NSFW ahead; Don’t follow if underage. Figuring things out. AUs are either soft or sad or body horror. I write RPF and OCs. Icon credit goes to the goose picrew. Mobile header courtesy of holographdick. She/They pronouns. Very very white, please let me know if anything I write or reblog is fucked.
The phone in his office starts ringing around noon. He thinks about ignoring it, but curiosity killed the cat and all that. When he answers it there’s the familiar click-buzz of automation, the opening tone of a collect call and then, rushed:
“—fuck up! 17th and Seville Rose got—!”
He declines to collect and hangs up, staring at his desk for just a little bit. Then he sighs and goes to grab his jacket. It’s a ten minute jog and that curiosity is still alive unfortunately.
When he turns the corner onto the intersection he spots them easily, a gaggle of arguing ghouls circled protectively around a stairwell alongside one of the buildings. Several of them are spattered in dark stains, hands and faces and clothes all dotted from a central point. He wonders if they notice how it taints the air around them, swirling around them like the beach at low tide. One of them, one of the older ones, gestures for everyone to be quiet as he approaches, turning to address him.
Another one bursts the second he gets within range.
“Rose fell off the roof and he won’t let us get him out!”
The older one claps a hand over their mouth, speaking up as the voice he recognizes from the phone.
“We’re supposed to be heading back to the house. We’ve got guests coming tonight and Ro wanted us to be there to meet them, but someone needs to deal with him first.”
That brings him to a pause, if only to think for a second about how most people would be calling him after someone took a dive for a very different reason. Then he waves them off, scattering them as he shoulders through to the stairwell.
“Go get something to eat, go home. He park near here?”
“No, we took the bus.”
Great.
“Then take the bus.”
He pauses at the top of the stairs to make sure they leave, then looks down into the shadows seeping over the bottom landing like fog. It’s pretty clear at a glance that Ro hit the surrounding fence first, a massive spread of black stain that explodes onto the surrounding sidewalk before slipping down the concrete to where he’s crumpled, more a bundle of loose sticks than a person. The haze blocks anything more specific, blurs the edges of his shape, difficult to determine beyond the most extreme notions—the long line of his neck bent too far, the golden flash of his tangled hair, the places where there should be bone exposed, bone extended, and is instead only black.
Anyone else would be clearly instantly dead, long gone before he could have even been told, but no, as he takes those first cautious steps down those twin lighthouses ignite in the darkness, watching him close. It would almost be comforting if they weren’t looming at Ro’s standing height, two feet to the right of his mangled body. His steps catch, instinct stopping him for only the briefest second before it’s overridden by the stench of burnt metal and stardust washing over him, petrichor and scrubbed floors. It feels like something burrowing into his lungs, spreading its claws through the meat and breath between. It feels like a tug in his gut, drawing him near. He clears his throat, grips the railing, unable to take his attention off those beaming lights.
“What possessed you to be on the roof exactly.”
The shadow in the shape of his associate splits with a brilliant smile that doesn’t fit in the incomplete shape of its head, too many teeth in a swath of void both identical and different from the rest. The voice is not quite familiar, a hum that creaks around his ears, settles down his spine, rather than coming from behind those almost-fangs. Neither of those startle him though. It’s the words themselves that send a chill through his veins, bring him stuttering to a stop two steps from the absolute void below.
“My duck, you should know by now that there’s many reasons anyone would want me anywhere.”
He’d rather eat paint than admit it but he knows this broken thing well enough, knows he isn’t one for pet names or overt sweet talk. Maybe he was, once, but Ro would be the first to say he understands how difficult his general countenance and demeanor would make it to tell he’s being genuine, knows how poorly strangers would take such things from such an even-tempered mouth. Maybe had it proved, once or twice. No, Ro is the type to show he cares with actions over anything else, to show just how genuine he always is through the power of an open door, a helping hand. A day out with his ghouls and company for dinner.
This doesn’t feel like Ro. This feels older. Much older. He pulls back a step, feels the frigid seeping dark recede off of his boots. Feels something slip off his shoelaces.
“And in this case?”
“There was a small creature stuck in the wires.”
And so he went up and fell six stories. Kids probably said something. He pulls back another step.
“Was told you need to be back home in an hour.”
“Cece is in town. Darling girl. I could use a hand.”
He bites down on his tongue until he tastes blood, tightens his hold on the railing.
“Ghouls said you wouldn’t let them down here.”
“Too heavy for them. You’re strong enough though, aren’t you my wolf?”
Lie. He knows how terrifyingly light Ro is. And besides, Ro doesn’t lie, not really, not about the little things. It takes effort to rip his eyes away from the pair watching him but he does, focuses on the shape behind. Suddenly that long thin scar feels like a beacon.
“Ambrose, your kids are worried about you. They need you home for dinner.”
Seconds pass, the shadow moves closer. He feels rooted, suddenly, trapped and frozen. Something slips under his fingers and pulls, slowly separating him from the rail. He can’t fight it. Those teeth seem so much larger than before, seem so much more dangerous. He doesn’t know this thing. Fingers that aren’t grip his jaw, pulling him, trying to move his focus off the corpse in the corner.
