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luisa2swag · 3 years

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Love me for me (2)

he towered over you, chest looking larger than usual thanks to the tight white shirt that stuck to his body with sweat. Your eyes darted to his nipple and before he could even muster another insult, His nipples were firmly grasped between your thumbs and index fingers, twisting away with all your might.

Your lips tugged upwards in satisfaction when he let out a yell of surprise and pain.

"What the actual fuck?!" He backed away, freeing himself from your hands. You smirked "Now you know why my last name is Mcniplecocker. Because I twist nipples and I certainly do have a cock!"

You were shameless as you said theses words. Jungkook couldn't even bother thinking of something else to say other than "okay I'm leaving." As you watched him walk away from you in the empty classroom. You saw him turn the doorknob but he did not move.

Was he maybe going to say something?

The tugs at the door knob became more violent with each twist and you could see Jungkook losing patience. His shoulders slumped, "We're locked in."

"W-what?"

[THREE HOURS BEFORE BEING LOCKED]

"W-wow." You looked at the school in amazement, boxes in your hands, you watched as the other male students buzzled around campus with their parents and installed themselves into their dorms.

You didn't have the luxury of being here with your dad. Imagine one of the most wanted criminals in the past setting foot into a place filled with lawyers. Your plan would be immediately dead but most importantly, you'd be behind bars.

This school must of been as old as Harvard. The building resembled the ones they would teach about in history class -You know the medieval ages- only the inside had been done up.

They were the only University that didn't open its gates to every gender which only lured more male heirs from all over the planet.

Parents thought that no girls meant no distractions but what they failed to know was that in 2018,some boys didn't just like girls.

"Hey, do you want help? You seem lost.." startled at the sudden deep voice coming from your right side, you jumped a bit.

Turning around to take a look at who had the audacity to initiate a conversation with your lonely ass. To be completely honest, you had just been standing around, mouth agape, looking at boys passing you by.

Holy shit he's hot

Instantly, you felt blood rush to your cheeks, you hoped that he wouldn't notice. He stood tall compared to you, nose long and eyes almost rectangle-ish. The sun and the ore gold were both jealous of his heavenly skin. You watched as he ran a large hand through his chestnut hair.

"Uh-huh" was all you could muster. A frown draped itself on your features, realizing how dumb and un-dude-ish you just sounded. Maybe you shouldn't be so hard on yourself, nothing could prepare you to the fact that a freaking model would be here speaking to your thirsty ass.

"Are you perhaps looking for your dorm? I had tricky time finding mine too in my first year." His voice god his voice.

"Am Taehyung, by the way." He smiled, a smile so adorable you couldn't help but smile back too.

"Am Bob, yeah I think I need help."you smiled sheepishly, holding your box closer to your chest.

"Alright, ill need the number of your dorm."

"67-b"

"Ahhh, that's the law dorms. So you're a law student huh? So am I." He seemed excited. Long legs already taking the lead to find your dorm.

"Are you a third year student or ?" You asked, now entering the dorm you presumed to be yours.

"No, just a second year." He smiled.

You both walked in a comfortable silence until he stopped infront of a door. "67-b is here." He said with the nod of his head, leaning against the wall near the door.

"Do we usually have roommates?" You read that since it was such a prestigious and little school, they would give you your own room but you needed to be sure. You didn't want any surprises. "Yeah it'll just be you in there." He affirmed with his usual dashing smile.

"Official classes start in two days but if you want, you could still go check out the classrooms. There won't be any teachers so make sure you leave the door open or else you might be surprised."

"Oh okay." You didn't bother dropping your voice a couple octaves, sure that in the near future where you could be possibly drunk or inattentive, It'd royally fuck you up. You found it to be a better idea to stick to your normal low but warm voice and let the guys think that "oh, his voice sounds slightly feminine!"

You took a step back, hoodie floating around your body and hiding your womanly curves the best it could, you bowed slightly "thank you so much. I hope I'll see you around school!" You actually did hope to see him around .

Not only was he devilishly handsome but very sweet. You wouldn't mind spending time with him all while gawking at his beauty greater than the Greek gods. "If you want, in about three hours I'll be able to hang. I would've been available way sonner if it wasn't for the fact that we both need to unpack a little bit. We could meet up at your new law class? What do you say?" He pointed finger guns at you, only making you blush more.

Fuck he doesn't even know I am a girl and here I am blushing like a schoolgirl just because he invited me to hang out.

"I'd love to I-I mean yeah, that be cool dude." Awkwardly, you raised a fist in the air which he happily bumped. "Okay I'll be off now!"

