it does.”

“Fuck it, you wanna go get steaks?”

Reese shrugs. “Yeah, fuck it, may as well.”

#reese.fic #ship: need a bastard?#this got one proofread/edit while i have a small migraine love and light #anyway it was bothering me tony hasn't gotten a lil something when norman has like three fics i've done

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flatstarcarcosa · 1 year

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whistleblowing, 2

@virus-selfship @jackals-ships (you liked the posts you get the tags /half-threat)

summary: reese gets a tip from a friend about some nefarious business dealings. slade has a bad feeling and goes with them. neither knew what to expect. ship: wilson & wilson at large au: outlast warnings: descriptions of game-canon gore. also not so much a content warning or a trigger warning but, HUGE doses of emotional whiplash because neither of us are capable of being fucking normal about things. part one

*********

The hallways of the asylum look like a tornado has blown through them. Reese makes sure to inspect every room, every drawer, every dark corner. They find some loose batteries, and numerous files laying around. The two of them are currently in a small corner office thumbing through various unorganized notes. Reese takes pictures of them with their DSLR and comments that neither they nor Slade have enough room on them to keep every scrap of paper they find. He hums his agreement as he opens the top drawer of the desk before letting out a low whistle.

“Well, hello,” he says.

Reese looks up from the papers in their hand. “What is it?”

Slade holds up an unopened packet of peanut butter crackers. “Someone likes snacks,” he says.

Reese frowns. “Is someone in this scenario you?”

“Maybe,” answers Slade around a mouthful of cracker.

“Jesus christ,” Reese mutters. They toss a piece of paper aside and flip to the next one. A crease forms in their eyebrows as they read. Slade cocks his head and looks over their shoulder.

“’Self lucid dream states’?” he asks. He pops the last cracker into his mouth and discards the wrapper. “What the hell are they talking about?”

“I...don’t know,” says Reese. They lay the file flat and take a couple pictures. “Something about this kids mom suing this place. That could lead to something.”

“Maybe,” Slade says softly. The word comes out more as a hum, and he tugs on Reese’s sleeve to indicate it’s time to move on. The farther the two of them go into the building, and he would guess it is not even that far, the more his own curiosity about the situation begins to drown out the gut feelings that they are treading dangerous, and unknown waters.

The first real sign indicating where the pervasive smell has come from is found in a break room. Slade surveys the vending machine and is surprised when it actually dispenses an ice cold Pepsi. He cracks the tab, and stops with the can halfway to his mouth as his eye lands on the counter next to the machine.

Placed almost neatly on a cutting board is a single piece of intestine.

“You don’t see that every day,” he says.

“Well, that’s disgusting,” says Reese. He turns and finds them gesturing to the soda in his hand. “I thought we had a rule about that?”

Slade blinks.

“There’s intestines on this counter and you’re disgusted by Pepsi?”

Reese blinks.

“There’s what on the counter?!”

Wordlessly, Slade reaches out to grip the top of their head and turn it towards the counter. Reese grimaces, but takes a photo anyway. “Is that… you think that’s human?”

Slade takes a swallow of Pepsi and regards the piece of viscera as the sugar seeps into his gums and makes his teeth tingle. “There’s really no way to tell just by looking,” he says finally. “But I know we sure as shit didn’t pass any farms on the way up here.”

“Well all righty then,” says Reese. They give the break room a curious last sweep before moving for the door. Slade swallows half of the can of Pepsi before leaving it on the table and following them.

Halfway up the hall, with the two of them discussing the things they’ve already found in hushed whispers, a door slams shut. They both stop. The bang that echoes makes Reese jump. Reflexively, they grab a hold of Slade’s sleeve.

He brushes a hand against their shoulder blades and moves forward, the other unholstering his magnum. He pauses outside the door. On the other side, someone is speaking to themselves. He can’t quite make out what they’re saying, and when he tries the knob to find the door locked, the voice stops.

“Let’s just keep moving,” he says softly. He motions for Reese to follow as he backs away from the door, leading them farther down the hallway until a barricaded door stops them both. He shoves his weight against it and when it doesn’t budge he can’t figure out if he’s annoyed or unsurprised. Behind the frosted glass that frames the wood he can see the foyer to the building, and he’d bet good money somewhere down there is more information about what happened here, along with their way out.

They don’t need to get all of the answers tonight, just enough to get people to listen. He’s not usually one to put much stock in local, or even state level PD, but he can already think of a few people to call to make sure Mount Massive gets investigated properly.

“I don’t think we’re getting through,” he says. He throws his weight against the door one more time, just to be sure. “There’s a vent in here,” says Reese. The muffled sound of their voice makes him realize they’ve slipped beyond the arm’s length agreement. Annoyed, he follows them into a room a few feet away.

“What did I tell you about-- the fuck,” Slade’s initial scolding melds into a surprised exclamation. Reese is standing in the middle of the room, looking up at an air vent. The flash on their camera goes off as they hit the shutter button, despite their eyes being nowhere near the viewfinder.

There’s blood dripping from the vent. It pools down onto a broken table top beneath it. Thinner parts of it have begun to dry and turn black, but the center remains wet and red.

“What are the odds this vent comes out onto the other side of that door?” Reese tears their eyes away from the mess as they ask the question. Their voice is tired and heavy with the conclusion that their guess is most likely correct.

If they and Slade want to get to the rest of the building, they’re gonna have to crawl through the wet, stinking vent.

“Me first,” says Slade.

“What about our mystery friend?” asks Reese. Slade pokes his head out into the hallway.

“I don’t hear anything,” he says. It is his first lie of the night. He can still faintly hear the unseen persons ramblings. He makes the executive decision that for now, what can’t be seen can’t be a threat, and shuts the door. “We know what’s behind us, mostly. I have no idea what’s in front.”

“All right, you first,” Reese agrees.

“And if what’s in front reduces me to hamburger meat, you’re going to be doing, what, exactly?” he asks.

“Barricading this door with this soggy wood, hoping it holds, and camping out til someone else shows up,” says Reese flatly. “We have no cell signal but I have a 1400 page ebook I can fire up at a moments notice, I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, well, then,” says Slade as he lifts himself into the vent, “I’m glad you’re learning to think ahead. Never too late to start.”

“Hilarious,” says Reese. They keep an eye on the door the whole time, and the seconds of silence begin to stretch out with more weight.

Soft thumping from above draws their attention from the door.

“It’s clear,” calls Slade.

More silence.

“I said clear,” he repeats.

“Yeah, I can’t fucking reach,” snaps Reese.

“For the love of…” more thumping, and when he speaks next his voice is closer. “Take a running jump.”

“A running- what, a fuckin’ six foot vertical leap over here? With my knees?”

“Reese,” is the only response.

Reese sighs, detecting the ‘serious, now’ in his tone, and backs away from the board. The room isn’t big enough for a real run, but they get a few steps in and jump when a foot hits the board. They slam into the vent, barely having time to register the impact before Slade’s hands close around their arms and haul them into the opening.

“This is why I keep harping about your cardio,” he says, shifting to take point.

They roll their eyes, following behind him, and stopping when an air intake peers down into a room below. Another break room, more blood, and the rambler from earlier.

Did he lock himself in there? They wonder, brows furrowing.

“Reese, let’s go,” calls Slade.

Looking up, they realize he’s exited the end of the vent, and they hurry to follow. He catches them when they jump out, setting them down on the carpet and gesturing with his chin.

“Vent led to the other side of the door,” he says.

“And our way out,” they add, approaching the glass encasing the foyer below. “Hop down a level, say hi to security, and call it a day.”

“Don’t brag until it’s done,” says Slade.

“Killjoy,” they mutter.

Their annoyance fades when the door leading to the lower level turns out to be barricaded.

“You were saying?” he asks, quirking a brow.

“C’mon, am I supposed to believe you’re incapable of busting down every shut door we come across?” they ask.

“Main entrance isn’t the only thing with a blast seal,” he says, indicating the metal bracers around the frame. “Question remains why, though.”

“I know it’s a mental hospital,” says Reese, “but it’s not like it’s Arkham. Public records show this place wasn’t even used much until it got bought out by Murkoff a while back.”

“Yeah, and your tip mentioned experimentation and abuses of the patients,” says Slade. “They repurpose an old public health facility, so they’re clearly not making money on the front end. Use the guise of healthcare to lure in the most vulnerable, get them trapped and unable to say no, test whatever your mad scientists are cooking up, make the money from it on the back end.”

“Oh,” says Reese, “so it is like Arkham.”

Slade snorts, gestures towards the end of the hall. “Looks like we can cut through the library, come out on the other side.”

“Something still feels off,” says Reese, falling in step next to him. “The security, that is. Makes sense when you consider there’s likely an inordinate amount of money moving around behind the scenes but…”

“But what?” Slade pauses, hand on the doorknob for the library.

“This feels less like keeping prying eyes out and more like… keeping something in.”

He says nothing in response. They're not wrong, but agreeing feels too much like admitting that there's something to fear. Instead he turns the knob, pushing the library door open.

Reese lets out a startled squeak, and a wet thump lands at his feet. He looks down at the body of a security guard, notes the angle of the neck being twisted, and uses one foot to push the body out of the way. No sense stopping for one corpse.

"I think we found the source of the smell," says Reese, face twisting as the odor inside the library wafts into the hall.

"One of ‘em," says Slade. He hooks a hand around their wrist and pulls them through the doorway.

They both stop a few feet in.

Scattered around the room, nestled between book displays are multiple human heads.

"Jesus," Reese mutters.

Slade says nothing, but keeps his magnum positioned in his free hand. At least they're no longer ignoring his arms length rule.

He rounds the end of the aisle, and stops again, this time suddenly enough that Reese bumps into his back. They hear a pained gasp from in front of him and even as they step to the side to see, they're very much thinking that they don't want to see.

"What in the Cannibal fucking Holocaust is this?" they ask, voice barely above a whisper.

A man in riot armor sits in the middle of the room, impaled on a spike with the tip of it protruding through his Kevlar vest just below the collarbone.

The man gasps again, reaching ineffectively for the spike.

"Y…you shouldn't be here," he gurgles. "The variants, they escaped, and…and…" coherence trails off into something between a sob and a moan as his fingertips brush against the spike. He attempts to grasp at it in a futile and mad bid to get any kind of relief, voice raising in volume as the reality of his situation gives way to fresh terror.

The report of Slade’s magnum firing makes Reese slap their hands over their ears. The man on the spike goes limp.

"We're leaving," says Slade, retaking their wrist and yanking them with renewed force to the library exit. "Now."

"Was that fucking necessary?" snaps Reese once the two of them are back into the hall.

"That man was already dead," Slade snaps back. "Prolonging his suffering-"

"I'm not talking about the mercy kill, I'm talking about the fucking noise," says Reese.

Slade pauses. "Oh."

"Whatever fucking did that to him knows someone else is here now," they say.

"Shit," says Slade. "All the more reason to go."

“You really didn’t think of that?” they ask, exasperated.

“I was thinking of doing a dying man a kindness,” he says, somewhat bitterly.

The hallway is blocked again, this time by a pile of bookcases and benches nearing the ceiling.

“It’s like a fucking maze in here,” says Reese.

“I think we can squeeze through this hole in the center,” says Slade, gesturing as he holsters his gun. “You first.”

Reese freezes. “Woah, what? Me first? What happened to you first?”

“Me first is when I don’t know what’s ahead,” says Slade, “you first is when I’m looking at what’s ahead and it’s clear. Get in the fucking hole.” “Fine, I’ll get in the goddamn hole, jesus,” they grumble. It’s almost a tight fit, even for them, and as they reach the halfway point they crane their neck to ask him how he thinks he’s fitting through the same space.

The words never get a chance to form.

There’s a massive brute of a man standing directly behind Slade, seemingly appearing from fucking nowhere, and everything happens all at once. On reflex, Reese scrambles to the other side of the blockage as fast as possible, falling to the floor in time to hear Slade yelp in surprise, followed by his weapon firing a single time. They stay low, crawling out of sight and backing against the wall.

They look up at the sound of glass shattering, and through the gaps in the bookcases can make out something going through the window into the atrium below.

Something else remains on the other side of the blockade, panting heavily, and watching the lower level.

And it’s not Slade.

They remain frozen to the spot, their heart hammering in their ears, and begin to wait.

#reese.fic #wilson & wilson au: outlasting

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flatstarcarcosa · 1 year

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love in a minor key

ship: masks&menace warnings: discussions of trauma, mild jokes about drug use, summary: what do you do when the ghosts you brought into the world are sticking around to haunt you? if you’re norman, you don’t do anything. at least, not until a nightmare rattles you so much you get woken up and come out swinging. note: briefly mentions some long standing headcanons i have about norman during dark reign that i did, at one point, try to pry out of him for here but it’s just so cemented in how i write him i stopped trying, thanks <3

**********

Bob’s eyes go wide as he raises his gaze back to Norman, all blue eyes and blonde hair and picture-perfect hero. “Y...you’re sure?” he asks. “It’s really okay?”

Norman laughs, claps him casually on the shoulder as if the man is not both God and God-Killer. “Yes, it’s really okay,” he says. “Really. It’s okay because I say it is, and from this day on, Bob, what I say goes.”