He—
The next voice he hears isn’t from the shadow, isn’t curling around his neck and burrowing into his ears. It’s quiet, and warm, and he can see the mouth move.
“Sam, go back upstairs.”
It’s like the world rushing back in. He stumbles back, landing on his ass for the briefest of seconds before he manages to scramble back up to the upper landing, to the spot where the noonday sun is casting heat and light. The shadow’s smile vanishes. The yellow lamplight narrows to pinpricks. Then, all of it is gone. The fog clears.
Suddenly there’s just a broken body slumped in the corner of a stairwell, spotted and stained and not quite dead. The head tilts forward, then falls, completely gone of any and all structural viability. It sags into the chest, held on only by skin, before a hand with fingers bent the wrong way slips up and grips the blond tresses attached, pulling it back up to rest against the wall, angled just enough to look at him. The sunglasses are gone, thrown in the grass nearby probably if not completely shattered. Icy blue eyes stare up at him from a completely human face.
Somehow that’s the most unsettling part of any of this. It feels like a breach, somehow, despite everything. His shoves himself to his feet, shoves his shaking hands in his pockets.
“I’m going to look for your glasses.”
“Thank you.”
It feels like pulling against a riptide but he manages, breath sharp in his nose as he circles away from the stairs and towards the stained grass, trying to focus on the hunt and not what just happened. It’s longer than it should be before he finds them, longer still before he manages to pull his mind away from the wet snaps and visceral cracks he’s hearing from below.
He leans over the fence just in time to watch inky black sinew lash out from the remaining open breaks, pulling the splintered limbs inexorably back to place. When they’re done, Ro stretches them out with a quiet sigh, like it’s any average strain and not what it was.
Whatever it was.
“Ro.”
The neck bends to a completely normal degree this time. He dangles the glasses over the edge, drops them when Ro holds out a hand. They land perfectly in his waiting grasp. Something about the way Ro tsks at the cracked lens makes him bite down a laugh, probably hysterical. He doesn’t speak as what minutes before was little more than a heap stands to his feet and quickly hops up the steps into the sunlight. Doesn’t know what he’d say.
Ro turns to look at him, mirrored spotlights watching him from behind broken panes. They both know he should run. Should turn around and never look back. Should take this as the warning it was, an insight into why Ro makes sure no one ever sticks around too long. His blood is still rushing in his ears, his hands still shaking.
Instead he straightens himself up, approaches with careful ease. Tries not to make it too obvious he’s staring at the stains covering the bright clothes, the cheap jewelry. Tries not to stare at how his hair is unblemished, his smile clear. Probably fails entirely.
They tell you it’s immortality, functionally. A safeguard in case something goes wrong out on a job. It’s a nice way to say you can be way more reckless than you usually are and the worst outcome you’ll have to deal with is a bad hangover and the knowledge of what fucking up and getting your face blown off feels like. Congrats! Cloning and consciousness transfer is real and they’re using it to cut down on casualty expenses during ops. Mostly it just makes you wonder what the hell they do with the bodies. Do they leave it for someone to find? Do they retrieve it? Is there half-a-dozen mangled Jane Does that look like you in morgues across the world?
Probably, actually. Seems easiest.
On top of that, it doesn’t even fucking work that great. In the seconds between whatever gruesome demise you’ve caused yourself and waking up in the cold bath you dream of—you see—you remember—
The shade of tall trees. The way her eyes squint when she smiles. The scent of pine needles and cigarettes. The way her nose crooks from too many breaks. The one leaky part of the roof and the floorboard that’s always creaking underneath. The sound of her laughter. The. The. The.
—nothing. Meaningless tripe. Weird drudged up sensations and half-thoughts bubbled together into a stew that doesn’t exist.
Also last time you woke up you were down a hand and that seems unintentional. The eggheads are more pissed about it than you, something about needing to reset the system and how it was working so well for so long. At least they’re going to have the opportunity to finally switch to that new engram storing that was being proposed, yadda yadda yadda. They assure you it’s not a problem, you’re just going to have to switch to a new body quicker than normal.
And to be clear, it is normal. They’re the ones who told you to be reckless, you can’t be judged for dying on average once every job or two.
They shuffle you off to sit in the prep room while they hit buttons or something and you stretch out on one of the benches, examining the stump of your hand. It’s not like you woke up actively bleeding or anything, it’s just…not there. Like it failed to grow entirely. You could probably still work with it, honestly, but if they’re willing to just slap you into a new body before you get back to business…?
The shortstack they keep partnering you with would probably say that this is a sign of some kind, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That there has to be a reason why they offered this insane mad scientist bullshit up to you with the only caveat that you do jobs you’re getting paid for anyways. That there’s a reason they’re only annoyed in moments like these with your repeated deaths. You think she’s probably overestimating, after all you’ve had plenty of free lunches through the liberal application of extreme violence and no one’s stopped you yet. And besides that, you think it’s pretty obvious what they’re getting out of this. You’re guinea pigs for moments like this, for troubleshooting a thing they’re probably going to sell off to the highest bidder once they’ve got the kinks worked out.
