Alice talks entirely too much for his own good, as if words will save him from the slow descent into madness that has taken the city.
He breathes fiction and dresses himself in fine suits and pleasant lies, counting on silk-thin promises to keep him--keep them both--free. He talks entirely too much for his own good, but he is not trying to be good right now, manicured fingers hooking into the waistband of the doctor's slacks. Ashford's brows lift and raise, but he allows him this, the palm of his hand over the evidence of pleasure to be had, hard and hot and none-too-gentle.
“ If I may, mon cher? ” Alice murmurs, smooth as the tie he tugs with his free hand.
A quick twist at the corner of the doctor's mouth, and he knows, feels it in the heat starting to pool at the base of his own spine, that there will be no resistance. Ashford's voice rumbles, the words not mattering as dark wool puddles on the floor, deep tones pitching higher when he finally, finally presses his mouth against pale skin bleached moonrise-pale by years away from the sun.
Alice Lamont talks entirely too much for his own good, but he lavishes and loves, and is silent for once.
“ For me, kitten? You shouldn't have. ” He smiles, icepick sharp and just for him and Ferdinand cannot breathe for the momentary flash of warmth that suffocates him.
Fingers twine and tug in hair a shade lighter than the ADAM staining the corner of his mouth, nose slotting sharp against Faolan's own. They fit as if carved from each other, halves of a whole seeking and searching as lips bruise against each other. They kiss as if wolves would fight to tear them apart, violence and the nip of teeth sharp and bloody. There is a war in Ferdinand's veins, a screaming that grows increasingly hard to silence but here in the moment, in the warmth of Faolan's coat and the press of chapped lips against his own, the noise grows quiet.
Is that what love is, he wonders, and the corner of his mouth curves like a knife beneath the Irishman's thumb. It must be.
Name: Eirnin Blodrinc.Nationality: Hrimheald (The Arcane Library).Setting: Custom D&D3.5/Pathfinder world.
The howl of the wind over the glittering snow is a blessing. The crunch of ice under his boots, Telchur’s imprint on the earth. Every icy blast, every chill that finds its way under his heavy plate armour, is a prayer to be sent to the god of the icy north. Standing at the apex of the summit, he looks out to see the fortress small below him.
He welcomes the soaring of white-winged dragons above him, and the ruddy redness of his cheeks. This is home, for him, and he’ll do all he can to keep it that way.
Name: Julian Weber.Nationality: Essen, Germany (Saeder-Krupp), later UCAS.Setting: Shadowrun.
The eyes behind the plexiglass riot mask are warm. The voice, muffled as it is, is comforting and the grip of the DocWagon employee, in spite of the glove and the tactical gear, is reassuring. Sure, you’re probably about to die from the blood loss but at least you’re in good hands.
A shout over his shoulder to the rest of his team, and he turns his attention back to you. “Please stay awake,” the man says, exchanging his black marksman gloves for blue nitrile. “The Valkyrie module will be here shortly.”
You nod, blinking tired eyes open to the press of his hands on your injuries. Some days you wondered why you were paying cred out the ass for that DocWagon contract, but today, you’re really goddamn glad you did.
As you drift in and out of the roar of gunfire and wind, you hear his voice faintly. A prick of a needle, and fabric soft under your shoulders. ”You’ll be alright. We’ve got you.”
Name: Nigel Sullivan.Nationality: American.Setting: World of Darkness (Hunter: The Vigil).
He’ll never get used to it, he thinks as he shoulders the door shut behind him. The heavy drapes drawn against the sunshine, the sterile emptiness of the apartment, and as he makes sure not to track dirt into the kitchen, the faint iron scent of blood.
But that might just be the stuff in the cooler he’s got. Nigel empties the cooler of its raw steaks from the grocery down the street, bloody livers from the Chinese market across town. The blood packs are settled where the pop and beer should be.
He picks up the money from inside the cookie jar. He doesn’t have to do this. Serena’s more than capable of taking care of herself, and there are stores open 24/7 these days. It’s not like she can’t pick up her own food. But between guilt at having let her go alone that night, and obligation to keep others safe, is something like friendship.