“Thank you,” says Bob.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, because when you peel back the gold and turn off the lights he is but a man with an addiction, and Norman is but a dealer in a ten thousand dollar suit.

He puts an arm around the other man’s shoulders, steers him down the hall in the direction he wants them to go and it is the first time he aims his shiny new weapon, but not the last. Would, that it were, of course.

God. God-Killer.

The scent of ash and metal and entrails burnt into his memory. The taste of it tainting his food and wine, forever.

“I didn’t know,” he will say later.

He didn’t know, he didn’t know, he didn’t know.

A lie, of course. He knew.

He knew it in his gut, in his marrow, but the burden of proof lies not with him and he knew it, too. Always deny, always have plausibility in the denial. The world is not about what is or isn’t; the world is about what you say it is or isn’t.

He knew that he was playing with things he couldn’t truly control, not forever, but it was his ego that insisted otherwise. The tale as old as time, isn’t it? Wax wings and hubris, a prelude to the inevitable descent into the dark. In his case the darkest and most forgotten hole they could find on The Raft, nothing around him but form and void and the unshakable reminder that he was as mortal as the rest of them, after all.

And the void, oh, the void. That’s where it all started, isn’t it? That’s where it began and, he realizes as he stares into the dark, that is where he will end.

The Void.

Immortal. God.

The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere and he stares straight ahead because like most monsters, it runs on a monsters logic, and as long as you don’t give them attention then it isn’t really there.

Right?

“It is, and it isn’t,” says the shadow. “Oh, Norman. Don’t look so surprised, you knew this was coming, didn’t you? You’re not stupid enough to think otherwise, not in earnest.”

He says nothing. He thinks back to what feels like yesterday, when he stood atop the world and bet he could piss off the side of it and convince everyone else it was rain. Untouchable, as he was, by the rest of the mortals he forgot that he too was still one of them.

Immortal.

Mortal.

“Don’t worry,” the room sighs. The darkness creeps in at the edge of his vision, a vise settling on his rib cage and giving a slow crank. “You said there is no Void, and so...there isn’t.”

The illusion of light winks out and the vise makes a rapid clicking noise, the slow squeeze turning into a sharp, bone-crushing pressure and as his blood pounds in his ears there is laughter among it.

It is his.

It is not.

And yet it is, because what else do you do? What else, when faced with nothing else? He knew, yes, he knew the Void would be where he ended because he knew the Void was not dead. The Void was not dead because you can’t kill-

You can-

-NOT KILL WHAT DOES NOT CHOOSE TO DIE, NORMAN-

His eyes snap open halfway through his name, and before Reese can get the second syllable formed he comes up fist first. They realize in the moment before impact that they, too, frequently reside in the same camp as others of forgetting just what the serum has done to him.

The reflexes. The strength. Well fuck- they think, knowing that even if they weren’t currently half tangled in a mess of bed sheets and pillows, they’d be too slow to avoid it.

Norman blinks and the world takes form, without void, and his senses reconnect to the rest of his brain. He finds himself not down in the dark and under the crushing weight of all he’s done, but in his bed in his softly lit bedroom.

The sense of taste follows sight, and with it the distinct flavor of blood coats his mouth. He purses his lips as he runs his tongue, gently, across his teeth and feels the edge on them that should not be. It explains the blood even as it makes his heart skip a beat.

How long was he down there in the dark? At the mercy of the monster? Long enough that the stress of it caused the serum in his blood to activate, picking up on elevated cortisol and adrenaline and beginning to alter his state of being in an attempt to save his life.

It’s not the serum’s fault that getting faster and stronger is not going to save him, not from this, anyway.

The sound of groaning filters in through his still too-distant mind, and he sucks in a breath. “Reese,” he hisses, scrambling over the side of the bed.

They’re sprawled on the floor, one leg propped up against the side of the mattress. They’re holding a hand over their face and blood trickles from between their fingers.

“Reese,” Norman says again. He untangles them from the sheet, letting their leg drop, and slips an arm around their shoulders to pull them into a sitting position. “Let me see.” He pulls their hand away from their face, watches fresh blood bloom from their nostrils, and grabs a fistful of sheet to press against it. They groan as he tilts their head back, his other hand braced against the nape of their neck.

Nightmares are not a new experience for him, but if they’re getting bad enough that he’s startling awake in such a manner, perhaps it should be addressed. Although what good a therapist and medication would do for this particular wrinkle in his mental health, he truly has no idea.

Yes hello, I have nightmares from the trauma of watching the God-Killer I manipulated quite literally rip my husband in half. Why did he do that? Well, because I told him too! Can I get some more Prozac or perhaps Hydroxyzine to help with it?

Reese mumbles something that pulls him out of his downward spiral, words muffled by the damage to their nose and the wad of material over their face.

“What?” he asks, pulling the sheet back.

“You good?” they ask.

Norman blinks. “I…” he stammers, “I should be asking you that.”

Reese levels their gaze at him as best they can with their head still tipped back, and gives a shrug of their shoulders.

“Can you stand?” he asks. They nod, and he has them take over holding the sheet to their face to help them to their feet.

The two of them cross into the bathroom and Norman hits the switch before picking Reese up to plop them on the counter top. Reese continues to hold the sheet to their face as Norman digs around the bathroom for the first aid kit. Producing it, he drops the sheet from their face and pops the lid open. He replaces the sheet with a couple of gauze pads, and gently prods around their nose with his fingers.

He has done far worse things with his hands throughout his life; been elbow deep in a living man’s chest cavity while scraping samples from his rib cage, to say nothing of havoc wreaked upon his own son, but it’s this broken nose that is giving birth to deeply rooted guilt.

“Let’s get the bleeding stopped and get dressed,” he says, “we’ll go into the ER.”

Reese grunts in annoyance, brows furrowing. “No,” they say.

“Don’t argue,” he says.

“Fuck sake, Norman,” they snap, words slurred around the injury. “you can set a broken fucking nose.”

He blinks.

“Well,” he stutters, “yes, but-”

“So do it.”

He wants to say no. Both out of guilt, and well, habit. He is still Norman Osborn, after all, and if he tells you you’re going to do something you do not get to say no. You do it.

You do it, or he’ll make you do it.

He has learned, or at least started to, that sometimes there is no forcing Reese to bend to his will. This isn’t the first time he’s relented just to make something easier, but it is the first time he’s done so without at least attempting to argue about it first.

Fifteen minutes later, their nose is set. Face cleaned up and bandaged, and Norman is dumping three hydrocodone into their hand. Reese doesn’t bother to ask where he got them, or what they were originally for.

They also don’t bother to mention that at 15mg they’d likely be perfectly fine with just one.

The pills leave a bitter, chalky aftertaste on their tongue that they haven’t tasted in a while, and they glance at the clock. It’s going to be interesting to see if their tolerance still exists.

Norman bundles the bloodied sheet into a ball and tosses it into the hamper before retrieving a fresh top sheet from the closet. Tilting their head, Reese notices from their perch in the armchair there’s still an abnormal pallor to his face.

“You good?” they ask again.

He looks over at them and appears to mean to force a smile and a dismissal. The expression vanishes, and he sits heavily on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t know,” he says, running a hand down his face. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and reaching to massage his temples. “I honestly just...don’t know.”

“I kicked Tony in the throat, once,” says Reese casually, moving to sit next to him.

He looks over at them, raising his head and an eyebrow. Reese shrugs.

“It was back when I thought being black out drunk would fix everything,” they say.

Norman is silent for a moment. “Reese,” he says, “you still think that, you just don’t do it anymore.”

“Not the point?” they respond, before continuing. “I don’t know what I was dreaming about, but I was laid out on the couch and when he woke me up I wasn’t entirely with it. Reflexively kicked my leg and caught him right in the trachea.”

“Eh,” says Norman, “he’s had far worse, I’m sure anything that doesn’t require a full body cast isn’t something he remembers.”

“The man barely remembers anything, to be fair,” says Reese.

“That’s true,” agrees Norman.

“And also,” says Reese, making a show of stretching and laying back on the bed. “You’re deflecting from the question.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I answered the question when I said ‘I don’t know’,” he shoots back.

“Yes, but also, no,” says Reese. “You know something, even if you don’t know that it’s relevant. You never don’t know entirely.”

“It’s just some bad dreams,” he says.

“Bad dreams are what you get when you take melatonin,” says Reese, “dreams that make you come out swinging are a little more than just dreams.”

He turns to look at them over his shoulder. “Melatonin does that to you, too?” he asks. “I always thought it was just me.”

“Deflecting,” sing-songs Reese, holding up a finger and wagging it at him.

“It’s Asgard,” he says finally, as if that’s all the explanation needed.

“Like…” Reese trails off. “Sorry, have they done something I missed?”

“My invasion of it,” he says. “Or, attempted invasion, I suppose. Failed invasion, more accurately.”

“Oh, right,” says Reese. “All I know about it is that it was a mess, apparently.”

“That’s a word for it,” he says, leaning back to lay next to them. “Treason is another.”

“Weren’t you trying to like, accuse them of treason, though?” they ask.

“Indeed I was,” he says. “I may not have been… fully in my right mind, at the time.”

“I mean are you ever?” they ask. He turns to glower at them. Reese shrugs. “In the sense that, are any of us? Really?”

“Now who’s trying to deflect?” he asks.

“So, you’re having nightmares about Asgard,” says Reese. “Why?”

Norman says nothing, staring up at the slowly rotating ceiling fan as the smell of burnt stone and ash creeps back into his senses. He can still hear Ares bellowing from across the battlefield.

“I told you what would happen! Armor and all!”

In the present he asks, “do you know what it takes to murder someone?”

Biting down another joke, or an obvious answer, Reese instead says nothing and waits for him to continue.

“Sometimes, all it takes is two words,” he continues.

“Bob. Go.”

Unsure of how to follow that, Reese remains silent on the chance he’s going to elaborate more.

He doesn’t.

They roll over, propping themself up with one arm. Norman’s still on his back, staring up at the fan with a distant look in his eyes. Wherever he is at the moment, it’s not here.

They open their mouth to speak, blinking as they do and in the same second the first traces of the painkillers slip into their head. A tingling around their temples as the pain input that never seems to leave their head and neck, made worse by getting socked in the face by a startled and over-powered goblin, begins to melt away and loosen the muscles as it goes.

They settle for flopping down closer to him, resting against his shoulder and laying an arm over him. He lets out a soft hum, mirroring their motion as he wraps an arm around their waist.

“You can tell me, you know,” they say, their own voice beginning to sound distant to their ears. “Or don’t, if you don’t wanna.”

“You know…” he says, “I know that logically you’re probably… the only person in a very long time that doesn’t judge me based on things that happened so long ago. But sometimes I think your choice to not form an opinion of me based on what others have written is going to eventually bite us both in the ass. Like one day I’m going to mention something that you’re not aware of, and it’s going to flip everything on end and I won’t be able to do anything to stop it.”

“Well,” says Reese. After a few moments, they haven’t followed it up with anything.

Norman finally looks at them. “Well…?” he prompts.

“I was getting to it,” they say, “eventually. I think.”

He quirks an eyebrow, and reaches over to cup their chin with his other hand, lifting their head a little. “Are you high?”

“Not as much as I’d like, but I’m sure it’s getting there,” they say matter-of-factly.

“I only gave you three painkillers,” he says, voice colored with mild amusement. “At five milligrams you shouldn’t be remotely high. Losing your edge now that you spend most of your time responsibly?”

“They were fif-teeens,” Reese drawls.

“...no they weren’t,” Norman says.

“Fives are round, fifteens are oval,” says Reese. “You gave me the oval ones.”

“Oh, god damn it,” says Norman, “I have got to start reading the fucking labels on the bottles.”

“No, no, don’t start on my account,” they say. “As long as I fall back asleep before the itching starts, we’re Gucci.”

“I catch you trying to get into the lab morphine again because of this, we’re going to have a serious talk,” says Norman.

“I think we should be having some serious talks regardless,” they say, managing to be and sound serious in spite of the high steadily peaking.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “probably.”

By the time he finishes mulling things over and feels like his thoughts are in an order that could be understood, he discovers Reese is sound asleep against him.

“Of course, maybe not tonight,” he says. He extricates himself from them and turns the lights out, retreating back to the bed with the TV remote and settling against the pillows. He flips through several channels before finding something that at least holds a small amount of his interest, and before the first commercial break Reese manages to retake their previous position against him without waking. The talks will come later, he’s sure. For now, there’s only one thing in the dark he’s concerned about, and at least this time, it isn’t a God-Killer.

**********

The talks don’t come the next day.

Or the day after.

It is only on the third day, when Reese corners him in the living room by pointing out they’re aware of the fact he simply hasn’t slept since punching them that he concedes defeat about it. He sinks into an easy chair with a glass of scotch, and bides precious more time out of regarding the fire burning in the fireplace for several minutes. Reese fills the time by pulling a frosted glass out of the mini fridge under the bar and dropping a couple ice cubes into it before drowning them in Jameson.

They plant themself in the chair next to him, crossing their legs under them and eyeing him over the rim of their glass.

“It doesn’t have to be everything,” they say.

“I know,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. “But, I just… I keep thinking that you don’t get to be… traumatized over a situation you created. Like it’s some previously undiscovered level of selfishness that only I would be the one to trip into.”