Also it’s very likely they’re selling your medical data to someone, that just seems fair.
One of the younger nerds comes and retrieves you, asks you to stand in the biohazard shower so they can ‘recycle this one’. The euphemism makes you laugh, just a bit. Her eyes flicker with eager delight as one of the guards approaches you with an unholstered gun.
These dorks are about as transparent as it comes, you can’t imagine what she thinks could possibly be happening that isn’t already supremely obvious. But then again, what do you know? She doesn’t die anywhere near as often as you, maybe she knows something you don’t. Maybe she’s just scared. Probably that, honestly.
You grin at the guard, fearless. You’re twenty-five, you’re well-paid, and you’re going to live for fucking ever. What could you possibly have to be afraid of?
Possibly because the last month or so of his life has been at best a carnival ride he can’t get off and possibly just because he’s finally lost his mind, he winds up crashing on Jay’s couch. To be fair to him, he’s still not entirely sure the world around him is real when he makes that decision and that fact if nothing else is making it increasingly difficult to overlay the boogeyman who was definitely about to murder him in an alley with the guy who keeps sneaking juice into his general vicinity. Besides, it’s only a few hours and for a pull-out bed it’s honestly pretty comfy.
Later than intended the next morning he gets to experience an objectively attractive man offering him a couple freezer waffles and yet another juice box, and that’s nice too. Usually he has to lie to get anything resembling that.
He still heavily debates fleeing the city once he gets back to his hotel, but it’s the thought that counts. He even gets as far as getting his shit back into his bags before giving up on the idea. It’s tempting, sure, but laying it all out in front of him really highlights just how little he has, how significant the risk of his head on a platter still is out there. Better to stay here, connected in the way all big beautiful cities are but separate all the same, hemmed in by deep water and some home-spun ‘outsiders don’t get it’ mentality.
It’s fucking weird here and that works well as cover, basically.
Still spends the few days it takes for Jay to text him basically sulking under the covers, but that’s more the principle of it than anything. When he finally does get the location he puts on his nicest shirt, fluffs up his curls a little, and tries not to wince at how the roots are already starting to grow back in. He takes the bus down into the city then walks into the maze of warehouses on the docks, the bay sparkling just beyond the concrete.
Jay waves at him from where he’s standing around in front of a door, casually unwrapping a frankly comically overfilled banh mi. His shirt is a little less concerningly tight than it was the last time they were face-to-face, but it’s enough to tell him that the guy is visibly unarmed. He for one has his taser in his pocket, not that he really thinks it’ll be of any use if anything happens. Still, he opens his mouth before he can think better of it.
“Aren’t we meeting up with your…friend?”
It feels rude to say ‘potentially dangerous criminal contact’, though he’s pretty sure that’s what this person is. Less rude than the look he can just sense Jay giving him, afternoon sun on those bottle-lenses be damned.
“Yeah? Her meeting’s running a bit long.”
He takes a bite of his sandwich. Belatedly, he realizes he didn’t see a single food cart between the bus stop and here. And there’s no car anywhere nearby that he can tell.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Picked it up on the way.”
“Did you walk?”
“Jogged, s’only like ten minutes.”
It most certainly is not. And beyond that, the guy isn’t even sweating. He is, because it’s fucking June and he’s a human. Jay’s phone dings before he can accuse him of being a changeling. He fumbles it out of his pocket, nearly drops it, and squints down at it longer than he thinks is strictly necessary. All of it is really not helping the disconnect happening in his brain.
It does, however, give him time for his brain to reach the other thing that’s pulling at it.
“Do you not want to cover up? Or something?”
Again with the look. He’s starting to develop a violent urge from it. Instead of acting on it he just sighs and gestures at the door.
“Can we go in now?”
“Yeah, c’mon.”
Inside is pretty empty, all things considered. A few people milling about, some scattered boxes and a few crates, but mostly a lot of bare space and open area. Perfect for meeting someone neutrally, he supposes. The squat older woman standing nearly dead center of the place turns towards them when the door opens, the half of her face that isn’t a massive burn scar breaking out into a toothy grin.
“Hey! Was good to hear from you, don’t do it enough.”
“It’s always nice to talk to you Lani, you know that.”
“Flatterer.”
Her eye flicks behind them, then back to Jay.
“No tyke? Pretty early for you to be out and about.”
“Nah, she’s off visiting Mari’s folks.”
“Ah.”
Well, there’s a world of meaning if he’s ever heard one. They come to a stop a few feet from her, enough of a distance that he glances to Jay like there’s something that should be happening, but no one else acknowledges it. No, instead he just gets pinned to the spot by a very sudden very intense scrutiny.
“So, you’re the one Jay mentioned.”
Jay. Not Death. Really not a care in the world, huh?
“That’d be me.”
“I think he’d be good for that box thing you were complaining about.”
Just as it sudden as it came, the singular focus on his person evaporates as the woman glances to their introductory hand. Who is still eating his fucking sandwich.