And just like that, the chestnut haired boy was out of your feet with hop of his own. Leaving you to unpack with the sound of 90's music from your cellphone.

Your room was a decent size, a simple bed on the left with a desk on the right, a tiny kitchen area and out and down the hallways were the shared bathrooms.

You took out the basics, some clothes, toothbrush, the frozen goods your dad had cooked you and bedsheets. You'd finish up your room later,after seeing Taehyung.

Yeah, I'll do this as soon as I get back!

[thirty minutes before being locked]

Your room looked neat. There were still some boxes here and there but you promised yourself to unpack them as soon as you got back.

Now you had changed into a comfortable black t-shirt and joggers.You made sure to duck-tape your breast, of course.

You stepped outside, the sun hung lower but still shined and the wind blew, giving you a comfortable breeze. The other students also seemed to take this evening as a chance to explore the campus more.

You watched as two boys ran, almost bumping you on their way. The shorter one with plump lips turned and blurted a bunch of apologizes before his taller lean friend dragged him by the collar. "Cmon Jimin, we need to get him !" And they were gone, leaving you to wonder exactly who they were going to get.

You continued making your way to the class, eventually finding it.

It was spacious just like in the movies about college life. You quickly found yourself a the front where the teacher desk was but before that you made sure to keep the door open, starring into space and waiting for the young man. You heard foot-steps and a smile already adorned your features.

You turned around, waiting to be met with the chestnut haired boy but you were just met face to face with a chestnut haired boy, that wasn't your chestnut haired boy.

"Erm, sorry." You squirmed away as the buff boy with the angular nose reached to grab something behind you.

"Were you really trying to steal the notes professor had prepared for me?" He took out a sheet of paper almost out of thin air and you just stared in amazement until it hit you.

Hold on, did this guy just accuse me ?

"W-what? I didn't even know that was there. I don't even know who you are!" Brows twisted together in confusion, you couldn't help but dart your eyes to the paper and to his piercing gaze, examining me like a corpse.

I gulped when he crossed his arms over his chest, oblivious to his flexing, he stood about one head and a half taller than me.

"You're lying. Everyone knows me." He scoffed, confident in the words he spoke as I blinked away, still In confusion.

"Come again?" I tried, I really genuinely had no clue who this dude was. I mean yeah he's kinda cute or whatever but with an attitude like that, I don't see him having any friends.

"Of course you would play dumb, well you are dumb for trying to steal my notes. Maybe you should take the initiative like me and ask teachers to prepare you notes of everything you'll have to study for the semester." His thin upper lip twitched upwards, his eyes trailing over my body, probably judging.

"I wouldn't be so quick to judge lil punk, school hasn't even started yet and to inform you, i am the smartest student here, I don't need your bitchass notes to be able to catch up on class before class has even started."ooooh I burned his bunny looking ass!

A smirk adorned my full lips when I noticed the blush spread across his cheeks like wildfire. I watched as his confident facade slowly broke when he took a step back.

"I guess you really don't know me then, my name is Jeon Jungkook." Now he was the one with the smirk.

I deadpanned, "Uh, yeah I totally know you. Omg I cant believe I didn't realize sonner!" Arms crossed, I rolled my eyes.

"Think harder dumbass. Jeon Jungkook, doesn't that ring any bells?"

I thought hard, past all the cat memes, gta on PlayStation 2 cheat codes, my club penguin password, the pin of my first iPod. Past all the unnecessary things my brain stored I finally found what he has hinting.

All boys : Great Jeon University

It couldn't be, no .

Or could it be ? With my luck it could. His smile grew larger as he saw my eyes widen in shock. "Don't tell me this is some crappy wattpad plot where your family happens to own this school?" I already dreaded the answer I knew I would get. "Yes it is." His chest proudly rose.

"Well I couldn't care less , dumbass." I stated, indifferent.

"I just told you that my family basically owns this place and you don't give a shit?" Index pointed at my face, he asked dumbfounded. Not sure if my lack of respect for him should be a good thing or not. "You have a lot of guts for saying that to the great Jeon."

"If you're so great how come you don't know how to tie your shoes properly, doo-doo head ?" I shot back, taking a step closer with my chin up, finger pointing at his untied basketball shoes. Jungkook scoffed "why am I even here arguing with you? You sure talk a lot but you forget that your last name is Mcniplecocker. Thats an instant L" Your eyes twitched confused, how did he know your name? Then your orbs wondered down to your shirt who haired had gifted you as a joke with your fake name written just above your left tit.

Your lips tugged upwards in satisfaction when he let out a yell of surprise and pain.