“Norman Osborn being self centered and mildly narcissistic isn’t a new situation,” says Reese mildly. There isn’t, contrary to their choice of words, a drop of condemnation in their tone. They raise their glass to their lips again, adding, “try again.”

If it were any other time, and they were anyone else, they’d have just dove headlong into dangerous waters. As it is, they receive an annoyed glare and a clicking of his tongue.

“You’re making me feel better already,” he says, unable to keep all of the spite out of his voice.

“I didn’t say I wanted to make you feel better,” they say, “I said I wanted you to talk to me about it. As it is, I can’t try to make you feel better if I don’t know what the fuck it is making you have nightmares that make you wake up swinging.”

Goddamn.

Even after the length of this relationship, he still hates it when they’re right and get him pinned over a barrel about it.

“I was responsible for lots of death in Asgard,” he says, swirling his scotch and watching the reflection of the flames dance across the liquid. “I was responsible for lots of death before Asgard. Lots of it after, too. In the moment, I didn’t concern myself with it. I suppose I never have.

“The ends justify the means, or so I always convinced myself. I always had some end or another that I deemed important enough for it all to even out after. It rarely did, but I got very good at picking the few scraps of gold out of the muck and insisting it was worth it.”

He drains the scotch, and leans froward to drop the empty glass on the table. “I played with things I didn’t fully understand,” he says, adding, “no, that’s not right. I didn’t want to understand. Refused to, even. They say that the Void is gone, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. I think all I did was prime a golden noose for myself, and one day, it’s going to pull taut.”

Reese is frowning when he looks back up at them. “There’s too many gaps for me to work out what all of that means together,” they say, a note of frustration in their voice.

Norman sighs as he stands, picking up his empty glass and holding out a hand for theirs. They pass it to him and he crosses to the bar.

“I suppose I should pick a starting point and just go from there,” he says, dropping ice into both glasses. “The reasons I invaded Asgard are… numerous…”

And so, he tells them. All of the blanks Reese was adamant about not wanting filled by anyone with an agenda, the things they refused to read about or listen to anyone else speak of are finally explained by the only source, ironically, they trust to hear it from.

It comes from Norman himself.

They know him well enough to be able to see through his bluster and grandstanding. They don’t know other people well enough to be able to gauge what kind of slant they may be giving to the same events. Heroes and villains often have wildly contradictory versions of the same events.

They don’t know if it’s because he once convinced himself he was now the former and had never been the latter, or if because he finally accepted he was always the latter and could never be the former that his retelling feels as close to the truth as they’re like to get.

Or maybe he’s just too tired from not sleeping to add any spin to it.

It might be the truth, but what they’re unaware of is that it is not entirely the whole truth. Even now, when the whole point is to lay everything on the table, he’s still keeping a couple of things close to the vest.

He tells them what Asgard was really like, what it was like to have Bob finally lose it. He tells them about how, even in his madness at the time, there was a part of him relieved deep down when Loki turned on him.

“No one would have been able to stop him otherwise,” he says.

“Y’know,” says Reese, “I can’t say I ever had a real fear of the dark, but I’m understanding your thing with leaving the lights on sometimes, now.”

Norman gives them a bitter smile. “It… wasn’t his fault,” he says. “Not really. Bob never wanted any of that. It didn’t matter if was me or Stark holding the end of his leash, all the man wanted was to feel safe. I saw that as a weakness and exploited it as much as I could.”

“It does kind of sound like he was a ticking time bomb either way,” they say, unsure of what else to say.

“Unfortunate for all of us I’m as good at making bombs go off as I am then,” says Norman. “Now you see why I said I feel like you don’t get to be traumatized by a situation you started yourself.”

“The brain doesn’t know that, though,” they say. “But I know that you do. I think you’re just trying to find another way to, I don’t know, punish yourself. If you’re punishing yourself, then it means you don’t have to start working through any of it. It’s easier to just point at the mirror and say ‘nah, this is just what happens, get over it’, but you won’t get over it unless you let yourself feel it.”

“Now you’re sounding like a therapist,” he says.

“Yeah, lots of my own brain shrinking over the years,” they say. “Not that it fixed anything, but sometimes I think that’s the point. Not everything can be fixed. You just learn to live with it.”

Norman hums, leaning back in the chair and looking back at the fire. “Well, I suppose I’ve got a lot to learn, in that case.”

#reese.fic #self shipping #self shipping community #self ship #selfshipping fic #ship: masks & menace #and small alludes to #ship: wargoblin #anyway this has been a wip for over a year babes but we're onto something now we're chugging the character development juice #except the juice is kind of expired bc norman just left it in the back of the fridge for a while insisting he didn't see it #but now he has no choice but to drink it and see what happens (mild food poisoning)

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flatstarcarcosa · 1 year

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The thing about Sam is that he’s honest to an infuriating degree. Reese and I used to plan ‘surprise’ parties for each others birthdays with him just for the amusement of watching him try to lie his way out of direct questions about it.

Sorry if this is how he finds out about that, by the way.

It also means he’s direct. There’s never any question about what Sam means, or why he means it. There’s no ambiguity. I don’t remember enough about the world before the Rising to know if that ever bit him in the ass, but in today’s world, it’s an asset.

When he told us about becoming our legal guardian, that was exactly what happened: he told us what the situation was, what our options were, and the idea he’d had. Then he left it up to us to choose. No hard feelings, no strings attached.

The state-mandated therapy wasn’t something any of us chose, and also wasn’t something we could get out of. The first therapist we had didn’t like how dependent Reese and I were, and wanted Sam to put a stop to it. She even made some not-so-vague threats about dragging him to court over it, and making our new life as fucked as possible.

The problem was that she was one of those people that thought the zombies would pass. Even five years since the Rising began, she still insisted that all ‘this stuff’-- she never called it what it was, like doing so is what would make it real, not the corpses in the streets-- would go away and the important thing was making sure we’d be able to blend right back into polite society.

She even started suggesting I should move out, since legally I was well old enough, though that also meant she couldn’t make him make me.

We used to get ice cream after those appointments. I don’t know what kind of weird ass logic he had in his brain that you get the kids ice cream after two hours of them bullshitting their trauma, but that’s what ended up happening.

It’s funny enough now that I almost feel bad about the time I cussed him out about it being stupid. Almost.

He brought it up after a few minutes, being honest and to the point about what games the therapist was playing. I think Reese heard ‘separate’ and proceeded to shut everything else out; they were still defaulting to shutting up, and down, at the slightest chance of something being emotionally taxing.

I asked him what he was going to do about it.

Not, ‘what are we going to do’, but what he was going to do. I knew how the cards were stacked, and that despite being over 18 there were still some things I may not ultimately get a say in. He couldn’t make me leave, but I couldn’t make him let me stay.

Wouldn’t shut me up about it, of course, but at least I knew when fighting was pointless.

He looked at me, and was quiet for a moment.

Then he casually took a spoonful of his coffee ice cream, making a show of digging it out of the cup and said, “I think we should lie about it.”

He banked on the therapist caring more about the illusion of power she had, that if she forced enough people that didn’t have the option of fighting against her to do what she wanted, that it would eventually pay off and she would be proven right when ‘this stuff’ finally ended.

In short, tell her what she wanted to hear and she’d be happy enough with it she wouldn’t figure out we were playing her as much as she was playing us.

At the time, it took me by surprise.

Looking back, it shouldn’t have.

More importantly, it was the first time I remember thinking that maybe he actually did give a shit about us, and this whole situation wasn’t just some way he was trying to assuage whatever guilt he had about his time in the service.

The moral of the story kids, is this: just because someone presents themselves as being more powerful than you doesn’t mean they’re automatically correct. And if the most straight-laced, no-bullshit person you know is suggesting you do the opposite of what the people in power are saying to do, you should listen to them.

Also, coffee ice cream is still shit-tier.

#reese.fic #reelix au: the good the bad & the dead #little blog entry for isaac that popped into my head #didn't do the 'from the blog of' thing bc i suddenly realized it would pop up if you search him and i'm like #[tiktok noise] oh no oh no #anyway obsessed w this unnamed npc therapist we had that was like hmmmm i know these kids are traumatized and have ptsd #and have only been back in civilization for like a year but have you considered forcing them to be normal?#and sam being like 'noted. see you in hell.'#also lmao 'looking back it shouldn't have'. isaac @ the guy he helped shank his own CO: oh right i forgot he bites back-

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flatstarcarcosa · 1 year

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The Good, the Bad, and the Dead

The chronological assortment of stories for the Reelix AU, beginning here, in the winter of 2017. It is the tail end of the Rising and the beginning of what comes after, even if no one knows it yet.

In this installment, Samuel Ortez is boots to the ground in the mountains for search and rescue. Weapons are hot, command is cold, and the dead are most definitely lurking.

parts: one, two, three

warnings, for this specific piece: nothing, actually? universe appropriate assholery, i suppose.

Given the circumstances we all find ourselves in these days, it is my personal,

and professional opinion that Lieutenant Ortez reacted in the only way that he could, and should have. I would like to remind the overseers of this investigation

that the Lieutenant had been given orders for search and rescue. He completed that objective, at great personal risk to himself. The loss of his team is unfortunate, but unsurprising.

Rescue teams all over this country are taking losses, and the loss of his team is but a drop in the bucket. What should be focused on are the two teenagers he found and safely returned to civilization. My final judgment is that the Lieutenant is of

sound mind and body.

He reacted in defense of not only himself, but the subjects he was charged with protecting.

As such, he should be returned to active duty as soon as possible.

---From the psychological evaluation of

Lieutenant Samuel Ortez,

signed by Doctor Emily Grey, summer 2018

********

Samuel Ortez is a traumatized mess of a man that is

speeding down the highway to a full mental breakdown at breakneck speed.

I both do, and do not, want to be there to see it happen.

I hate psychology.

---From the private journal of Doctor Emily Grey, summer 2018, unpublished.

Somewhere Else in Appalachia

Spring, 2018

Captain Curtis Eakes is tired. His fire team has been deployed to five cities in five days, and they have come up empty handed each time. Their objective is search and rescue first, and clearing out as many infected as they can second. He has seen more corpses in the last week than he had in his entire career before the Rising, and he is sure he will see more before the mission is over. The Humvee rattles beneath him as it bounces over the choppy mountain roads and cuts a dark path through the freshly fallen snow.

Snow. This far south, in April. It's as if the universe is playing some sort of sick fucking joke that has yet to develop a punchline. Curtis allows himself a disgruntled growl in the back of his throat before turning to address his team.

“All right listen up,” he barks, “we're gonna do this quick and we're gonna do it as quiet as we can. I'm not expecting to actually find any of these hillbillies around here alive, and I'm not in the mood to get mobbed by the dead ones. Keep yours eyes alert, stay in contact. Supposedly there's a National Guard team inbound tomorrow, we're going to sweep this place from end to end and then meet them in the morning to get the fuck out. Understood?” He gets a resounding whoop from his team as the Humvee begins to roll to a stop.

“Lock and load boys, and don't let these rotting bastards make you their lunch!” The team begins to unload after Curtis kicks open the back door and hops down first. Snow crunches beneath his boots as he takes a mental count of his team.

There are eight of them today. Yesterday, there had been ten until Vasquez got jumped and bitten, and was ineffectual enough to get hot, live blood all over Travis.

Two soldiers down in under two minutes, all because one of them blinked too many times while entering a dark building. Curtis would say he hates this goddamn war, if not for the fact it isn’t a war.

Easy enough, and the government sure was quick enough to frame it that way when it started. Calling it The Rising only happened after the fact. During those first 12 weeks, it was simply a war. A war on home soil, a war where the enemy might be your own grandmother, but nonetheless a war. America knows what to do with a war.

It does not, as it happens, know as much about adjusting sharply to a world that changes so completely and so quickly. Four years out and it still feels like every day involves picking up whatever pieces you dropped yesterday.

The Captain sighs, allowing himself a few sparse seconds to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose before releasing the safety on his weapon and turning to face his team.

“Gonna split us into two groups,” he says. “Cover more ground, get this done early. I’m leaving Jenkins with the truck, he’s gonna send out a broadcast on the emergency channels, it’s on anyone left alive to be able to meet up with us on our sweep. No more dimly lit buildings, got it?”

“That would include most of the buildings, sir,” says Lieutenant Ortez. Curtis raises an eyebrow, and someone behind him mutters ‘here we go’.

“Indeed it does, Lieutenant,” says the Captain. “And I am ordering you all to avoid as many of them as possible in light of yesterday. We do not have enough people that we can afford to lose more. And personally I’m fucking tired of having to execute my own men.”

“Sir, any survivors are likely in those buildings,” says the Lieutenant. “Bypassing them may very well mean missing people.”

“Which is why Private Jenkins is going to stay with the truck to broadcast on the radio,” says Curtis. He speaks loudly and slowly, as if the issue is that Ortez just isn’t getting it, rather than him bringing up a valid point.

“And if there’s people who do not have radios?” he asks. “Or maybe they-”

“If they’ve survived this long and they don’t have a fucking radio that can tune into emergency channels then they’re stupid, and I don’t have time for it,” the Captain snaps. “And if, for some reason, they’re unable to make it to us, then they’re weak. And I don’t have time for it.”