“That the case? Alright then kid, how good are you at replication? Not just with standard art, I mean overall.”
He is definitely not that much younger than this woman, but he appreciates the compliment to his skincare routine. Either way, better to not piss off the potential new boss with his vanity.
“Damn good, I’d say.”
“Yeah? I’ve got a buyer looking for some fancy-ass jewelry box that took a dive in the bay when the last rich moron who owned it threw a rager. Belonged to a queen or something. Thankfully, this rich moron doesn’t give a shit about it actually being the real thing, just wants something he can point at and claim it is.”
He hesitates, like he’s thinking about it, like he hasn’t already pieced together more or less how this conversation will need to go.
“Do you have any references I could use?”
“I’ve got some pictures from the eighties but it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It doesn’t need to be that close.”
“It does actually. I’ll also need kit, I don’t have any of mine at the moment. And lamps if you’ve got them, or somewhere to work with decent lighting.”
She squints at him, for just longer than’s comfortable. Like she’s weighing if he’s worth the effort. Jay takes another bite of his banh mi.
“I can get you the pictures, but I don’t have anyone who can give you kit right now—wouldn’t be hiring out if I did. That said…Jay, Lark’s kids knocked over some place uptown last week and from what I’ve heard they haven’t cleared out yet. Could ask them, they still won’t talk to me.”
He glances over to see Jay’s mouth twist mid-bite, not quite a grimace, not quite anything else. His fingers tap the wrapping awkwardly, paper crunching softly as he swallows.
“Lark’s still out of town?”
“No one’s said otherwise.”
“Then…yeah, we can try. Where exactly?”
“Not sure, but Viper’s the one who told me. She’ll know.”
After that the conversation mostly wades into the murky swamp that is trying to get paid in the criminal underworld. They wind up agreeing on less than what he’d prefer but with the added benefit that if he can’t front whatever he might need for kit he can have her cover it from his cut. Not great, but at least a little kinder than he expected. Enough to get his feet back under him. Jay doesn’t pipe up again for it, content to stand there slowly working through his food, eyes sleepily sliding back and forth between them. Even when he finishes all he does is crumple the wrapper as quietly as possible and slip his hands into his pockets alongside it, the perfect picture of a dozy loiterer.
Finally, she holds her hand out for him to shake.
“We’ll have to make it work. Call me in two days, I’ll—“
The air around them shifts. Cold fear slips a tracing finger down the notches of his spine and he feels himself move instinctively away from the source, the sound of footsteps telling him he’s hardly the only one. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jay’s head snap towards the far loading doors, the movement too damn fast, the look taking over his expression a little too assessing. No other part of him has moved, nothing has changed, and yet something has. Something curling in the back of his mind, drowning him with a bone-deep dread. An undercurrent that sings to the animal part of his instincts, telling him he’s something very very small next to something very very deadly.
It’s a feeling that’s been waiting in the wings, he realizes with the absent dismay of the damned, never quite there but never quite gone either. He feels a moment of grief for his own self-awareness, all the terror he’d thought gone surging back to wrap its unforgiving gauntlet around his throat. The barrier he’d put up in his mind between how he’d felt in that alley and everything that came after crumples like it was never even there.
Jay is still Death and he was a fool for trying to separate them, even for his own sanity. That much is palpable.
“Lani, were you expecting company after us?”
It’s like warm tar, that voice—has been the whole time—but now it feels less like an enveloping hug and more like a sandpit. He feels all his muscles tense to the point of pain. Across from them, the woman spins on her heel.
“Take cover!”
The gunfire starts half a second later. The only reason he isn’t perforated is an iron vice wrapping around his arm, dragging him back behind a support pillar. It lets go to give him a few cursory pats, making sure he didn’t get hit, then the body attached to it nods towards the way they’d come in.
“You should probably go. I can text you Lani’s number.”
There is, quite literally, no cover between them and the door. Absolutely the fuck not. When he says as much all he gets is a shrug, ambivalent.
“It’s not that bad.”
The violent bubbling rage works good to suffocate the terror he’s feeling, up until a bullet clips the concrete protecting them from a very messy demise. He yelps and ducks down even further. There’s no other movement in the vicinity, nothing so much as a flinch.
For a minute they stand there, at an awkward impasse. Then there’s a brief lull in the fire and a clatter of sheet metal informs them of a new presence. He looks over to see his new boss half-dragging a wounded someone or other behind the crates a few feet from them. Her voice is tainted with exhaustion, annoyance, and little else.
“Mind giving us a hand?”
What she gets in return to that is a small tilt of the head, face flickering almost into a frown that is far far too genuine for the moment, and a gesture towards the high windows, where the sun’s still streaming cheerily in.
“It’s like three in the afternoon.”
“I don’t need a full job, just be a dear and bust some heads for me, okay?”
It’s phrased like a question but somehow, it doesn’t really feel like one. The frown returns for half a second more, ticks slightly off, then clears with a sigh.
“Sure, fine.”
Sleepy eyes turn back to him, almost honey-brown in the light.
“Stay here, actually? Just for a sec.”