"What the actual fuck?!" He backed away, freeing himself from your hands. You smirked "Now you know why my last name is Mcniplecocker. Because I twist nipples and I certainly do have a cock!"

[taehyung pov]

I don't remember the building being so far... I entered the law block, nothing but the sound of my sneakers against the wood floor could be heard. Hallways were clear and so was the sky this evening. I smiled thinking of the new friend I had made.

Pat pat pat I whipped my head around st the sudden running noise "Jimin? Namjoon?" My brows arched in confusion, I watched how they frantically started shouting my name.

I looked back to the front

The class where I had so kindly asked you to meet up with me was maybe twenty steps away

I couldn't just blow you off, no that wasn't something I'd want at all.

But with a blink of an eye and a stumbling Jimin, we we're passed the door and left behind a loud clacking noise. In fear of having accidentally closed the door shut, I twisted my neck to look back all while running with the two grown man looped around my arms. "J-Jimin, the d-door!" I let out breathless, heart thumping

"Guys -wait there's someone-" Jimin quickly interrupted "Yoongi snuck a girl on campus!" I looked back again, wishing that my gut feeling was wrong, wishing I hadn't just locked someone in a classroom.

She might be late, everyone comes late nowadays! I reassured myself.

With a aggressive tug of my sleeve from Namjoon, I realized that I didn't have a choice.

I'll come back later, I promise.

[Narrator pov] You were shameless as you said theses words. Jungkook couldn't even bother thinking of something else to say other than "okay I'm leaving." As you watched him walk away from you in the empty classroom. You saw him turn the doorknob but he did not move.

Was he maybe going to say something?

The tugs at the door knob became more violent with each twist and you could see Jungkook losing patience. His shoulders slumped, "We're locked in."

"W-what?"

#bts imagines #bts fanfic #jungkook #taehyung x reader #jungkook x reader #bts

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curlicuecal · 7 years

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Let’s Be Outcasts (ch 14/?) (AR/Kankri)

Part 2 of cyber!bunny Apocalypse ‘verse (tumblr)

ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

read on AO3

Summary: Divergent AU where AR and Li'l Seb get kicked into a new universe with some snazzy new cyborg bodies. They’re still working out the bugs.

In which AR discovers that kidnapping rarely solves more problems than it creates, Mituna breaks out of a lab (with some help), and Seb continues to take good care of his Bro.

—-

Ch 14.

Cutting through the streets of a patchwork city, following the trail marked by a small robot bunny turned cyborg child, you attempt to explain your life to a troll you were thinking about murdering not 72 hours ago.

You don’t know how long it’ll take you to catch up with Seb, but you’ve got a looming mystery device de-activation to keep on schedule with, so you treat Kankri to the outline version of your backstory. And by outline you mean you leave some things out entirely. Wallowing in old memories is not on your emotional to-do list for the foreseeable future, and anyway, you’re hoping that the caffeinated cliffnotes rendition will make you sound less like a crazy person.

Alternate realities and reality altering games, check; watery sea Hitler dystopia, check; trolls and humans from previous game iterations, check. Teenagers creating artificial intelligence brain-clones in their bedrooms… eh. What are the odds of that being plot relevant, really?

You breeze through the getting left behind bit so fast even you aren’t sure you covered it before you’re on and already wrapping up with “…so Sawtooth and Squarewave grabbed a door out of the universe and me and Seb followed after and tah-dah, here we are; you might have some familiarity with the end of this story.”

You’re currently picking your way through the debris of a crumbling boathouse/alien hell-garage that some universal force has very inconveniently plopped down in the middle of a street, so you can’t actually watch Kankri’s face for reaction. This is fine. His reactions are, provably, of statistically insignificant consequence in the calculation of your internal state. Really. You could make spreadsheets.

You duck a ceiling beam and hopscotch a broken boardwalk of wooden planks, turning to catch a glimpse of him in the corner display of your ever helpful shades. Chin down, brows drawn together, he appears lost in thought—although that might just be his contemplation of the route least likely to collapse under his feet. (You’re going through the landlocked boathouse rather than, say, around because your path-flagger is a tiny robot bunny child with apparently no setting other than DIRECT. Thanks, Seb.)

“Spoilers,” you add, “the end of the story contains explosions and kidnapping.”

That at least provokes a twitch, eyes flicking over to you as he draws level and then passes. You make your way after him, watching the back of his head, something restless and dissatisfied in your gut. He’s been—well, not quiet, quiet is rarely the appropriate word for Kankri. But for all the intensity of his attention to your story, his questions and comments have remained inscrutably neutral. You’d expected more… reaction? Humorous huffing and flailing and stubborn argument with your reality. But no, just this loaded silence and the questions.