“Our mission is search and rescue,” says the Lieutenant softly, “not either or. All due respect, sir, but you don’t get to decide who lives or dies based on an arbitrary timetable.”

“I do, actually, based on the fact that I’m in charge of this fucking operation!” Curtis snaps. “That and the fact that again, as I have already said, odds are none of these hillbillies survived anyway. In and out. Go home. End brief.”

“I wouldn’t count these people out so quick,” Lieutenant Ortez insists. Captain Eakes says nothing and snaps his fingers as he turns to another soldier.

“Sergeant Moore,” he barks, “you’re in charge of Team Two. Move out, and I guess keep an eye out for any surviving hillbillies.”

“So, keep an ear out for any fuckin’ banjos?” asks Moore with a barely contained snicker. The teams split into two, with Ortez following into step behind Moore. He pulls his scarf up over the lower half of his face in more of a motion to hide the frown on his face than to protect it from the icy wind. The sound of footfalls are muffled against the snow under foot and after a few minutes one of their radios crackles to life with the prerecorded emergency message being broadcast in the area.

“This is Captain Curtis Eakes, United States Marine Corps. I am here with one of the many teams deployed in search and rescue operations in this area. If you are alive, and uninfected, please contact us on the following channels and we will do our best to link up with you. I repeat, if you are alive and uninfected-”

Samuel notices with disdain the message has been changed from yesterday. It used to include a reassurance that the team was going to be in the area as long as it took. A ‘no stone unturned’ type of thing. He doesn’t begrudge the Captain for being exhausted, but he does begrudge the man for indulging in the desire to cut corners.

Despite this, he remains silent. His job has never been to question orders, or even give an opinion on them. His job is simply to follow them, and his ability to reliably do just that has been no small part in the trajectory of his career thus far.

“Good soldiers are hard to find,” he’d been told at his last promotion, along with a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Even harder to keep, and make no mistake about it, Lieutenant, you are an especially good soldier.”

He takes in a long, slow breath and lets the wind sear through his senses as he reminds himself of that.

He is a good soldier, and good soldiers follow orders.

Even the bad ones.

#reese.fic #self shipping #selfshipping fic #self shipping fic #reelix au: the good the bad & the dead #tempted to make a burner ao3 account to make these easier to link/read once i get farther along #burner bc i don't want my obvious selfship stuff w the rest of it lmao

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

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bernard trigger

ship: your sins come for you again, with soft the butcher and the blade as this piece takes place during the curve from the second to the first. TWs: soft mention of suicide in relation to pain levels, actual medical drug use for once. summary: butcher’s latest plan of attack goes south. the group gets separated. blinded and useless, reese is forced to let ben take the lead. part one, because this got longer than i thought it would.

i’m still going to throw rocks at this man, though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s their own fault.

Not paying attention, getting too cocky. Taking time to send Butcher a verbal barb rather than watching their flank.

The person on the other side has done their homework. That, or they’re taking a good guess and getting lucky.

The flashbang pops, and immediately the world goes white. And white.

And white.

Then Reese is shot in the head.

Shotgun rounds wont kill them, but it serves to knock them ass over end and leave them disoriented as well as blind. Their ears are ringing and the world is nothing but searing light. The garbled sound of steel hitting flesh pokes through the ringing, and they feel someone grab their bicep and drag them to their feet.

Their boot catches on a body. Before they hit the ground, their (alleged) savior takes them by the waist and hefts them over his shoulder.

“Oh, injure my fucking pride along with everything else,” they snap. Their voice is muffled still by the ringing in their ears.

Somewhere to the far left, they hear Butcher’s voice. They can’t make out the words, but if he’s not the one holding them...

They feel around with their hands, fingers brushing against the hilt of a knife, and groan. “Oh fuck me, is that you?”

“You know, learning some gratitude wouldn’t kill you,” says Ben. “One flashbang and you’re completely useless, I should leave you here for the sake of the rest of us. Survival of the fittest.”

“How bout you fit my foot in your ass?” Reese snaps.

Abruptly, he sets them down; one hand guiding their shoulders back to lean them against a tree. They blink a few times, narrowing their eyes, and are able to make out a rough, green-tinted silhouette against the blinding white of the world.

His hand brushes against their cheek, along their jaw, fingers moving to comb through their hair. They reach up and attempt to swat it away.

“The fuck is your problem, man?” they ask.

“I was making sure you’re not bleeding out,” he says gruffly, “you’re welcome.”

“Don’t care, didn’t fucking ask,” they say, adding, “I’m invulnerable on that front. Gonna be fucking useless with the migraine, though.”

“I’m not one for running away, but I think Butcher’s tactical assessment of ‘absolutely fucked to the gills’ is correct, and a retreat to regroup is the best plan,” says Ben. He shifts, leaves crunching under his boots, and loops his arm around theirs, pulling them to their feet.

“Someone fucked us,” says Reese.

“No shit,” agrees Ben.

Reese isn’t happy about having to be led around, and less happy about him being the one to lead them, but at least he hasn’t resumed carrying them. By the time the pair loop back to where Reese’s bike is parked, their vision has softened. Less white, more hazy shapes to denote their surroundings.

“Can you see?” asks Ben.

The green of his uniform is just barely able to register, the details of it are still lost.

“Oh, god damn it,” they say, realizing that while they’re not totally blind, they’re in no condition to drive.

Ben laughs, and they feel him reach down to unclip their keychain from their belt.

“Guess you’re not the only one driving this bike after all,” he says. The engine roars to life a moment later. When they haven’t moved, he sighs with annoyance and leans over to grab a fistful of their shirt and pull them towards the bike. “Complain later.”

“I think I will, thanks,” says Reese. They lean across the bike, making no motion to sit down, and begin fumbling with one of the saddle bags. The sun bearing down on them in the aftermath of the flashbang is doing more harm than good, so they finally relent and shut their eyes.

Ben quirks an eyebrow, turning on the bike to watch them attempt to unclasp the lock on the saddlebag with their eyes closed. He drums his fingers against the throttle, counting down the seconds that they fail to get the bag open.

"What do you need?" he finally asks, mildly annoyed. “I’d rather not sit here and wait for someone to come fuck us some more.”

"There's a glass case in there," they answer.

He unclasps the lock and flips the saddlebag open. The glasses case is nestled inside, along with a magnum and a half-empty pack of black & mild cigars. He pulls the case out and flips it open.

"These look different," he says, commenting almost absent-mindedly as he pulls the arms open and slips them over Reese’s ears.

They feel the glasses settle on their nose, the familiar weight a small comfort against the throbbing in their brain.

Their usual shades are aviators, mirror reflected and fitting the definition of fashionable as well as functional. This pair are clunky, square, and the lenses themselves look more like a tinted window than anything else.

"They're custom made," says Reese. They reach up and press a finger to the small indent next to the lenses, blinking slowly. "They block out all UV light and peripheral vision, and there’s a camera that gives me a live feed."

They look up at him. The images from the camera feed are blurry, but less so than their naked vision would be.

It’s still not good enough to drive.

"Something about cutting out visual noise and excess stimuli," they say. “It gives my eyes only the information they need and nothing else.

Ben says nothing, and unfortunately for Reese, their vision is still too poor to make out the confusion and disbelief that flashes across his face at the concept. He’s not unfamiliar with cameras, of course, but how they could fit into a pair of glasses and be useful enough for what they’re describing seems improbable.

“Okay,” he drawls, dubiously.

Reese settles behind him on the bike, and bites back the urge to shit talk him when he fish-tails the end of it as he pulls out onto the road.

They spend the ride back to the motel with their forehead pressed against his back, eyes closed, and every nerve ending in their face on fire. There’s pressure building behind their eyeballs, throbbing more with every pump of their heart. Eventually, the casual hold they have on him to remain steady on the bike turns into them reflexively clenching their fists in pain.

If he notices the grip on his waist, he says nothing about it.

After all, why would he?

He, too, is well acquainted with the fact that invulnerable doesn’t mean painless.

Ben makes a loop around the block the hotel is located on before pulling in to park. There’s no sign of the rest of the boys, but also no signs of anyone that shouldn’t be there. He pulls in and kills the engine, kicking the stand down and letting the bike lean.

He pauses when he realizes Reese is suspiciously silent.

“If you died on me, I’m gonna be very unhappy,” he says, looking over his shoulder. They don't move, so he nudges them, snapping, "hey."

The nudging wakes them and they sit straight on the bike. Behind the glasses, they open their eyes.

It is a mistake.

The sun is still bearing down on the world, and the brightness from the camera feed alone is enough to sting.

“God damn it,” they mumble. They dismount the bike making slow, deliberate motions as they do. Nausea swirls in their gut, bile slinking up the back of their throat and coating their teeth with an aftertaste that’s already making itself comfortable.

The two of them cross the parking lot, and Reese stumbles on the steps leading up to the hotel room door. Ben’s arm shoots out and catches them before they fall, and they grunt in annoyance.

"These things don't do shit for depth perception," they say.

He keeps a hand locked around their wrist until they've successfully navigated the stairs.

Reese reaches into their back pocket and produces the room key, passing it wordlessly to him. He quirks an eyebrow as he takes it and inserts the card into the lock, wondering why they can’t unlock the door themself.

"Oh, right," he says, more to himself, "depth perception."

The door lock makes a discordant buzzing noise, and Ben frowns when the handle doesn't move.

"Other way," says Reese.

He frowns, yanking the card out and flipping it over. This time, the door beeps pleasantly and unlocks.

Cold, stale air wafts them from inside, and once the two of them are past the threshold Reese hears Ben engage the electronic door locks as well as the deadbolt.

Not that any of that is going to be worth anything if they end up with an army of supes outside the door.

“I need fucking drugs,” says Reese. They pause to kick their shoes off, and then flop face down onto the bed. The glasses press awkwardly, and painfully, into their cheek. They roll to their back, blinking up at the filtered view of the ceiling.

Ben’s shield makes a sharp, metallic clang as he sets it down.

Their phone vibrates in their jacket pocket, and Reese sits up to pull it out. They squint at it for a few moments, as if narrowing their eyes will clear their vision enough to be able to see more than brightly colored fuzz on the screen.

“Motherfucker,” they hiss, adding, “hey, come here.”

Ben looks over, pausing in stripping out of his gloves. “What now?”

“I need you to tell me what my phone says,” says Reese, passing it to him. “It’s probably Butcher.”

Ben looks down at the screen just in time for it to go back to sleep. He frowns. “It’s blank,” he says.

“Seriously?” Reese asks. “It’s been like, what, two weeks and you still haven’t learned how to use a phone?”

“I don’t fucking need one,” he snaps.

“Factually incorrect,” they say. They move from the bed to pull the curtains in the window shut, drowning them both in blessed darkness, and remove their glasses. They set them down on the night stand with an audible thunk.

“Press the button on the side of the phone,” they say.

“Okay, it’s on,” says Ben. “It says ‘slide to unlock’, what am I supposed to slide?”

“Run your finger across the screen.”

“Oh,” he says.

“41660579,” says Reese.

“What?”

“The passcode.”

They can hear the subtle vibrations from the phone as he unlocks it. “Why do you have a pinup of some guy in his underwear on this thing?” he asks. “Not that I’m necessarily judging.”

Reese lets out an exaggerated groan as they dig around in their duffel bag. “He’s a wrestler, will you just check my fucking messages?”

“That’s still a thing?” asks Ben, looking up. “Oh man, I used to fucking love Andre the Giant. I mean, wrestling was stupid but it was fun stupid. Those guys also had the best fucking coke, hands down.”

Reese pauses.

“God, I hate that I’m absolutely going to want you to elaborate on that later,” they say.

“How do I get to the- oh, nevermind,” says Ben. He taps the message alert that pops up on the phone. “Butcher says he and Hughie got followed, they’re gonna deal with that before they try coming back here.”

“Great,” says Reese sarcastically. They pull a silver lock box out of the bag and plop it down on the table.

The phone buzzes again.

“Tell him we’re at the hotel,” says Reese.

“How do you people type like this?” asks Ben, frustrated.

“I’m amazed you figured out the keyboard on your own,” says Reese.

“Well, it’s pretty fucking obvious by all the letters, isn’t it?” he snaps.

Ben leans against the dresser, looking up from the phone as Reese inputs a code on the lock box. It beeps twice.

“Please confirm voice print,” says a pleasant, electronic voice.

“The one-eyed man tells naught but lies,” says Reese.

“Voice print confirmed. Lock will reset in...five minutes,” says the box. It beeps once more, and opens with a hissing noise.

“Tell Butcher I got fragged and shot,” says Reese, before Ben has a chance to ask what it is they’re doing. “I gotta bust out the big guns for this migraine, so it’s gonna put me down for a bit.”

“What are the big guns?” asks Ben.

“Drugs don’t work on me like they do normal people,” says Reese. “I’m sure you know what I mean about that.” They pull a pill bottle out of the box.

While they speak, Ben figures out how to silence the phone. It cuts off the buzzing every time it receives a new message.

Reese doesn’t seem to notice.

“Frenchie and I worked up a nice little combination for times like this,” they say. “It’s gonna stop the migraine and give me time for my eyes to bounce back, but I’m gonna be on my ass for a while.”

“That bad?” he asks. For once, there’s no contempt or judgement in his tone, instead just genuine curiosity.