What follows is…incomprehensible. The mercenary he’s been pretending wasn’t steps out into the fucking gunfire, moving at a speed incomparable to the bulk he possesses. He gains ground on the source of the shooting in moments, ducking easily in and out of cover until he’s upon them, vanishing behind where they’re hiding like a shadow. The wet crunch seconds later echoes, doubled by horrified screams.
He spots a darting flash of movement between boxes, then the sounds happen again, and again, and again. The air fills with the sounds of squelching meat and terror.
Someone begs. It isn’t enough.
“Jay, please leave one of them at least a little alive! I have some questions!”
His head snaps over to where she hasn’t even looked up from where she’s patching up her wounded, simply raised her voice to be heard. The response she gets back is far too mellow for the sounds underscoring it, only just carrying over the open space.
“Yep.”
There’s a shuffle, more nightmarish noises, and then one of their attackers scrambles around the corner of their cover and out into the open, fleeing towards an exit that isn’t blocked by the oncoming specter of their demise. They make it all of three feet into the light before a ragged piece of rebar materializes in their throat. They collapse, gasping without air, and watch in fear as the end of all things steps from the darkness, caked to his elbows in gore.
Death reaches down and wraps one hand around their neck, just above the metal, and squeezes. There’s a disgusting squelch of bone and viscera, and then it’s over. Jay gives his hands a cursory shake before thumbing back over his shoulder.
“One of’m fainted.”
He watches, desperately close to a panic attack for the second time in a week, as his new boss passes her wounded off to the rest of her crew, then gestures for a few others to go retrieve the unlucky survivor.
“That’ll do, thanks kid.”
“Mhm.”
“Should probably take your new pet out of here before he hurls. Have him sit on the pier while you clean up.”
They both turn to look at where he’s still crouching. Jay’s gentle smile contrasts nastily with how dangerous he looks, with the low simmering fear still swirling in the air. His stance feels like a mimicry of how he’d been watching them only a few minutes before. He feels the indignation in his chest but it catches in his throat, failing to coalesce. Instead he just stares back at them, unsure of what to do.
A few long seconds pass. Jay turns a little more towards him.
“You can come out, they’re all dead.”
He feels remarkably soothed by how her hand instantly comes up to pinch the bridge of her nose, a sigh punching out of her mouth. The towering man next to her reaches up to scratch absently at his scruff and she, without looking, slaps his hand.
“I’m sure he’s aware. Pier, go.”
They’re very quickly evicted from the warehouse, a set of loosely apologetic young crooks shuffling them out before they can be privy to whatever targeted conversation happens next. Jay leads him through the maze of towering concrete to a massive supply dock, then has him sit near the end and hands him his phone. He’s about to ask why the hell he’s holding it when Jay just. Jumps into the water. He stares at the ripples of his splash for a solid minute before the other man resurfaces.
“You’re crazy. Like actually fully crazy.”
Jay just snorts, clambering back out with an ease he finds he’s deeply jealous of. The shirt clings to every inch of his muscle in a way that makes it very hard to look him in the eye.
“I mean, we could have just sat here for twenty minutes while I laid on the dock but I kinda want to get a move on? Next bus for uptown is in ten.”
He actually would have preferred to sit and try to process, but he gets the feeling that’s not something he’ll be able to do. And at least this way he gets the small victory of a nice view as they hike back to the stop. Jay taps something quick on his phone once he takes it back, getting a response within seconds. There’s a little more back and forth, then a definitive nod. A few seconds later his burner also pings with a text from Jay, complete with a number that he assumes is his new boss. Who he is not sure what to call. There was definitely a name but he’s also not dumb enough to unilaterally decide that’s what he’s supposed to call her. He just chooses not to save the number.
He’s really fucking tired. He assumes that’s normal. Jay nudges him with his hip, smiling down at him while they wait.
“Hungry? There’s a corner deli by where the kids are posted up, we could get something on the way. Probably should actually, they usually only eat takeout when Lark’s out of town.”
The half-twist fades over his mouth like morning fog. He figures he may as well take a shot with that versus pointing out that Jay still has a sandwich wrapper in his pocket.
“You don’t like this…Lark?”
Jay blinks at him, seemingly surprised. Of all things, a slightly embarrassed flush crawls its way across his face.
“No? I mean, I don’t dislike him. He’s fine. He’s just…not my type?”
The red crawls all the way back to his ears, contrasting with the damp loose mess of his hair in a way he kind of wants to touch. Instead Jay crosses his arms—equally unfair—and turns to stare resolutely at the other side of the street.
“You’ll see. Lots of jobs go through Lark, stay here and you’ll meet him.”
Remarkably ominous actually.
The bus shows before he can press any further. The driver is obviously not a fan of letting the guy who clearly just clambered out of the ocean on, but seems mollified enough by Jay’s awkward smile. It helps maybe that Jay promises to stand the whole time. It certainly helps him having that much muscle mass between the spot he finds to sit and everything else.
The trip is mostly quiet, Jay pointing out a few places out the window here and there, mostly good places for food or somewhere that often has cheap deals. The type of places a parent might consider important.