You’d assume he thought you were full of shit if each verbal probe didn’t jab directly to some tender spot like a heat-seeking missile.

“You don’t think you’ll find the rest of your companions?” Kankri asks.

Like that one.

“Different doors, different universe.” Focus on your steps. Kankri runs lightly along a fallen crossbeam and you follow after. “That’s the whole point.”

“But you didn’t go into the same universe as your friends?”

“It is physically challenging to pass through a door that has stopped existing.” Your own voice has grabbed some toneless, sing-song neutrality, old auto-responder rhythms emerging without thought, wrapping around the words to keep them separate from you. You have the idea that that maybe gives away more than it conceals, so you make an effort to lever some glib back in there, too.

“’Friends’ is such a strong term, anyway. ‘Long-term associates by necessity’? ‘People who are better at navigating through access portals than me’? ‘Proud recipients of the ‘Winner’s Only’ Universe award’? For winners? And their friends?” You sense you might be failing at glib. But words have always been your core armament and damn but you have a lot of them. “PS: no offense–great world you’ve got going here and all, love the man-eating plant zombies–but have you considered we might be in the multiverse’s equivalent of a junk drawer? Like, we are literally spelunking through spare parts that didn’t make the cut right now. An entire universe built out of defective extras. Opposite of the winner’s ‘verse is—”

Kankri stops in his tracks so abruptly you almost trip right into the back of him. You end up awkwardly skip-hopping several steps sideways in your efforts to stay upright and avoid impact.

You take another step back when he wheels on you, then manage to hold your ground when he plants himself right up in your space.

“I hope,” he says, in clipped tones, “you will forgive me if I seem to be silencing your viewpoint, but I find the idea that an individual’s circumstances are interchangeable with their worth to be fundamentally offensive.”

“Um,” you say. His eyes are very bright. Chin high, stance set, looking down his nose at you like some kind of classical angel casting down judgment. You resist the urge to back up another pace. “I didn’t mean it… quite like that.” You think.

He doesn’t budge an inch. “Excuse me for not appreciating the implication that I was hatched into some kind of universally decreed lesser state. Or do you think your circumstances in life are somehow more inherently meaningful than mine? This isn’t a game and it’s never been fair. You talk like being here is—is something you earned, some kind of punishment, when all I hear is a series of accidental mishaps and coincidences that no one present could have accounted for. It’s a universe, not a referendum on your character.”

Your breath comes short and superficial in your chest. For once, you think your face might actually be completely blank, if only because you have so many complicated emotions going on right now mere organic features couldn’t hope to compose a functional physical representation of them.

“…That was a very long way to say ‘shit happens,’” you say faintly.

Kankri actually flashes his fangs at you. Which is, um. Sort of interesting actually, but wow do you not need to add any more confusion to the feelings pile right now. It’s like he flayed you open with words just to pick apart vulnerabilities you didn’t even know you had. (A pointless, pointless fucking accident. Do you think that you deserved it, do you think they wouldn’t have changed it if they could?) How do you not be a flippant asshole when you can’t even deal with the question existing in the first place?

Kankri sucks in a breath. “First of all—“

“Sorry,” you interject, because when all else fails you can at least pretend to not be a massive tool. The surprise draws him, blinking, to a halt.

“That’s—that was a good point. Actually. I—I’ll have to think about that.” Do you really, though. Okay, fine, probably; you are rationally aware that permavoidance is not a tenable long term strategy for proper social adjustment and damned if you won’t face your demons like a Strider.

…Later.

“Also I don’t think you’re a lesser being. If that was unclear. All of my hang ups are 100%, grade-A me-centered; it’s this thing I’m doing where I forget my words reflect on other people and are generally capable of being offensive and sort of degrading when followed through to their logical conclusions.”

You know what’s terrible? Apologizing. And also sincerity. And having an organic nervous system that rings horrible fluttery alarm bells whenever it decides you’ve got a vulnerability showing—thanks, self, you can work that out without your heart humming deafeningly in your ears or your neck flushing hot.

Kankri’s still looking at you, eyes startled, lips parted like you’ve caught him off-balance, and that, at least, is a small victory that you can cling to.

He’s still just… right there. He’s not close, not exactly, there’s a solid body’s width of clear space between you, plenty of room for the Holy Spirit to get down and jiggy with it, but he feels close. Hemmed in by fallen beams and the debris of this strange, out-of-place building; moonlight trickling uneven through cracks in the ceiling; and it strikes you, suddenly, that you’ve literally never been alone with anyone except Seb.