“If killing myself was the only option, I’d take it,” they say, matter-of-factly. It is not a despairing type of suicidal ideation, just a simple statement of their pain level.

The pill bottle pops open, and they dump two into their hand. Wordlessly, Ben reaches for a bottle of water sitting on the dresser and drops it on the table next to them. He looks down at the phone again as he sits on the end of the bed.

“You keep those things locked up that tight?” asks Ben, ignoring the phone for a moment. He leans down to remove his own boots.

Reese swallows the pills, replacing the bottle in the lock box and regarding it for a moment. “If I use them too much the efficacy goes down,” they say. “The box is a deterrent so I don’t get into them all the time. But that’s not the only thing in here.”

He wants to ask what else is, and chooses not too, instead turning his attention back to the phone.

“I got about twenty minutes before these things kick in,” says Reese. Unable to scrounge up a care to give about a pretense of modesty, they shrug out of their jacket and their pants on the way to the bathroom.

Ben quirks an eyebrow at the phone. He takes time to discard his own bits of armor and uniform before picking it back up.

He downs a hefty mouthful of whiskey while Reese is in the bathroom, and flops at the head of the bed with the TV remote in one hand and the phone in the other. The TV powers on, running on a news channel he immediately skips.

Ben snorts.

Reese exits the bathroom, and when they fall onto the other side of the bed Ben gets a whiff of toothpaste and eucalyptus. Whatever they did to freshen up enough to sleep apparently works, and they stretch out in a tank top and their underwear.

“Anything else from Butcher?” they ask, pulling the sheets into a more comfortable position.

“Nope,” says Ben. He drops the phone on the night stand and resumes channel hopping. “Guess we’re just waiting for him to fix his latest fuck up.”

“That’s just been my life for the last like eight years,” says Reese softly. “Y’get used to it.”

“Do you?” he asks.

Reese’s only answer is a low, non-committal grunt before sleep and drugs tag team them into oblivion.

#reese.fic #ship: your sins come for you again #ship: the butcher and the blade #self shipping #selfshipping fic #feels nice to actually finish this part of this #i can fuck around with the remainder now :)#i didn't wanna slap it all into one big ass piece but as you know i have chronic cannot shut the fuck up disease once i get going

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

The Boss frowns, first at him and then at their phone when it flashes a low battery warning and promptly dies. They turn to find a charger or an outlet, and that is all it takes for the room to spin violently. The world briefly turns into a blur of lights cocooned in a widening black tunnel. When they blink again, it has stopped spinning. The lights above are blurry and soft, but blessedly still. “The fuck?” they mumble, unaware of the slur crumpling the edge of the words. “Jesus goddamn Christ,” Killbane growls. He’s leaned against the side of the sofa and as the Boss reorients more they realize he’s got one hand on their shoulder and the other around their waist, and is the reason they’re still remotely upright instead of being a puddle on the floor. “I’m fine,” they say. They think they say it with bite and warning as they try to disentangle themselves from him. All Killbane hears is a stubborn, flaccid protest that he’s in no mood to entertain.

god help me we’re trying to stay in it lads

#txt.txt #reese.fic #ship: dressed for killing #first drafts are for puking words and nothing else i yell to myself while demanding i keep hitting keys #one day i will finish this series that was supposed to be an au one shot about the boss getting hatefucked and nothing else #boss is fainty bc of getting shot and almost drowning and then popping their stitches disemboweling a dude to be Dramatic btw

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

had 2 take a shower bc i can’t figure out how this acne gel my doctor gave me is supposed to work outside ‘slathering it on letting it sit and then rinsing it off in the shower’, and man

thought about like, by the time norman and i are almost done cleaning out my old house, i’ve finally gotten him acclimatized to being in the middle of literally nowhere, even if he hasn’t realized it yet, and the way being isolated like that can force you to sit down and think about things because fuck,

there’s nothing else to do.

****

i drag him down to the beach, using the illegally-created but never filled back in path from the property across the street. he comments ‘aren’t you always the one talking about how trespassing down here gets you shot?’ and i say well, yeah.

but only if the person you’re trespassing against knows you’re doing it, and the property owner doesn’t, so it’s fine, shut up.

he shuts up.

we plop down in the sand and he comments it’s not a bad set up for a lake in the middle of the woods, actually.

“well at one point it was the biggest man-made lake in the country,” i say, standing and snapping a branch over my knee. i pause, staring off at the darkened shore and grinning a little. “man i always wanted to go scuba diving around this place.” i snap another branch. “they flooded the farmland, you know. just left it as is. no sense demolishing something yourself when nature will do it once you get it going.”

“what the hell for?” norman asks.

i snap another branch. shrug. “dunno,” i say. “never looked it up, never cared. wasn’t about why, was just about...is.”

he opens his mouth, biting comment about rednecks refusing to look things up being responsible for oh so many things at the ready, and somehow manages to swallow it down.

“anyway,” i say, shrugging. “dig me a hole.”

and then we argue for ten minutes about how yes you need a fucking hole to make a bonfire on the fucking beach you stupid yankee ass, and it ends up taking half an hour to do something i coulda done in less than ten minutes, but eventually i have a moderately sized bonfire, shitty gas station booze and the joy of getting to watch norman be forced to do something truly horrible:

attempt to smoke a black and mild.

“this is about 6 misdemeanors by the way,” i add, tossing a stick onto the fire.

“let me guess,” he says, “technically state park land, still on your bucket list anyway?”

“shit, ain’t no technically about it,” i say. “but yeah. but also, show me one fuckin’ person in this area that gives a shit about those laws and i’ll still say you’re full of shit; park rangers included.”

he raises an eyebrow. “really?”

i tell him they’re usually only around during the peak season anyway, and since it’s mid september, peak season ended a week or so ago. aside from that, it’s always been an unspoken rule that minor infractions are fine, as long as you’re not being stupid or rude and you make sure to clean up after yourself.

“you know,” i say after a while, “i didn’t realize how much i missed this until i had to come back.”

norman scoffs and stubs out the cigar in the sand, silently admitting defeat. “i don’t see how there’s anything to miss.”

“i’m not talkin’ about the house,” i say, “or...the town, the people. it’s just....this.” i gesture with both arms, around us, and he frowns.

“there’s nothing here,” he says. “i just drove 42 minutes round trip to get gas station booze that’s barely a step above prison hooch.”

“norman,” i say, “look up.”

he doesn’t.

i sigh, and sit up straighter. “come on, for once, just do what i’m asking without making a thing out of it.”

“fine.” he looks up.

“what do you see?” i ask.

“nothing, as we’ve already established,” he says, still looking skywards. “there’s nothing out here but sky and star-”

he stops. blinks.

“well, shit,” he says, softly.

“last time i saw this many stars was when you took me joyriding with that old armor,” i say.

“only because we went above the light pollution,” he says, and i wonder if he’s noticed the way his voice has softened.

“more here than there used to be,” i say. “after the housing crash it left a lotta empty land for real cheap, so the land developers n’ old southern money started buying shit up on the shorelines.” i squint a little. “i can make out more'n a dozen houses that weren’t there when i left. bet they’re ugly fucking mcmansions, too.”

i wonder if he’s noticed the blurring of the spaces between my words, the drawl creeping its way back out of me. or, if the last few days has made it blend in along with everyone else.

“i thought my upstate house was far out, but this...” he says.

“your upstate house is carefully positioned and meticulously manicured in some woods to make it feel like it’s balls deep in seclusion,” i say. “until you cross the property line and there’s a fuckin’ kroger two lights away. and don’t get me wrong, i like it.”

“but it’s not this,” he says. he leans back, still looking up, and stretching one leg out in the sand. “i can’t remember the last time i saw this many stars.”

“i hated this place,” i say. “i still do. they’re demolishing that fucking house as soon as we’re done, and i still haven’t decided if i want to watch it go or not. i always hated being so rural, so cut off, so...”

“...alone,” he finishes.

“yeah,” i say. “but i guess it took having to come back to realize it really wasn’t all bad. it’s...it’s just land, you know? clay and water, trees and grass and all the little bits of life dotted around.”

“well,” he says, “i don’t know about life, exactly-”

“you are literally a scientist, you could probably rattle off a dozen microbes hanging out in this sand right now that’ll make me wanna camp in a hermetically sealed room for a week,” i say.

he chuckles.

“it’s just weird,” i continue, dragging my fingers through the chilly sand. “i always thought once i left, that’d be it, i wouldn’t think twice about anything. but now that i’ve had to come back, i’m thinking about so many things, but none of them are what i expected.”

“it’s your home,” he says.

“that house was never a home for anyone,” i say.

he looks over at me. “i know,” he says. “we’ve established you aren’t talking about the house. but like you said, this,” he gestures, “is where you spent the first part of your life. regardless of what happened, it’s still your home. sometimes home is a house, but it can be a place, too.”

“homesick for a place i never loved,” i say softly. “how ironic.”

“i still own mine,” he says.

i blink. “what?”

“the house i grew up in,” he says. “haven’t been to it in a long time. frankly i only know it’s still standing because i see tax forms for it every year. good location, too. i could sell it and make enough off it that my father might dig his way out of a grave just to get his cut. instead, it just sits there every year, and every year i imagine all those little bits of life you were talking about gain more ground for themselves.”

“why keep it around?” i ask.

“it’s my home,” he says.

#reese.fic #ship: masks & menace #arc: filthy dirty south #going 2 start logging these so i can find them easier #planning/hoping to go back over them at a later date and link them all in the proper order tho #but ah yes anyway lads.

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flatstarcarcosa · 3 years

Text

Thinking about nights like this where I don't sleep, and zaeed keeping me company. He dozes, here and there, but never really falls out entirely.

I finally decide maybe its time for breakfast and another round of meds, maybe I can will my body into comfort.

******

"Do you want some eggs?" I ask. He mumbles, sleepily, and blinks a few times. I caught him dozing. "Do you want eggs?"

"I'll eat whenever you're cooking," he says, voice thick with the sleep he's been at once chasing and fighting. His words tend to jumble together, a gravel driveway of mixed up consonants that surfaces from deep in his chest.

I frown.

"Thats not what I asked," I say, pushing the laptop off my thighs and sliding over to plop myself across his lap. "I asked if you want eggs for breakfast."

"I know what you asked," he says. He reaches down, fingers trailing over my side and across my shoulder until his hand settles in my hair. "I said I'll eat whenever you're cooking."

I frown, more.

He hasn't said if he wants the goddamn eggs, and I just want to know how many to make.

And then it hits me; all those little moments you never consider as they're happening, you just file them away in your memory banks as they pass.

A contented groan as he picks the empty plates off the table, pauses to lean down and kiss my cheek.

"You do make a fantastic goddamn roast."

A metal spoon sliding against the inside of a metal bowl, an attempt to scrape up the very last dregs of stew.

"Thought you were wasting credits on that goddamn crock pot, but at least being cooped up in this ship is bearable with something better than field rations."

A pause in chewing. A raised eyebrow when he swallows.

"This goddamn cake is one of those gluten fucking free monstrosities? I honestly wouldn't have known if you hadn't told on yourself."

I return to the present, dragged forth by the feeling of him bumping his knee against me.

"Feed me or don't, but I gotta take a goddamn piss," he grumbles. I hum and sit up, disentangling myself from him and staring off into the dark of the bedroom. The bed shifts as he rises, and the bathroom door shuts most of the way before he hits the light.

"I'll eat whenever you're cooking."

The toilet flushes, the sink runs, and the light is turned out before he opens the bathroom door and pads back across the room. I am still staring into the dark, and stubbornly ignoring the tears in the corner of my eyes.

His fingers trail up my side again, searching for my hair and settling to brush through it at the base of my skull. He leans down, plants a sloppy kiss on the top of my head. I blink away the wetness, dare to sniff up the lump in the back of my throat and reach up to wipe at my eyes.

He catches my hand on the way back down, pulls me to my feet.

"You ever clean the frying pan after those burgers the other night?" he asks. He leads me to the kitchen, where turning on the light answers the question.

"God damn it." I glare at the frying pan, still sitting on the stove and packed now with congealed grease from the pound and a half of beef I turned into "burger crimes" the last time I cooked dinner.

He chuckles and moves it to the sink, hitting the tap for hot water and nudging me towards the fridge with his hip. I stumble, just slightly and catch myself on the door handle. I pause as I pull open the door and he turns to the sink, back towards me and the faintest slivers of sunrise beginning to creep over the skies of Bekenstein.

So this is where I have landed, after so much time falling aimlessly and wanting only for the crash to meet me faster; with a man who will not freely and recklessly say I love you, but who instead looked up and planted his feet and said I bet I can catch that.

A stranger, for all purposes, who caught the briefest glimpse of the darkest part of my existence and the bloody, gaping wound behind the words fuck I'm ODing again and discovered there was still something in him that could break apart at the sight of it.

An implacable, stubborn, goddamn jackass that said if no one else is going to dive into your incurable insanity and save you from drowning I guess I'll fucking do it and then proceeded to simply build a dock in the middle of it.

Perhaps, I think, as I watch steam from the sink puff into the air, it makes perfect sense in a way that is almost laughably stupid that it would take a man permanently on fire to boil away enough water that I am able to stand once again.