This man really does his head in.
They get off at a stop sandwiched between a little boutique practically leaking summer blooms and an electronics store he doesn’t think anyone has stepped foot inside in twenty years. He follows Jay as he leads him, mostly dry by now, through the winding and increasingly small streets of the city’s oldest district. The deli they stop at is indeed a very brief detour, aided by the fact that the owner clearly recognizes Jay and immediately starts slicing large swathes of meat for him to cover. The bag they pay for looks like it weights twenty fucking pounds.
After that it’s maybe only five minutes to a complex that was definitely not originally designed for human residency. He can admit aesthetic appreciation for the large windows and quiet area, but living in that much dull gray would kill him before anything else, minimalism be damned. Jay shoves the busted security doors open, then leads him up a few flights of stairs to what can presumably be considered the converted penthouse, also with a busted door. Even Jay huffs a slightly bewildered sigh at that, especially when they step in and there’s no sign of any kind of defenses. They get maybe five steps in, then stop and listen for…something, presumably. He can hear the TV in another room, some assorted sounds of life, but nothing else. Jay sighs again, takes a breath.
“Anyone home?”
All of the commotion stops, just for a second, then it turns into a frankly concerning amount of clattering and fumbling and one distinct shatter as a small pack of—no, no, kids was definitely right, all of them maybe twenty, twenty-five at most—kids comes barreling out of the adjacent room, nearly taking themselves out on several pieces of furniture. He watches them, as a unit, light up when they spot Jay, then deflate when they see him standing beside. One of them, only barely avoiding being trampled by his peers as they all skid to as stop, speaks up. The way the kid’s voice cracks instantly knocks his assessment of him down a few years.
“You aren’t the beetle.”
Um?
“No…?”
“Bea’s out of town right now. We were told you might have some kit we could take.”
One of them, sharp-eyed in a way that speaks to long distances and rifles, eyes the bag of food, then them. Jay tilts his head at her, unaffected. Her frown just deepens.
“Depends on what kind of kit really.”
“We can discuss while we eat, how about that?”
There’s a moment of collective consideration, some muttering, and then the first kid waves them all off, squaring his shoulders. Their leader apparently, or as close as they have.
There is a wolf in the forest, shaped like a man. Once he was something else, once he possessed a mind, a heart, a soul. He was kind. He loved. He mourned.
There’s little of that left now. What remains has been shredded, suffocated and masked by slavering and panting and hunger. His hide is scarred, his teeth are cracked, and very soon he will die and the thing that rules him will move on to another, continuing its vicious cycle forevermore.
Not far from there is a man shaped like a wolf. He lives on the edges of town, busies himself with a faltering garden and a rotting house. Others look to him and see a beast, hulking and silent and there, failing to see the downturn of his eyes, the tremble of his hands. No one is born that way, they whisper. He must be other, some foul thing given improper form, some failure abandoned at the outskirts.
Changeling, they whisper. Monster.
Soon he will prove them all right, and it won’t even be his fault.
For now though, a stranger blowing into town. Small and unimposing and bereft, possessed only of a medicine bag and the cloak on his back, velvet crushed dark with weather and blood. Struggling to get where he’s trying to be and running from where he’s been.
Chased by something shadowed and indistinct. Wanted, needed, required. A constellation of gaps in his flesh, space beneath like that above. A singing song of the cosmos bubbling under the thin layer of his skin.
He goes to their doors, asking, begging. Somewhere to stay the night, somewhere to rest. A prayer of hospitality, of desperation.
From behind the crumbling mossy stones he rarely crosses, a man doomed to become both catastrophically more and terrifyingly less watches as each turns this other wounded soul away, venom-wrought suspicion carving away what they could be and leaving only what is. He watches that tiny shape melt further and further into a shadow of hopelessness, and when their eyes meet, dark and darker, he simply nods his head towards the crooked hinges of his door.
Void-struck and bloody-destined, they make an awkward pair that night. And the next, and the next, and the next. Each day the traveler plans to leave, means to move on, and each day he stops at the boundary line, at that simple broken circle of what might have once protected what lies within, and cannot bring himself to move to what’s beyond.
Each day he turns back to the hulking shape quietly pulling weeds, forever resigned to this lonely thing, this disparaged existence, and cannot abandon such kindness.
Each night the ragged sheets of their makeshift beds move closer, rotted wood at their backs and wanted warmth close, so close, but never quite there.
Others in town watch them from a distance, faces sneered and minds jumping, spitting, hissing. Who is this wretch, this transient speck, that has come into their land and taken their accursed thing and given him something resembling hope? A possessiveness that should never be scorns in their chests, whispering cruel words and crueler actions. How dare it take that which they have scorned and make him smile?
They are too cowardly to turn their ire towards their true victim, his body like a mountain and his hands like tombstones, but towards this? This solvent shape, this flicker of light in the oppressive shadow? It seems almost too easy.
It is a poor decision.