(It wasn’t kind, what he said, it wasn’t nice or sensitive or empathetic to your experience, but maybe you still wanted to hear it and maybe there’s a fascination in the way he never lets any of your shit slide like it doesn’t matter.)

And then, thank god, the floor collapses under your left foot.

“Ow, fuck,” you say, and then: “…Found the next path marker.” From this angle Seb’s shuriken is clearly visible high in the next wall over, glinting dully in a promising ray of exterior moonlight.

“Are you all right?” Kankri asks. You peel your elbows up off the floorboards to see that he’s hovering uncertainly close, feet placed carefully, hands half out like he went to touch and then thought better of it. Hm.

“…Yep.” Bruised and scraped and disoriented, flat on one knee and up to your ankle in rotten board, but, as buildings trying to eat you goes, surprisingly all right. Wow, you are hella lucky you didn’t break something going over like that. Incapacitated by architecture, how completely mortifying would that be?

Kankri, you note, has not set a foot wrong this entire time.

“Systems are registering 100% peachy.” Teeth gritted, you ease your leg back through the gap, shaking loose rot-soft splinters. You’ve ripped your pants and your shin’s scraped all down one side, but it’s oozing, not spurting or gushing or anything. Dirk’s gotten around fine on worse than this plenty of times. So whyyyy does it still have to hurt like the bloody blazes? Nervous systems. Ugh.

You head for the hopefully-an-exit-wall, choosing your footing attentively again, but moving at a good clip. Kankri follows after, hanging close. …If he starts trying to coddle you the way Seb does you are going to lose your damn shit. But ten paces later you realize he’s using each footing you test and he hasn’t even tried to recommend better ones. Your shoulders unknot a fraction.

The final, exterior wall turns out to contain a solid row of boarded up windows and… that’s about it. Well, there’s also fallen beams and a pile of decaying nets further blocking some of the boarded windows. “Seb, what the heck,” you mutter blankly.

Kankri cranes his head way back. “I think he went out that sort of… porthole aperture. The one tucked under the ceiling arch.” His own voice sounds a little flat.

You both contemplate the climb. Unanimously and with no discussion, you elect to set about prying free some window boards instead. It’s a team effort.

“Is it okay if I hate that building in particular?” you ask not very long afterwards, when you’re outside picking yourself out of the dirt below the narrow opening you made. “Because I think that building in particular was designed by leprechauns entirely to spite me.”

Kankri, who made it through the window with a surprising amount of facility after shedding his cloak, looks up sharply from fiddling with the fabric. “You can feel however you want.”

You blink, uncertainly, and still don’t know what to make of his tone by the time he looks away again. “…Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Kankri fiddles with his cloak laces some more, but he’s got that little tick line between his brows that implies he’s thinking hard. You are starting to find Kankri’s deep-in-thought face nearly as alarming as the intake of breath that denotes the wind up to a lecture.

Whatever. You’ve got places to go, so you set off down the street towards a fluttering strip of blue cloth. Kankri shadows you silently.

Maybe he’s mad at you.

“Thank you for telling me your story,” he says, abruptly, and you are left to face the possibility that maybe you just don’t understand Kankri Vantas even a tiny fucking bit. He abandons his laces to fold his hands in front of him, squares his shoulders as he falls into pace with you and, oops, yes, there is the lecture-breath. “I should have expressed that earlier. I recognize that that was a symbolic gesture of trust on your part and that my behavior may have come across as …insensitive to your emotional vulnerability and accompanying cognitive distortions.”

You have this weird thing where you find him sort of offensive and charming and hilarious all at the same time and you can’t put your finger on the fascination. Probably you’re going to die of it. He picks through every phrase like it’s a foreign concept he’s memorized by rote and he’s so damn sincere even when he’s insulting you to your face.

“Also,” he adds, as you skirt some thick brambles that are eating a set of surprisingly unrusted construction machinery, “I appreciate your openness to correction.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, but politely refrain from derailing that into kink territory. “I’m not a homework assignment. I’m not going to agree with you just because you come at me with a red pen that says I should.”

“I never—“ Kankri pauses, checks himself. “It wasn’t my intention to imply that I expected you to. Of course I only want you to listen to reasoned arguments.”

“What, despite my crippling cognitive distortions?”

“Please refrain from putting reductive adjectives in my mouth. I only meant it was an emotionally charged topic for you and—and I appreciate that you were willing to listen despite your rationality on the subject being impaired.”