I pull the carton of eggs from the fridge, abandon them on the counter and refuse to acknowledge the trembling of my jaw as wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his spine. He shifts, hands caked in soap and grease and pausing over the frying pan as he tries and fails to look at me over his shoulder.

"Christ," he says, softly, "it's just goddamn eggs."

"I know," I say. It comes out as a hiccup, and I cannot bring myself to hate myself for it. "But it's not. I'm..."

Stuck, again. Even after all this time-- so much time-- it catches in my throat like some rabid beast that sinks its teeth into the words and tears them to bloody bits before they have a chance to get free.

The frying pan clangs against the sink and the water steams more as he runs the water hot and washes the grease from his hands. He leans forward, pulling the towel from the rack in the window and making use of it before nudging me with his elbow. I loosen my hold on his waist and he turns in my arms.

Wordlessly, still-warm hands cup either side of my face, pulling it up and forward and forcing me to meet his gaze and reminding me that he used to stake his life on picking up bloody bits of mess and turning it into a finished production that resulted in a job well goddamn done.

His thumbs brush over my damp cheeks and I wonder, not if that dark part of my existence is still there, but if it is visible once more because I have slipped up, or if because sometimes he drags it kicking and screaming into the light just to remind it that it does not get to run roughshod over the rest of me.

He pulls me closer, enveloping me in flame and pressing his forehead to mine before following with his mouth. He tastes like mint from toothpaste and menthol from cigarettes and smells freshly like the citrus in the dish soap and stagnantly like the lake water from our swim the night before.

It is just eggs.

But it is also everything else and he does not let anything else escape his grasp. He kisses me until it begins to hurt and his fingertips press into my skin.

He pulls the rabid beast from its perch, and executes it in the only way that matters: he disregards it completely.

When he releases me but keeps me close enough that I still feel his breath on my face, I let out the faintest of sobs and his thumbs brushes the tears away once more.

"I'm sorry," I breathe. He sighs, and then forces a chuckle.

"It's just goddamn eggs, love."

And it is, also, everything else, and for the first time in my life I begin to think that maybe,

maybe there is room for it all.

#selfshipping fic #self shipping #i'm gonna be fucking daring and hope this doesn't blow up in my face pls b gentle this was about the CATHARSIS but #zaeed massani #ship: stubborn goddamn jackasses #reese.fic #anyway i meant to make eggs eat the eggs and go play more me3 until i fell asleep but then i sat there Thinking and Going Thru It #and ate my eggs while sobbing into my fucking eggs #i also did not proof read or beta read this because if i don't go get the taste of fucking SNOT out of my mouth #i'm gonna fuckin be meeting those eggs again so aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #anyway we're unpacking trauma in weird ways once again here at flatstarcarcosa ladies

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

“you are being insufferably stubborn right now,” he says, brows knitted together and expression firm.

reese raises their own eyebrows, gaze implacable behind their sunglasses. “really? got you in a bit of a tizzy?”

norman’s nostrils flare as he steps closer. “a bit,” he says through clenched teeth.

“i seem to recall you liking that, once,” says reese, crossing their arms. “something about grit and showing initiative and you finding that extraordinarily sexy.”

“well,” he stammers, “yes, but not when it’s directed at me and causing problems for me.”

“oh,” says reese softly. they lower their arms, reaching for his wrist and for a moment he thinks the situation resolved. “i’m sorry.”

“so you see-” he begins, only to get interrupted.

“i’m sowwy that me being firm on my awtonomy is making nowman cwanky because he’s not getting his fucking way fow once,” they say. if they could make the mocking and the annoyance in their tone any stronger, he’d be truly stunned.

norman clicks his tongue. “reese-”

“no,” they say, voice firm. “i am allowed to have friends, and if some of those friends happen to be some of the same people you personally don’t like, then simply don’t be around them and get the fuck over it.”

“and if i don’t?” he asks sharply.

reese shrugs. “guess we’ll burn that bridge if we come to it, huh?”

they’re not going to waver. he knows this as sure as one knows the sun will rise in the morning, and as much as he knows that they’re right. it was their immutable stubbornness that caught his attention, their refusal to move or sway in the face of disagreements.

in a way, it mirrors so much of himself that he’s also sure a therapist would have a field day with it, and how his attraction to it relates to his own ego and self image.

regardless, it presents a conundrum: what do you do when neither person is capable of bending, yet breaks far too easily?

you can continue the stalemate, and waste time, and accomplish nothing. or, maybe you admit to yourself the issue is less about the topic of argument and simply more about being right, even if you’re not.

his jaw twitches as he rolls it over in his mind and finally comes to the only logical conclusion he can find:

he gives.

“fine,” he says, throwing his hands up. “fine, you win. go make friends with all the insane murderers you can find in the city, but don’t come expecting my help when one of them decides they like you so much that they’re going to make you a necklace with your own intestines.”

“thoughtful,” reese says, deadpan. “are you going to pout about this all night?”

“i’m not pouting,” he says, pouting. “i do not pout.”

“ah-huh,” is all the response he gets. he glowers, reaching down and grabbing them by the front of their shirt.

“i do not pout,” he repeats. he slips his arm around their waist, pulling them to him and leaning down to plant a kiss on their mouth. “not all the time, anyway.”

#reese.fic #norman @ me every time we have a stupid argument: YOU DIDN'T WIN. YOU DIDN'T WIN-#ship: masks & menace

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

friends, now acquaintances

this was supposed to be a short little thing about when matt finds out i know who he is, and he finds out who lester really is, but it got a bit long and lot bittersweet. for context: i end up, through bouncing around from job-to-job, working at nelson & murdock for a while. by virtue of me being there, it means lester was also there with a bit of regularity. bringing me lunch, picking me up or dropping me off, that kind of thing. the end result was all of us hanging out and getting friendly because well, why wouldn’t you invite your coworkers boyfriend for drinks when the office is only consisting of 3-4 people to begin with, and he’s also standing right there?

no i haven’t worked out what incident triggers him finding out why do you ask?

***********************

“what the fuck do you want me to do, matt?” i finally ask him. “by the time i worked out who you are and what YOU do in your spare time we were all already buddies. it’s not like i was going to go home and tell lester ‘oh by the way you can’t hang out with us anymore’ but not tell him why, it would have sent up a fucking flare that something was going on.”

silence.

“you...you haven’t told him?” matt asks.

“of course not, jesus christ,” i say, pinching the bridge of my nose. “i love him. i know you’ll never understand the how or the why, and that’s fine. i’m not asking you too. but i need you to understand that i do love him, and that is never going to change. but just because i love him doesn’t mean i’m not aware of...what he is. i love him, but i’m not remotely naive to him. so, no, matt, i didn’t tell him who you really are. you two have enough run ins with each other as it is, i’m not going to make it easier for him. also, i’d never hear the end of it, and if not for the fact he’s already died on me once i’d say it’d drive me to kill him in his sleep.”

he snorts an annoyed, bitter sound, that sounds more like he’s mad i almost got a whole laugh out of him than anything else. “but how can you live with it?” he asks. “you said it yourself, you know what he is. and you just...you’re okay with that? you’re so casual about it, ‘oh he’s traveling for work’, like it’s the most normal thing in the world but it’s not. he’s out there. killing people, doing...worse than that, sometimes.”

“because he’ll never change,” i say, without a drop of condemnation in my voice. i’m not judging lester, or holding it against him, i am simply stating a fact. “he’s going to go out there and kill people whether i’m in his life or not. me being with him has no bearing on it, so why should i lose sleep about it?”

matt’s jaw twitches as he mulls over my words. it looks like he’s biting back initial, and no doubt aggressive, responses.

i cross my arms. “honestly i think the years we’ve had together has mellowed him out, if anything,” i say softly. “among other things.” other things being the thunderbolts, and getting electrocuted until he was almost paralyzed again. the dark avengers, trapped in osborn’s tower before being cut loose to get impaled on live television. “some of which you had a small hand in. no pun intended.”

he’s quiet for a moment. “yeah,” he says, “i suppose i did. i’m still curious how you think he’s mellowed out, though.”

i laugh a little, dropping my arms and pulling my vape out of my pocket. it tastes faintly of mint and strongly of burnt coil, and i grimace as i make a mental note to pick up a new one. “when we first got together...” i blow a weak cloud of vapor out of my mouth. “there was period where going out in public with him was stressful. it was like being out with a rampaging toddler, except you blinked and the toddler got annoyed by someone across the street and flicked the top of his beer bottle and nailed them in the aorta.”

“so why-” he starts.

i cut him off. “you don’t get the why,” i snap. he blinks in surprise at the ice in my tone and even though i know the expression is lost on him visually, i still find myself narrowing my eyes. only now do i think how ironic it is that matt’s one of the few people i find myself conversing with without my sunglasses. it makes sense when i think about it.

“how does that mean he’s mellowed?” he asks.

“he used to cause chaos wherever he went whenever he felt like it,” i say. “he’s bored, or annoyed, or he thinks it’d be funny. somewhere along the line, he stopped. he’s very particular about the jobs he takes these days, moreso than he was at first. it’s not unusual for him to go months at a time without taking one. every day he wakes up and decides to stay home, every time we go out and he’s more interested in me and us than causing chaos is a day someone out there isn’t dying because of him.”

“that sounds a lot like you’re grasping at straws and trying to justify your own guilt about him,” says matt sharply.

i shrug. “and you can think that if you want,” i say, “but something tells me you can read me well enough to know it’s not true.”

he says nothing. i dare to reach out and place a hand on his forearm.

“you have to understand this was just a...really, really fucked up coincidence,” i say. “of all the law offices in the damn city, i end up working at yours. this wasn’t some fucked up plot because i thought it’d be funny or something.”

“i believe you,” he says. “but you still chose to not tell me. nine months, reese. you’ve known for nine months and you’ve just kept quiet about it.”

“i was worried you’d kill him again,” i say.

“what?” he asks, shock on his face.

“i get that it wasn’t...entirely you the first time,” i say, “but regardless, i also don’t know that you wouldn’t do it again anyway because it’s him. and, somehow, knowing where he lives could just give you the advantage for it. if that makes me some sort of evil asshole, then, whatever.”

“are you going to tell him?” he asks after a moment of silence.

“no,” i say. “things are fucked up between us right now, and i know it’s never going to be right again, but you’re my friend, matt. i don’t have many of those, and i’m sorry it’ll be one less because of this, but i’m still not going to tell him.”

“you don’t owe me anything,” he says, disbelief in his voice. “i...i don’t even think i’d be surprised if you did tell him.”

“i’m not keeping it from him because i feel like i owe you something,” i say, “i’m keeping it from him because it’s none of his fucking business. you’re my friend, or were, i guess. i don’t tell him all of my friends business, regardless of what it is.”

“how did you figure it out, anyway?”

“he came home all chatty and happy one night, talking about how he broke dared||devil’s ribs,” i say. “i go to work next day, and you walk in with broken ribs. i’m no mathematician but what are the statistical odds that there’s a different blind guy wandering around hell’s kitchen with freshly broken ribs, a black eye, and a broken nose from the night before?”

“low,” he says, “but never zero?”

i click my tongue. “yeah,” i say. “and for what it’s worth, no one else knows either. i’ve been sitting on this the whole time, with no one to fucking talk to about it.”

that’s the first lie i’ve told him so far. i did tell one person: i told logan. he surprised me by telling me he already knew, and has just been surprised no one else has worked it out sooner. he also commented he’s pretty sure others have actually worked it out, and are just being quiet about it out of mutual respect and professionalism. regardless, i knew if there was one person i could talk to about it and not have it on the front page of the bugle the next day, it would be him.

“i appreciate that,” he says. “i...i don’t know where we go from here.”

“there’s no ‘we’, matt,” i say. “i am going to go home, and start looking for a new job. you can go do...whatever it is you do.”

he blinks. “why a new job?”

“i didn’t figure you’d still want me working for you, given this,” i say. “me being there means lester will be around and i’m not going to make you spend more time with him than you already have.”

“no,” he says, “no, no, don’t...don’t just quit. that’ll just send up that flare you were talking about.”

“what, you wanna fire me instead?” i ask, joking.

matt raises an eyebrow. “well, you would get unemployment,” he offers.

“les has more money than god,” i say, “i’m not dealing with the unemployment offices for a bit of extra money.”

“but still,” he insists, “don’t just quit. let me...i’ll take a leave of absence, work from home for a bit if i have to. i just need to...think about all this.”

“you need to reconcile the opinion you had of me before with the information you now have about me and lester,” i say blandly.

matt shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and then holds his hands up. “yeah,” he sighs, dropping them back at his sides. “i do.”

“i’d be surprised if you didn’t,” i say. “whatever you decide, all i ask is that you’re deciding it for you. i’d hate to lose your friendship, but moreso i’d hate for you to continue offering it and hating every second of it.”

“you shouldn’t have to chose between having friends and having him,” he says.

i laugh. “oh, matty,” i say, “my lack of friends is because i’m stubborn, insane, and a junkie. i’d be all those things with or without lester. i don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones i do have are good friends. don’t worry about my social circle.”

“you’re a good person, reese, even if you do have shit taste in men,” says matt. “i hope i’m good enough of a person to remember that while i’m working through this.”

i smile, and reach up on my tip-toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “i hope so, too,” i say. “i’ll see you around, matt. or, maybe i won’t. either way, it’s been nice knowing you.”

by the time he returns the smile, i’ve disappeared from the park path and am lost among the trees.