This day, this final day, when he has once more abandoned his pack by the door and moved to join in the work, they lurk nearby. When he leaves out the back gate to retrieve some miscellaneous twigs for their cooking fire that night, a small retinue follows. Ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Deeper and deeper. They mean him harm, they mean to scare him off. Hatred in their hearts, foolish pride in their minds. They would follow him as far as it takes.
When he hears them approach he doesn’t try to scream, doesn’t try to flee. He just sighs. Sighs like he was waiting for this moment. He sets down his small pile at his feet and requests they leave, as polite as managed. Promises them it would be for the best. Knows it would be for the best.
Perhaps others would feel the gravity in his tone but these ones are young, fiery and feckless. One way or another, their stories were always bound to end like this. Early. Unlived.
The unstated leader of the group throws a rock, to start. Their supposed victim watches it go sailing past with nary a flinch. He requests, once more, that they leave. One of them rushes him, throws a punch. He doesn’t bother to dodge. It catches on his cheek, scabby knuckle to soft flesh.
Reality tears.
They jolt back, horror and terror surging in their minds, a blank and wordless thing. They stare into the space between stars as he calmly straightens up from the mediocre hit, the echo of things that eat galaxies dripping down his face, this mistaken lantern of hope exposed as the backlight of shadow, the mottled outline of his unrelenting pursuers like the aftermath of a spark, unknowable writ across the back of their eyes.
Someone screams. A glint of metal bears witness.
It is a mercy. This is a fact wrought from experience. What is left in the after cannot even be considered human.
The gap in the world seals like it was never there.
He is alone. He is hunted. He starts down at the pile at his feet, grim and knowing that he cannot tarry any longer. Knowing that he has stayed too long. Knowing that this moment is the end come calling.
Pity then, that it has come calling elsewhere too.
At the corner of the failing remnants of the stone fence, a wounded and dying thing collapses. From a distance it looks almost like the man it once was. It looks small, weak and pathetic and agonized.
All the better to draw in the next prey.
Its target pauses, hands twisting thoughtfully around the garden pole he’s been gently realigning. His shadow casts darkness in a swath down his property, towards the piteous shape bleeding just beyond the edge of his world.
To help means to step beyond the gate he rarely ever crosses. To help means to risk much more than he realizes.
He steps up, steps past. It barely even requires a moment. Barely even a thought. He crouches, he breathes. Then, like he has done time and again—like every single damned soul has with this, each so fundamentally kind despite it all—he reaches out. And in doing so kills all he has ever been and all he could have ever possibly become.
Pain shoots into his hand. The world separates into pieces. Blood. Bone on bone. The sensation of slithering. He stumbles back, gasping a noise far louder than most he makes, but it’s already far too late.
The eyes of what was once a man meet his, anguish and guilt and—the life in them goes out, like the snuffing of a candle. The corpse slumps, mouth still stained red.
Fear in his throat, shaking in his limbs, he forces himself to his feet, forces himself inside. The need to be somewhere safe overwhelms his addled mind, somewhere without eyes, without ears.
It makes it all too easy when the first lance of agony slices through him. All he can do is collapse to the floor. All he can do is sob.
Ten minutes crawl by. Twenty. Thirty.
The back gate creaks, ever so quietly. The sounds of padding footsteps, of a confused pause, then a weak sigh.
He’d hoped to get to say goodbye. A foolish thought. More than he realizes.
He pushes open the door, steps inside. Stares at the shredded clothing, the tipped furniture, the smears of drying red on every surface. The strips of flesh hanging off the shape curled tightly into the furthest corner.
The door creaks shut behind him. The eyes that snap to his are not ones he knows. It’s the only thought he manages to have before the wolf is upon him.
His vision flickers when his head connects with the floor, a gasp ripped from his throat as a final nascent cry, the end of all things.
Teeth and claws and panting slavering hunger tear at him, rip into his gut and splay him open, blood-black spray and mottled gore across the creaking floor and leaking roof. Space-time splatters and leaks and spreads, ice-void clawing at the warmth that the walls struggled so hard to maintain. The absolute and infinite seethes around them.
He should by all means be dead. They both should be. Beneath the hulking mass of what has become, he should be little more than a morsel. Within the arcing sprays of that beyond the stars, all things should be consumed.
Instead he reaches down and gently pets the head of the thing that cannot kill him and cannot die. What is already changed stays stagnant in the forceful waves of abyss, solely focused on itself and its needs as it has since its first moments at the beginning of it all.
The fragments of his bones glisten like far-off stars. The hanging tatters of his guts wisp like the threads of galaxies.
Forever ravenous, the haunting curse of eternal feasts on the offal of the universe, a zero-sum game wrought on two frail bodies, ultimately human, ultimately weak. The fabric of ending tears at them, at this grasping and gasping and low persistent hum, this thing that might almost resemble love.
A hand slides into his, shredded and sopping and desperate. He squeezes back, as tight as he can.
Two steps forward one step back, but in a good way, promise. Give me five minutes to talk?
I’m writing this with the knowledge I might not post it, I might get embarrassed about it and I might delete it but. I want to try.
Let’s be a little frank about what this blog’s been, as a whole.