He’s got his black-in-gold eyes fixed on you again, intent and painfully earnest, and it’s short-circuiting your ability not to feel a little touched. In the way where you would also like him to stop harping on about your irrationality, but, hey, choose your battles. “You’re welcome,” you say dryly, stealing a response from his repertoire. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of being too emotional before. You do realize you’re talking to the guy that’s basically a microchip implanted in a meat-suit, right?”

“And you realize that you are propagating harmful stereotypes when you make flippant comments of that nature. Cybernetically modified humans are human in origin and are perfectly capable of a full range of typical human emotions. I can’t say that I’ve noticed you are any exception in this regard. Except perhaps for being incredibly aggravating.”

“Flattery.”

“Besides,” he adds, ignoring your smirk, “that prejudice is premised on the idea that a certain way of processing reactions is somehow the superior state. Saying something has to have emotions to have its personhood recognized is just another direction for enforcing a social caste system favoring the status quo.”

“In other words, systemic oppression continues to be a fun, fun, multidimensional exercise in how many new and exciting combo-attacks we can create. Yay, intersectional privilege.”

Kankri blinks and looks sideways at you. His brows twitch in. “…I’m not familiar with those terms in that context,” he says after a pause.

This, you reflect, is the Kankri Vantas method of asking for clarification: guarded, resentful, vaguely accusatory; like you knowing something he doesn’t is some kind of intentional slight.

You shrug disarmingly, wave a hand. “Uh. Well, privilege is…advantages you get based solely on chance or social structures; and intersectional is, like, the idea that you can have a bunch of advantages or disadvantages from different sources pile non-additively to make the system even more unfair…”

You trail off because there’s a strange gleam in his eyes. You feel like you’ve just given crack cocaine to a baby.

“Privilege,” Kankri repeats, in a thoughtful tone.

You don’t flinch, but it feels like you should.

Maybe you should not teach Kankri any more cross-dimensional lecture vocabulary. Or…. You contemplate the intriguing possibility that you could teach him all the words. That would probably be terrifying. And hilarious.

…holy hell, who placed this kind of power in your hands? There is no way you are not going to wield this for evil.

You are still contemplating your potential for AI super-villainy when Kankri interrupts your thoughts.

“Were cy privileged very differently in the society you came from?”

You miss a step. Thanks, adrenaline surge. Lie or tell the truth? Lie or tell the truth? Lie or– “There weren’t any cy.”

Kankri blinks. “But you—”

…Yep. You really, really, don’t like his thoughtful silences.

You could have just told him. A whole long crazy speech about alternate realities and you could have dropped ‘I’m actually a high-tech photocopy of a brain’ in there anywhere. You could still tell him right now. ‘I got dropped into this flesh suit via game mechanics I still don’t understand and I don’t know whether it’s worse if it’s just an accident or if something decided that this was as close to being a person as I get.’ You could just. Say it. Except the muscles of your throat feel tight and locked like a system failure.

He’s looking at you. “A number of your comments have suggested surprise or unfamiliarity with. Erm. Details of your person?”

The thing you keep forgetting when you go into your bullshit snark routines is that he just keeps listening.

“…Were you an unmodified human?” Kankri sounds dubious at the possibility. That—hurts. Maybe. You can’t even tell what you feel anymore.

“No.” Your sentence ends before it even really starts. Oh, great. At this rate you can play a game of twenty questions on the topic. Or charades.

You tell yourself, again, all the reasons you’re being ridiculously overdramatic and all the reasons it doesn’t matter to you in the least if you just say the thing. Ha ha. Nope. You are not remotely okay with this, you’ve smacked face first into a steel wall of not okay do-not-go-there, and at the very least you can try to not to add self-delusion to your list of sins.

“I thought,” you evade finally, “the deal was for an exchange of information. It seems I’m carrying out the greater part of the soul-baring legwork here.”

Kankri frowns at you. “You’re uncomfortable with this topic,” he says, like a revelation.

You resist the urge to facepalm. Then you decide, what the heck, you’ve got hands, clearly the universe has provided for this situation. “Congratulations on your impeccable analysis,” you tell him sincerely through your fingers.

Kankri’s frown increases. “Is this the part you meant before about being flippant as a coping mechanism?”

Pffft. Okay. You’re still upset, but this is also funny. And also sort of endearing, but you really, really need to stop thinking like that because it’s probably proof you have a wire crossed. Or several. “On the balance of probability?” You slide him a provoking smirk. “Historical precedent would indicate I am being flippant roughly 95.5% of the time.”