Nigel leaves before he can think of stopping to check if she’s sleeping. Vampires, as all hunters know, lie in torpor during the day and he doesn’t know if he can stand to see her lying dead and drawn yet again.
Name: Serena Reed.Nationality: American.Setting: World of Darkness (Hunter: The Vigil).
”Let me get this straight,” Serena said, tapping her pen against the notepad. “Your cat has been missing for the last three days, and you want me to find her. Um. Sure. Could I just get your name and address?”
She waited a full thirty seconds after hanging up before heaving a sigh. Of all the jobs to fall onto her plate, this was not something she expected. Sure, she knew the advertisement in the paper—for those who hadn’t quite caught up with the times—and Kijiji had said ‘no job too small’. But that was just something catchy, to fill the rest of the space up.
Not that she could complain about having simple jobs to do, forlornly sucking on a blood bag with a straw. At least it’d be easy for her to find animals, what with her newfound affinity to beasts. And as much as she disliked having to feed on humans, blood bags were a poor substitute for the fresh blood.
Cursing the now-dead vampire who’d been her sire for the umpteenth time since she’d woken up decidedly not dead in an alley, Serena rolled up the plastic pack and tossed it into the kitchen garbage can. Like it or not, it was time to bag a cat.
Name: Darius Eamon Johnson.Nationality: American of Irish descent.Setting: NYD-RP, an (inactive) roleplay loosely based on the movie Now You See Me (2013).
It’s late. Or rather, it’s really goddamn early. Either way, the glow of the orange sunrise peeking over the NYC skyline is visible from Darius’ apartment patio. It’s too early for somebody who shows up for in the district office at nine o’clock sharp, but realistically, he wouldn’t have slept a wink.
That’s also exactly what he did, tossing and turning in a too-large bed in an too-empty room for hours. At least by being awake, he’s being useful, or that’s why he keeps telling himself. Better to be useful by writing out case reports and reviewing evidence than trying to fall asleep futilely.
He takes another look at the sunlight on the horizon, the cup of coffee warm in his hands, before turning back to head inside. Enough delay. It’s time to dive into the mess, the reason for his wakeful night. Hands, now devoid of the warmth of the porcelain cup that now rests at his side, hover over the keyboard.
But where to begin? Where should he even start in all of this madness? The money falling from the fucking sky, the truck filled to the roof with packs upon packs of playing cards. This sounds like a circus act or a publicity stunt, not a pack of criminals that the Bureau has been chasing.
Darius sighs, cracking his knuckles. From the beginning, then. With as much professionalism as he can muster because by all that’s dear to him, he’s going to need it.
Making a good impression on the corporate who’s paying you the big nuyen to bring in the goods, or as the case might also be, stop someone else from bringing in the goods, is always in your own best interests. That being said, the Johnson should have shown up by now. It couldn’t possibly be the petite elf by the bar, could it?
You’re just glad you didn’t say anything disparaging when the woman in question picks up her briefcase and strides purposefully to where you’ve been sitting for the last half hour. Her movements are knife-sharp, down to the crisp fall of hair down her back, and the snap of her case on the table is only marginally less jarring than her surprisingly-unaccented voice.
The job is risky —she’s asking you to break into an medium-security Ares thaumaturgical archive, of all places—but the payoff is too good to turn down. To top it off, she’s even offering you and your team a bonus if you leave whatever’s in the small box she pushes across to table to you at the site.
”One more thing,” she says softly, leaning forward. Her tone is sweet, but her words scream otherwise. “You don’t really want to find out what happens to runners when they fail me.”
With that, she smiles at you if she cares about your well-being. “Good luck.”
Name: Jun “Eric” Watanabe Kit.Nationality: Kizugawa, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan (Mitsuhama Computer Technologies), later UCAS.Setting: Shadowrun
Heaven, it seems, is made up polished black and the incessant drip of water by your ears. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, Heaven is still a ways off and the polished black is a nice pair of smart shoes on the feet of a man standing by your formerly-limp form. He’s an elf, actually, from the point of his ears and the inhuman grace to his every motion.