“you too,” he says softly, to no one at all.

#reese.fic #i didn't bother to reread this before hitting post so be nice to my miss steaks #ship: right on target #platonic: matt #also of note is that i tend to blend the show canon with the comics canon in a way that barely makes sense to me #nvm making sense to anyone else and esp anyone that knows nothing of the lore to begin with so #if something seems confusing it's not YOU it is in fact just me <3

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

currents

i had the initial part of this rolling around in my brain the last few days and couldn’t figure out where to put it, and while this is messy and decidedly NOT the fic i was originally working on, i wanted to pour this out anyway. @heavenshipped consider it like the mint on your hotel pillow, or the little towel animals some places leave.

summary: reese and liv share a bit of melancholy and a lot of alcohol.

ship(s): illegal ship (norman/reese), harry/liv (...portmanteau of larry, just saying. consider it. /j)

warnings: booze is present, but otherwise nothing that i’m aware of.

**********

“i mean, i want to support him,” says liv. she is perched in the corner of the sofa, the stem of a wineglass between her fingers and her legs half folded beneath her. the fire crackles softly, filling the room with warmth that is almost uncomfortable for reese, though soothing for anyone else. liv continues speaking as she slowly swirls the glass in a half circle. “it’s not that he doesn’t care about what i think entirely, but i understand that i’m new in all of this, so my opinion on his relationship with norman doesn’t hold as much value.”

“it’s not about value,” says reese from their lounged position across the arm chair that is normally reserved for the original osborn. “it’s like you said: while harry may listen and consider your feelings on say, what to have for dinner, your feelings on norman are just lacking the context harry himself has. it’s a lot of history between them, and it will be a while before you and him have enough between the two of you for it to be comparable.”

liv says nothing, and takes another swallow of her drink. reese stretches and raises the jameson bottle they’re nursing. they catch sight of the fill line and disregard it when they realize they don’t remember where it started. they stopped counting individual drinks a long time ago, and not just on this night. these days, they go by feeling alone and currently, they’re sluggish and loose and judging from the direction of the conversation, liv is somewhere in the same plane.

“it’s not a bad thing,” they add. “it’s not a good thing, either. it just...is. for what it’s worth, norman and i are the same when it comes to my family. it took him a while to stop asking, and longer to stop fucking digging, but he knows i don’t consider anything he’d have to say about my life before new york. some of it is because he can’t relate to growing up as a poor hillbilly, the rest because my fucked up family isn’t anyone’s business but mine.”

more silence.

“can i ask you something?” liv finally asks, eyes downcast and watching the fire dance in the hearth. reese uses her averted gaze to let out a silent groan as they roll their eyes and shoulders. when she looks back up they’re leaned as far back as their position will allow, the jameson bottle tipped upend and draining swiftly into their mouth.

liv blinks.

reese holds up a finger as they drain the bottle. they pull it away from their mouth and close one eye to peer down the neck before tipping it back up and shaking it vigorously. they give a discontented groan as a single drop falls onto their tongue and lean forward to drop the empty bottle on the coffee table.

“i know there’s more behind the bar,” they say, “but if i use one of my get out of work free because i’m dating the CEO days because i wasn’t able to sober up enough for my shift, i’ll never hear the end of it.”

liv blinks again.

“from your supervisor,” she asks slowly, “or the CEO himself?”

“yes,” says reese. “now, ask. sooner you do, sooner i can get done dealing with it.”

“you don’t know what i want to ask,” protests liv.

reese props a leg up over the arm of the chair. “yes i do,” they say. “i’m dating norman, you’re dating his son, they both have a very well-documented and public history. it’s the...goblin in the room, so to speak.”

liv considers things for a moment before deciding to empty her own drink and set the glass on the table. “how much of it is true?” she asks. “about norman, i mean. i know with the news being sensationalist, and with how the bugle loves jumping to conclusions, that a lot of it must be exaggerated. i’m just trying to-”

“all of it,” says reese, cutting her off.

“what?” she asks, softly.

“all of it,” reese repeats. “if anything, the news is more likely to try and downplay what he’s done as the goblin because of the positions he’s held as norman.”

“how...how do you...” liv trails off, unsure both of what she is trying to ask, and how she is trying to ask it.

“how do i reconcile it?” asks reese, quirking an eyebrow. “or how do i justify it enough to stay on his side?”

taking a page out of their book, liv says, “yes.”

reese clicks their tongue, feels the cotton growing along their teeth. the aftertaste of whiskey crawls up their throat and begins soaking into it, and they know their mouth is now a tinderbox.

one misplaced spark will prove to be a grave ignition.

there is danger here now, and not for the first time reese finds themself wondering if liv is truly aware how much. there is danger with the goblins and the shadows in which they lurk, and the benign looking ones are the most hazardous.

when they speak, their words are weighted with consideration for the origin; for the bias and the cognitive dissonance that no doubt colors the walls of their relationship with norman.

“when he’s sane, he’s one of the most ingenuitive people on the planet,” they say. “that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. norman may not do things altruistically, and he may be motivated by making someone else look worse, or doing something simply because someone else said it couldn’t be done, but still.”

“but that’s when he’s sane,” says liv tentatively.

reese shrugs. “yes, and no,” they say. the jameson is also adding weight to their words, but in a way that is making them clunky and contradictory.

“it can’t be both,” says liv, almost frustratingly.

“sanity fluctuates,” says reese. “with norman it isn’t a simple matter of is or isn’t. that...part of him, that strip... it’s like a sandbar. when it’s exposed and dry there’s life, and functionality and possibilities. but the problem is that the tide will always come back. that sandbar will always be back underwater for a while, buffeted by the waves and the only recourse you have is to dig your toes into the sand and become unmovable.” reese looks up, brows furrowed in concentration. “does that make sense?”

“yes,” says liv, “it does. it’s not about...justifying anything, it’s just...accepting that what’s out there is there, and that you can’t change it or fix it. you can’t stop the tide, you can only plan for it and hope for the best.”

“exactly,” says reese. “and the same goes for you and harry, you know. maybe not in the same exact way, but in general principle.”

“what’s happened between him and norman is just there,” says liv softly. “i don’t have to agree or be okay with what norman’s done or how he’s acted, but i have to accept it because it means accepting harry, too.”

“you don’t have to pick a side, you know.” reese absentmindedly cracks their knuckles as they speak, hooking one finger behind the other and popping the joints one at a time.

“what?”

“norman and i, you and harry,” says reese. “i’m not going to get hurt feelings when the time comes and you stand by harry in the face of norman. if you were...worried about that.”

“you say that like everything’s going to fall apart.” liv tries to inject nonchalance into the words, and she knows she’s failing.

“you build a castle on a sand bar, the tide’s going to flatten it when it rolls back in,” reese says simply. they catch the expression forming on liv’s face-- or perhaps it’s been there a while and they’ve only now noticed-- and attempt damage control. “i’m not saying you and harry aren’t going to work out, or that you’re doomed or anything. but for all the softness and all the sweetness, the makeup of this goblin in the room means that there is also going to be gaping darkness...and, badness?”

reese blinks the double vision away and realizes the jameson has hit their bloodstream with all the grace of the famed bull in a china shop. as they’re trying to figure out where that monologue was going, and more importantly, why it was going there, liv manages to suss it out first.

she smiles, and uncurls from her position on the sofa. “i’m not expecting a fairy tale you know,” she says.

“but...at the same time...?” reese asks slowly.

“at the same time,” says liv, “people have been known to build houses on sandbars all the time.”

“ill advisable,” says reese. they have begun to slur as they speak, and the room has begun to lose its form around the edges.

“of course,” agrees liv. “aside from the tide, you have the hurricanes to deal with. rebuilding is probably stressful, but it could also be a good excuse to redecorate.”

reese hums in agreement. “so, that’s where we’re at?” they ask. “all the fucking men in this city and we picked the two dudes whose ties to reality are dependent entirely on the ebb and flow of the ocean and the pull of the moon?” they grimace as they speak, wondering what the verbal and spoken equivalent of purple prose is.

“seems that way,” liv sighs. “but, i think we can make it all work.”

“i don’wanna work,” reese groans.

liv grins a little, watching reese glower up at the ceiling as if giving it a dirty enough look for long enough is somehow going to abate the whiskey sloshing around in their head. the sound of footsteps and muffled voices fill the hall, and it pulls her attention to the entryway.

norman and harry appear from the shadows a moment later, and liv cannot hold back the smile harry’s presence draws out of her. he makes for the sofa to plant a kiss on her lips in greeting and her only complaint is that it is quick and, dare she say, chaste.

norman pauses behind his chair, raising an eyebrow and leaning on the back of it as he looks down at reese.

“was that a full bottle of jameson when you started?” he asks, much in the same tone of voice he would use to request an expense report.

“no,” says reese, “i mean. the seal had cracked but fuck know what that means, really.”

“i see you’ve progressed into the expired word salad stage of being drunk,” says norman.

“hah!” liv’s laugh is sudden, and chipper. “expired word salad, that’s funny.”

“give it a month and it’ll stop being funny,” says harry, only half serious. he holds out a hand towards her, and slips an arm around her waist to steady her as she stands. “time for bed?”

liv thinks on it for a moment, and then nods. “yeah,” she says sheepishly.

“that’s not a bad idea,” says norman. “it’s a good thing i was catching up on my work tonight, since i know which department is going to be short handed tomorrow.” he moves around the chair, sliding an arm under reese’s back as he does, and without missing a beat in his stride, hefts them up and over one shoulder with an effortless ease.

liv blinks, tilting her head a little. it’s easy to forget, during those times when the tide is out and the green goblin is slumbering in the shadows, that norman is far stronger than he appears.

the four of them make their way upstairs, harry and liv arm in arm while reese insists from over norman’s shoulder that they’re not calling out of work, they are fine thank you, but also could someone make the building stop spinning before they throw up?

“if you so much as drool on these floors i’m taking the cleaning expenses out of your next paycheck,” says norman as he crests the top of the stairs.

“fucking goddamn rich people,” reese drawls, halfheartedly.

harry pauses, abruptly enough that liv is nearly knocked off balance. the room spins for a moment, and she suppresses a giggle at the realization that she isn’t quite as a sober as she’d thought. she glances over, catches him watching norman as he heads down the hall to his room. harry opens his mouth, inhales, and then seems to think better of it, and says nothing.

“good night, you two,” she says for him. to her surprise, norman pauses, and turns.

“good night, liv,” he says, adding, “harry.”

“hey,” says reese, using a fistful of norman’s shirt to pull themself up a little, “if you think you’re gonna be meeting that booze a second time do it before you try fooling around, because few things kill a boner as fast as someone puk-”

their sentence dies as norman loosens his grip and unceremoniously dumps them ass over end onto the floor at his feet.

“fucking-” they holler, interrupted a second time before they get any farther.

“not for you any time soon,” says norman. he steps around them to open the bedroom door, leaving reese to stumble halfway back to their feet on their own.

they take a step forward, and the bedroom door slams shut suddenly and loudly enough that liv feels harry reflexively jump. she wraps herself around his arm even tighter, hoping her closeness will settle his misfiring nerves. she can read on his face, even in the low light of the hall that at this moment he is no longer sure if the situation is still lighthearted and safe, or if norman’s mood has genuinely nosedived south.

then reese blurts out “library”, and takes off down the hall at a gallop in the direction of the library and set of doors that lead into the other end of the master bedroom suite. as quickly as it’d washed over harry to begin with, liv feels the tension leave him.

“i think they forgot about the-” he begins. he is cut off by a moderately loud thud, the sound of a piece of furniture getting scraped across the wood floor, and reese yelling ‘fucking cedar chest’.

and faintly, through the walls, norman’s laughter.

liv falls asleep in a warm bed next to her equally warm, if somewhat fractured boyfriend. she has the strangest dream that she will only vaguely remember when she wakes, of being a child and building a castle in the sand with a brown haired boy that has the deepest eyes she’s ever seen.

in the dream, the tide rolls in and washes the castle away, and the boy sits in the sand and cries and refuses to believe her when she says they can do it again. she sits with him, watching the water swell and roll until it’s whisked back into the great blue void. she digs at the wet sand with her hands and gets a crooked and already crumbling watchtower built before the boy slinks over to join her.

together, they rebuild the castle and then sit and watch the sunset while the tide pays them another visit. it claims this castle as well. this time, the boy doesn’t cry and it fills her with so much hope that it carries over to when she wakes.

she opens her eyes to find harry propped up next to her, watching her sleep with those same, impossibly deep eyes from her dream and she doesn’t even try to find a suitable explanation for why she woke up and immediately started crying. it’s fine, she promises. it’s fine now, it will be fine later, and when the time comes that it no longer is, well...that will be fine, too.

because like the tide, it will come back around.