“That would imply you’re trying to cope most of the time,” Kankri says blankly, and then does this thoughtful little head tilt that makes you want to smack yourself in the face again. “I don’t even understand why you’d be uncomfortable,” he adds, chin rising. “You’re aware that I’m a mutant. Hemoanomalous trolls are supposed to be culled at hatching, are not eligible for imperial service to the Ebon Empire, and, given interspecies tensions, are essentially locked out of every organized society currently in existence on this planet. Not to devalue whatever your own experiences might be, but on a spectrum of… intersectional privilege… targeted genocide strikes me as the likely lower threshold.”

“…Point.” You narrow your eyes behind your shades. “I see you mastered the privilege Olympics at full speed.”

He narrows his eyes right back at you, then turns away with a toss of his horns. “I don’t know what that means. But my custodian always said strategic thinking can turn a vulnerability to a strength, or a pawn to a queen.”

“Talkative lusus.”

Kankri sniffs. “Don’t be species-prescriptive. If it’s any business of yours my lusus-mother is carapacian.”

You consider that for a minute, picking your way down a rapidly narrowing alleyway. “How’d that happen?”

He hesitates a half-beat before waving a hand dismissively. “Oh, the usual way.”

You’re guessing that means something different for trolls.

The alleyway grows still narrower, and he waits politely for you to go ahead of him, hangs back to give you your space. Courteous. Careful. He’s one more person that’s worked out the ‘don’t touch the jumpy cyborg’ rules and, considering how oblivious he is to everything else that hasn’t been explicitly spelled out, you can’t help but wonder grimly whether it’s so much consideration as fear. He seems self-assuredly smug enough, but you’re still the dude that kidnapped him and held him at sword point not so very long ago.

(–he flinched, and he looked at you with eyes that burned like coals, and you did that, you put that bright kernel of fear there behind the steel–)

“—so, do I get to hear the Kankri Vantas secrets repository?” You’ve turned sideways to crab your way through the excessively narrow space between brick and stone—what even, Seb; thank you so very much for this entire experience—so you can see him cast you an unreadable glance.

“Should I interpret that to mean you would prefer I not ask further questions about your person?”

“Gotta save something for the second date,” you quip, before you can really think about it. He blinks and you bite your tongue, hard. Whaaaaat are you doing here, exactly? Everything about this situation is still a majorly bad idea, and you’re trying to cut back on those.

“I… see,” Kankri says, looking utterly puzzled by you.

Oh, look, this wall is conveniently close should you urgently need to knock some sense into your skull. Maybe you should stay here. You skootch your way free from the end of the alley and grab for the first conversational redirect that comes to mind as you wait for Kankri to catch up.

“Not eligible for imperial service, huh? I don’t want to make unsolicited conjectures here, but that sure sounds like ‘not actually working for the government.’”

He stops and looks at you. You feel like there is something very heavy hanging in the air, poised to tip. To fall. To break.

You never could resist pushing.

“So? Are you?”

There’s a few ticks of silence. “No,” he says finally. “Not particularly.”

And boom, there’s that adrenaline buzz back, licking through your veins like lightning, the world slowly tilting towards something new. (He’s going to tell you.) ((he’s going to trust you.))

“I wouldn’t be …welcome. Which isn’t to say that Porrim and Latula and the rest of our… assemblage don’t have service obligations to fulfill,” Kankri adds, briefly distracted by the minutiae of precision word-smithing. “But those imperial obligations are, I admit, entirely extraneous to our purpose here.” He pauses, and you can’t turn away from the weight of his gaze, intense upon you, there in the mouth of the alley.

“In fact,” he says, still studying you, evidently choosing his words with care, “you might go so far as to say they are in opposition.”

Adrenaline spikes, hot and sweet.

He hesitates again, drawing in a breath, but now it’s very much the hesitation of someone settling themselves into the irrevocable pull of gravity before a leap. You make a sound of encouragement, low in your throat, and startle yourself with how much it sounds like sex.

Okay, you know what? You’re going to chalk everything about this day up to ‘organic physiology is stupid, non-compliant, and not my fault’ and add ‘get a handle on yourself’ to your urgent to-do list. In whatever sense of the word ‘handle’ puts you back in charge of your own reactions.

And now you’ve gotten so flustered distracted you’ve actually missed the next bit of Kankri’s speech.

“—drones themselves are not the problem, but rather the centralized nature of the collection of, er… genetic material.”

Wait, back up.

Why are you getting a lecture on troll reproduction.