”No need to thank me yet, chummer. The name’s Kit.” It’s a street name, of course. Nobody but a fool and an idiot would give out their SINner name just like that. He helps you to your feet, holding out a slim hand—also gloved—to assist in righting you from the ground.
Kit’s accent is hard to place. It’s one of those smooth foreign-sounding ones that’s just out of place enough for you to know it’s not from around here, but vague enough that you’re not quite sure where he’s from. A smile touches his lips, and you can’t help but like him in spite of just having met him. “I solve problems. Just like the one I got you out of.”
He hands you the weapon you don’t even remember dropping. “We’d better be off. I have every interest in keeping you alive, and there’s still the matter of the guards on your tail.”
Did Kit say he wanted you alive? Surely none of those interests are good, but before you can ask, he tilts his head toward the blessedly-unlocked exit door. "Do keep up. Last I checked, the corpsec around here really do ‘shoot first, ask corpses later’.”
It’s the slow fall of water, a steady drip-drop against the tile floor, that wakes him first. Before the full extent of his situation comes crashing back down on him again, in the form of fresh bruises purpling on top of half-healed ones and the dizziness spiking its way through his head. They’ve been at this for, what, an hour? A day? A week?
He can’t even remember at this point. It’s been so long since he’s had the mercy of sleep that every second and minute has blurred together into a mass of time spent denying he knows anything of importance about Andrew Ryan, and time spent unconscious. It’s rather hard to tell which is which when the hallucinations start. Are they hallucinations?
gambit (noun): An opening in chess in which a player makes a sacrifice for the sake of some compensating advantage.
“Was it worth it? All of this,” He gestures, as if to weigh what’s up in the air with the sacrifices to be made, “For what? How long have you been hurting from these imagined slights?”
“Shut up,” Darius snaps back, “Richard Johnson, you are under arrest.”
Richard has that insufferable smirk on his face, calm despite the gravity of the situation at hand, “How long have you been waiting to betray your own brother?”
*
It is the same song and dance every Thanksgiving, Christmas and any other holiday requiring the consumption of food in the presence of family members. The parents at either end of the table, the flatware in between and at opposite sides of the dining table sit the brothers.
Sometimes there are more guests but it is always the same; Richard on one side, Darius on the other. The invisible line is drawn down from mother to father, crossed only by the passing of food dishes.
The obligatory discussion of personal lives begins sooner than he likes, but really, any time before never is too early for his preference. Richard is more than happy to oblige in detailed descriptions of his exploits for the season. When their parents turn to Darius with anxious eyes and that disappointed lilt to his name, it’s no wonder he’s less than forthcoming.
At this point, his name is more of a joke to himself than anything else. He’s certainly no conqueror of men, content with his job as he is, and the only comparisons that seem to matter are the ones he doesn’t care about.
In their eyes, he’ll only be found lacking compared to the brilliance of his elders. Who would want to live like that? He does, he supposes.
The cutlery clinks on china, the conversation passes back to more comfortable topics, and the world spins on.
Habits are hard to break, after all.
*
He smokes too much, eats too little and works himself too hard over the case.
Theo shakes him, “Johnson. You need to take care of yourself.” When he brushes him off, he gets that determined frown on his face before bodily dragging him from his desk. “You’re no good to anyone, much less yourself, if you’re dead.”
It says something when Darius lets himself be frog-marched out of the office to get fresh air.
*
He flinches at the mention of betrayal, but stands his ground. “You’re not my family anymore.”
Richard grins as he is led away in handcuffs, throwing one last verbal barb at the place he knows it hurts most. “They’ll never be proud of you.”
Darius watches the cars drive off in silence. There are fingernail gouges in his palms when he finally turns to walk away, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
*
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Of course,” he smiles and squeezes their hands in his own. “I have both of you, after all.”
Theo beams back, Lily grins and in that moment, everything feels like it might actually turn out alright.
He’d only sat down for a moment, just a moment once he was out of earshot, and definitely out of visual range. Not that Jin would’ve been in any state to look up, but it was the substance of the matter that counted. Setting down the pack and that bloody half-broken shortwave radio, Isaiah sat—slid, really—down to the floor to catch his breath.
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