#txt.txt #reese.fic #others: liv #man i'd stopped this at norman's laughter and didn't like the suddenness of it and then those last #handful of paragraphs came to me and i'm fucking CRYING IN THE CLUB RIGHT NOW /throws hat on ground #fucking played myself like a FIDDLE i can't keep GETTING AWAY WITH THIS #was gonna add something about /my/ dreams but i wanna try n sleep but something something the duality of whatever #liv dreams about harry's inner wounded child and being able to be there for him and i dream about the #monsters from my past that hide in the shadows and behind the locked doors in my brain and #know that they're spitting fucking mad because they're fucking stuck there and it doesn't matter #because i have my own monster now (& he's bigger and meaner so don't try any shit)#ship: masks & menace

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

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The omni-tool beeps, signalling the end of the analysis. “It’s rachni,” says Norman. Snow crunches under his boots, and outside the blizzard continues to batter Peak 15.

“Impossible,” says Garrus. “The rachni have been dead for over a thousand years.”

“Right, and the geth never venture beyond the Veil.” Norman rolls his eyes, still squatted over the rachni corpse. “Thank you for the history lesson, Professor Vakarian.”

“Do you always have to be such an ass?” Garrus grumbles, crossing his arms.

“This just got a lot more annoying,” says Norman as he stands, pointedly ignoring Garrus’ comment. “Now we need to figure out what kind of rachni this is.”

“I was not aware there were multiple kinds,” says Liara.

“What?” Norman blinks, and lets out a small laugh. “No, not like that. What I meant is that we need to figure out if these are original rachni, or clones.”

“Does it make a difference?” she asks.

“Well,” says Norman slowly, “consider the options: they’re clones, which means Binary Helix got a hold of enough genetic material to start producing them, which means they could make god knows how many. Or: they’re original rachni, which means Binary Helix got a hold of something that should be extinct, and has now released god knows how many all over this place.”

“Not a fan of either of those options, I have to say,” Garrus drawls.

“And the question either way is still how did they get a hold of it, when, where, and why?” adds Norman. “I don’t like the idea of rachni just wandering around loose somewhere, do you?”

“Can’t say it fills me with very cuddly feelings, no,” says Garrus.

“Saren clearly thinks the rachni will be useful somehow regarding the reapers,” says Liara.

“If I were Saren, I know I wouldn’t pass up the chance to have an infinitely producing army of mindless, acid spitting monsters at my disposal,” says Norman. “Hell, I wouldn’t pass it up now, actually...”

He trails off, turning to look at the corpse again.

“All right, well, this has been fun,” says Garrus, “but maybe we should see where the real party is. I’m thinking if we find a cafeteria, maybe we’ll have a rachni jump out of a cake to surprise us like in those old human vids.”

“I’m confused,” says Liara, “why would there be cake?”

“It’s a joke,” sighs Norman, nudging Liara towards the elevator, “Garrus is considering taking up comedy since he quit C-Sec and figures his entire life has been a joke up until now, anyway.”

“Ow,” says Garrus, “I thought we agreed no hitting below the belt?”

Norman grins, elbowing the call button on the elevator. “You agreed.”

#reese.fic #c: reason in madness #i am going to simply shit out the scenes that move into my head so they don't start living here rent free #the game canonically says everyone loves shepard and i'm here to inform you that when it comes to norman #they tolerate him at best.

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flatstarcarcosa · 2 years

Text

adoption

noun

1. the action or fact of legally taking another's child and bringing it up as one's own, or the fact of being adopted.

“I just can’t believe he did this!” The words are punctuated by the sound of a knife hitting a cutting board. Reese pauses, popping a slice of potato into their mouth and crunching angrily.

“Hm, absolutely!” agrees Jackal, joining in to snag a potato. “Remind me, what...exactly did Silco do, again? You left that part out in all of the aggressive potato stabbing.”

Reese frowns and roughly slices another potato in half. “He decided in a moment of sheer impulsive stupidity that we’re apparently going to take in a disturbed murder child, because, why not!”

Jackal perks up at that, eyebrows raising as they stretch out across the counter. “Murder child, you say?”

“CHILD,” Reese repeats. “An entire fucking child! He’s lost his mind. I swear to god, he’s lost his mind and now I’m going to have to just put him down as an act of mercy!”

“An entire child,” Jackal echoes, “as opposed to half a child. Which we all know is infinitely worse.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Reese asks. They gesture towards their face, either unaware of the fact they’re using the end of the knife to gesture or apathetic to the fact. “Do I look like anything about this is funny?”

“Absolutely not!” says Jackal. “However, the prospect of you kicking Silco to death in his own office? Hilarious. About this child-”

“She’s fucking insane,” says Reese. “And I mean,” they pause, gesturing at themself once more, “I would goddamn know!” Jackal nods in agreement, doing very, very well at the practicing of the empathy while waiting impatiently for the perfect time to press more about the child.

“Where did he get her?” they finally ask. “Why? How old is she? Is he aware neither of you should be raising a kid? No...actually, full offense, sorry.”

“I don’t know. Because he had ‘a moment’. She’s like...nine, or something,” says Reese, answering the volley of questions just as fast as they’d been asked. “And I know! That’s why I’m so mad! I don’t have a parental bone in my body and he’s an idiot if he thinks he does. She’s going to need to be watched, and what’s gonna happen every time he’s busy or not in the mood?”

“Exactly,” Jackal purrs, “what is going to happen?”

“Before or after I strangle him in his sleep with his own tie?” asks Reese. They toss the knife into the sink, where it bounces with a clatter before landing in the drain and getting stuck. They stop to look at it, frustration with Silco momentarily transferred to the helpless kitchen utensil. Jackal watches their temper boil behind their eyes, and leaps off the counter before the whistle can go off.

“Here’s an idea!” they say loudly, drawing attention. “She will simply need a babysitter. Someone to keep an eye on her when you two aren’t around, and...guide her, since we know Silco’s the last one who should have the final say on that.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Reese sarcastically, “you missed that part. Apparently ‘Sevika will handle it’.”

“Horrible idea,” says Jackal. “But, consider, if you will-”

“Should I strangle him or smother him?” Reese asks, only mildly paying attention to Jackal as they attempt to fish the knife loose. Jackal sighs.

“Consider, if you will,” they say again. “If you-”

“Maybe,” Reese grunts, pulling the knife loose. They swear as it slips from their hand, leaving a mild gash in their palm. Jackal sighs again, louder and more exasperated as they reach for a towel.

“Consider! If you will!” They say, a third time as they offer Reese the towel. “If you had someone to help with her. Someone that isn’t you, Silco, or Sevika.”

“I’m considering boxing her up and sending her back,” says Reese, “if that counts. Give her a blanket, little sign ‘free to good home’, like when you have a stray littler you didn’t expect.”

“Okay for one, shouldn’t do that to animals anyway,” says Jackal, “definitely shouldn’t do it to people. For two, what if I keep an eye on her? I’m sure with such delicate murder tendencies she will need proper care and instruction and also knives.”

“As long as she stops stealing my fucking chefs knives, I don’t give a shit,” says Reese, gesturing towards the now bloodied knife laying on the counter. They squeeze the towel against their palm. “I’m tired of chopping potatoes with a fucking bread knife, Jackal. A BREAD KNIFE.”

“The horror,” Jackal says, completely deadpan. “So we agree? You and Silco shouldn’t be trusted to be the only ones taking care of a child.”

“That was my whole complaint, and yes,” Reese adds before Jackal has a chance to say anything else. “I sincerely don’t care who watches her, but I do want to watch him pop a blood vessel when we tell him it should be you.”

“Fantastic.”

Reese makes a stop at a bathroom to grab some bandages and is still wrapping it around their hand when the two of them waltz into Silco’s office. He glances up from his desk, frowns, and looks back down.

“What have I told you about knocking?” he asks.

“You haven’t told me anything,” says Jackal.

“To do it more often, since you’ll settle for at least some of the time versus never,” says Reese at the same time. Jackal utters a soft oh as they realize they weren’t being spoken too, and takes a perch on top of a coffee table. Reese makes a show of pushing Silco and his chair away from his desk with one foot, and he looks up to glower at them as they sit directly on the paperwork he’d been examining.

“What, pray tell, is this about?” he asks, sighing.

“Honey,” Reese says, voice pitched a couple octaves higher than normal. The sweetness of the word yet drips, slightly, with venom.

“Darling,” Silco responds, his own tone matching.

“We need to have a talk about Powder.” Reese cuts to the meat of the issue and props their bad leg in his lap while attempting to tie off the bandage with one hand. Silco rolls his eyes, but leans forward nonetheless to tie it for them.

“That’s not her name anymore,” he says.

“What?” Reese frowns as he tightens the bandage and leans back in his seat.

“She doesn’t want to be called that anymore,” he says simply. “Her name is Jinx now.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Reese sighs. “What I care about is that she’s driving me insane, and we shouldn’t just be letting her run around with no supervision like she is.”

“She’s not unsupervised,” says Silco stiffly.

“Where is she, right now?” asks Reese.

“The important thing is that Sevika is watching her,” he says. Reese rolls their eyes again.

“Sevika’s getting drunk at the Last Drop, kid not included.”

“Damn her,” Silco hisses.

“The fuck were you expecting? She was just gonna cozy up to the kid that incinerated her fucking arm?” Reese frowns, dropping their leg. “This isn’t an environment for a kid. And before you start-” they hold up a finger, silencing Silco before he interrupts “-I know that nowhere down here is. But I also know what she’s going to need is someone that isn’t us, that isn’t balls deep in this shit to be able to... I don’t know, do whatever kids do. At least for a while.”

Silco narrows his eyes, tilting his head to look around Reese at Jackal. Jackal offers a wave, currently lying across the coffee table on their back with one leg crossed over the other.

“And I suppose Jackal is your suggestion,” he says flatly.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know Jackal, only by reputation,” he says. “If you expect me to trust them with my- with Jinx with what I know of them, you don’t know me as well as you think.”

“Oh?” asks Jackal, unaware until now that they have any kind of reputation. “What’ve you heard?”

“Nothing I find charming,” Silco snaps.

“I’m not asking you to trust Jackal,” says Reese, prompting a frown Jackal themself. “I’m asking you to trust me, and I trust them.”

Silco regards them both, Reese for far longer, and says nothing. He reaches for a cigar, and frowns when Reese swats his hand away.

“All right, all right,” he snaps. “Fine. I don’t disagree that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to have someone else around. But she tells me she doesn’t like it, or you,” he adds, pointing at Jackal, “it ends. Understood?”

“Oh absolutely,” says Jackal. “Which won’t happen, I’m very good with murder children. Now, I should probably go find her, since apparently you don’t know what she’s up to.”

Jackal is up and out the door in a flash, giving Silco no chance to respond to the verbal barb. Instead he’s left with only Reese, and a staring contest. One arched eyebrow above their glasses, and fingers drumming against their bicep. He relents first when reaches once more for his cigars. They allow it this time, if only to pluck it from his mouth after its lit to smoke it themself.

“I still don’t like this,” he says, reaching for a second cigar.

“Well you should have thought of that before you decided we’d all play fucking house without asking me,” they say.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asks, smoke trailing out of his mouth as he speaks.

“I don’t know! But there was a time where that kind of shit wasn’t our fucking business,” Reese says. “We didn’t get involved unless it was profitable...or, y’know, funny, and I don’t see this being either right now.”

“Maybe sometimes it’s not just about that,” he says softly.

“Oh, don’t start,” Reese groans. He looks up at them, brows furrowed.

“Are you mad that I rescued her,” he says slowly, “or are you jealous because you’re still mad no one ever did it for you?”

The tone of room, and conversation, switches in a flash as the sound of Reese’s boot hitting the floor echoes like a shot. As they’re pulling their fist back and aiming it towards his jaw, Silco is rising fast enough to send his chair sailing towards the window. It slams into it with another bang, the noise sounding almost in time with a crack from Reese’s knee.

They put their weight for the punch on their bad knee, exactly as he’d expected they would. The result is them glancing down at their footing and reflexively dropping their fist to instead grab at his shoulder for support. The flurry of movement ends with him supporting their waist while they clutch a bundle of his shirt in their hand.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he notes neither of them dropped their cigar, and can’t help an amused chuckle as he reaches up to pull his down and rest it in the ash tray.

“I wouldn’t have to drag things out of you if you’d just talk to me, you know,” he says. Reese grunts and corrects their footing before making a show of shoving him back. He holds his hands up, sarcastically placating.

“There’s some things that stay buried,” they say, and angrily stub their own cigar out. “You know that.”

Silco hums in response, watching intently as they stomp across his office. He pulls his chair back to his desk as they slam the door hard enough to rattle in the frame, and lets out an exhausted sigh. He stares at the closed door for a while, through the haze of smoke and letting his thoughts recenter before returning his attention to the stack of paperwork before him.

He’s no sooner read a single sentence before a thud up above tears him away once more, and catches sight of a nervous pair of blue eyes looking down from the shadows.

“Yes, Jinx?” he asks. “Did you need something?”

“Do you wanna meet my new friend?” asks Jinx, almost apprehensively. A small smirk tugs at his lips as he realized no one had actually discussed how Jackal would introduce themself to Jinx, yet somehow the agreement of not telling her Silco already knew was evident.

“I would love to,” he says.

#reese.fic #ship: jesus for the jugular #others: jackal #bruh why do i actually really like the writing on this one tho #also reesco is like right behind reezai for fucked up 'i should have murdered you when i had the chance'#'BUTCHA DIDN'T' dynamics and we truly hate this for me.

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