“Looked at that way you can see the issue,” Kankri adds, oblivious to your wildly shifting attention. He’s definitely warming to his topic, chin tilted up, eyes half-closing, hands gesturing. “Governmental control of reproduction creates a fundamental power imbalance between the government and the populace—not just for trolls, but for carapacians as well. Even the human cy, in a way, since they could breed but not reproduce their technological alterations.”

The flow of his words doesn’t stop, but he does that thing where he peeks one eye open like he’s checking his lecture is having the appropriate impact. You’re still in the middle of mood whiplash—you give him blankface. Your mind buzzes, trying to catch up, slotting new information into place, chasing down implications.

“They can’t choose to walk away from their empires,” Kankri says, “—not and persist.” His tone picks up conviction and he leans in toward you almost unconsciously, hands gesturing. You’re transfixed, frozen. It feels like any action might break this moment, send you leaning in or bolting back, or startle Kankri into stopping talking, which is ridiculous, nothing ever stops Kankri talking, but you really, really want him to keep talking. You want to know.

“Only the unmodified human populace have that option, and they’re still recovering from perigees of heterospecific oppression and war. The lynchpin of societal control is always the next generation. If we—“

Something… shushes, a hushed, sliding noise across concrete, from just around the corner.

You’re muscling Kanrki back into the cover of the alley before you have time to process anything beyond your body’s immediate ‘danger, will robinson’ chemical shrilling.

Kankri stifles his yelp surprisingly quickly. He ends tense but silent, his eyes wide and bright and red on you, his pupils contracted down to points. His body has gone stiff and defensive from head to toe, a fact you can attest to because your rapid retreat left you both wedged tight against each other, pressed between brick and stone in the narrow confines of the alley.

You can’t breathe. You can’t look away.

His eyes are so close, his face is so close. A breath away, if either of you were breathing. You can feel the heat of him right through your clothes, the not-quite tremble of muscles drawn taut in a line up your thigh and abdomen. His hand, pressed over your heart, trying to keep some space, sears you like a brand. He could do some damage with those claws.

It sort of feels like he’s damaging you right now, burning you right up.

You sort of like it.

Can you panic on behalf of yourself and someone else at the same time? Because you might be about to flip your ever-loving shit.

Kankri’s eyes flick towards the mouth of the alley.

That sliding noise comes again, so soft you might have mistaken it for the feather fall of sand down a slope—a sort of swish swish swish of something moving back and forth.

You have heard that before.

“Dominion sanitator,” Kankri says, and it’s hardly more than a breath by your collarbone.

Oh, joy, more unfamiliar alien terminology. Not helpful, but at least it distracts you from the panic attack you are very much not having. You follow his glance toward the street ahead, but there’s nothing to see. Whatever’s moving out there (big, quiet—hunting?) is still a street over at least. Kankri does not look inclined to go out and say hi to it.

Where did you hear it before? You rifle randomly through sensory memories, frustrated for the millionth time at the lack of reliable organic sorting algorithms, trying to trace the source of the familiarity. It’s stupid how difficult it is, you’ve barely got a few pocketfuls of embodied time to dig through, hardly any time at all since you woke up in an unfamiliar body on an unfamiliar world…

…that’s it. The city that first day, on the roof with Seb, and questing through streets below, a ripple of white. A thing like some mad scientist crossed a centipede with a snake, and then in a fit of extra death-wishery, magnified it to parade-float size and set it loose on the populace. You’d suspected that one of hunting, too, feelers probing along the ground in front of it as it flowed through empty city streets.

You never did find any people in that city.

The noise seems to shuffle and slide past for a long time. Yards and yards of time. You wait, with your heart in your throat and Kankri pressed silent and trembling-tense against you, until the unseen creature becomes unheard once again. Until you’re sure it’s continued past your street and your narrow, tucked away alley, taking no notice of you, hunting blindly on.

Kankri wriggles against you (--um), prying his way out of the alley and free. “It’s gone.”

“How do you know it won’t turn around and come right back?”

He lifts his chin. “They’re engineered to remove non-carapacian sentient life from cities. If it had realized we were here we’d know because we’d already be dealing with it. They mostly make straight sweeps unless they pick up signs of life.”

That… does not sound like fun times. You wonder what would have happened if it had found you, heard you. Smelled you? If you’d actually been out in the street beyond to make a sound or leave a footprint or drop a scent trail for it to catch. If you’d been a few minutes ahead of yourselves…

Your heart clutches again.

“We need to find Seb right now.”

Kankri sucks in a breath, but doesn’t argue with you.

#cyberbunny au #kankri vantas #autoresponder #ar x kankri #hal strider #homestuck #ccwritings

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