It’s been a place for me to write, yes, but it’s also been, full honesty, an escape, a panicked and grieved one, away from all I was before. I grabbed my funny little Star Wars OCs and my loose concept for a Mars story and I ran out the door. I made a blog that for years had a header title specifically referencing that it was somewhere new. Somewhere different. Hell the name of the blog itself was that too. I didn’t want to lose all I worked on but I couldn’t bear to be in the same place as it anymore.
I still, frankly, can’t be. The part of me that craves validation and misses all that old feedback, even when I can acknowledge to myself that I wasn’t getting any of that anyways, really. Not towards the end. The peak of the glory days of the Achievement Hunter fiction community had, admittedly, passed a while before I closed up shop. It was nice having what I personally considered a Big Follower Number, but I’d watched plenty of people move on over the years. I’d made several posts half-joking about it in the year leading up to the Big Move alone but it was happening before that too. It wasn’t fun, I got really genuinely upset over the fact that in the middle of all the things I’d cared about writing, the quick brainworm things I slammed out in two hours were the only things that really got traction, but it wasn’t unexpected. It happens, people grow into and out of fandoms and followings and the beginning of the end for AH in the state it had been felt looming on the horizon well before…everything that happened. And everything since.
I don’t mean to dredge old wounds. It’s dramatic to say but I still find mine plenty raw, four years down the line. It aches at me that I can acknowledge, objectively, just how Mine everything was towards the end, how little I’d even really been watching videos and being influenced by them, and still be unable to even brush the edges of character descriptions, much less names. For a very long time I couldn’t even go back to look at my old work, though that particular aspect has gone away through slow and steady effort.
Anyways.
My tenure on satansprettyprose ran a little over five years. It had a huge impact on my life, with reverberations I still feel, and then it was over.
I left a lot of stuff behind when I moved here. A lot of things I loved, a lot of things that filled me with joy. Concepts of ideas, plans I had, conversations I wanted to continue and people I wanted to hold close. Not every attempt to bring any of those back to life has succeeded. Some have failed to such an extent I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to even shape the edges of them again without feeling it in my chest. Some things I might never be able to use again.
To be entirely transparent, the reason I pushed so hard last year to write once a month is that I felt myself drifting away from writing at all. I felt like no matter what I wrote it didn’t matter, it wasn’t what people wanted to see, it wasn’t what I’d done before, what I couldn’t go back to. Writing gives me such joy and I was losing my grasp on it because it felt like it was just me and the big dark shadow of the Before, even while I was actively running away from it. I don’t even talk about writing outside of here and my friend group and that was happening less and less. So I figured I’d give myself one last shot and see if I could even still do good consistent writing anymore. And I’ll be honest, I think I’m a worse writer now than I was. I’ve let the muscle atrophy.
But this last year I wrote some damn good chapters of Orbit in Decay and got us at least lined up for the real meat of the story to get going. I wrote Neighbors, a good amount of it, and got to play with different styles I’d been nervous to touch again, on top of having a lot of real genuine fun with opposing viewpoints. I wrote proper Star Wars things, pieces I’d been holding back on for years because I couldn’t get myself over the hurdle of my own self-conscious hurdles.
But more than all of that, I started working on things like what I’d loved. I started writing the still-unnamed fae stuff, which was and is a blatant rip of the ELR longform spy rewrite I’d been working on, just with supernatural elements and different characters. I started working on some old-fashioned tolsmol stuff, one of which went out last week. Another, which involves some mushrooms and star-void, is still rather piecemeal but has had some space to grow anyways.
And then last month. Last month I made Jay and Obie. Last month I broached the writing topic I was terrified to come back to the most. I wrote criminals. More than that, I wrote a lot of criminals. I’ve still been writing a lot of criminals. And it makes me so so happy to do.
I’ve written so much this last year I’ve had to start sorting it aggressively so that I don’t lose everything.
Here’s the point.
It’s been four years here. I’m older, I’m more tired, my health is worse and it’s harder to want to keep the ball rolling. I’m rarely on here, and I’m aware of that. There were some months this last year where it was all I could do to kick out something short at the very end of the month for the sake of checking that box and very little else. I’ll never match the person I was, but ultimately I think that’s what happens with time anyways. So, what then?
The answer is that I’m going to try. Like I’ve been but also more than that. I’m going to stop living in the shadow of it all. I want to write what I want to write and I want to create what I want to create. No more clinging to the idea that I can’t even acknowledge all I did because of all the guilt and rage and grief. No more forever reminding myself that I can’t because it was something else. I miss writing things, so I’m going to write them.
It won’t be the same, obviously. See the fae stuff, see Jay and Obie, hell see the clone lesbians I’ve been toying with. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a way to write a revenge story I won’t find utterly lacking and I know with a certainty that tears at me that I won’t ever be writing a massive longform polyamorous corruption arc again. No matter how much I miss it.
But we’re going to find rhymes, going to make new suspiciously similar OCs, going to write new and weird things, and some old and weird things too. And I’m really hoping it’ll make some people smile like it used to because I know it’s done that for me.
If this is published, if you’ve read this far, thanks so much. I hope this rambling thing made sense to you, since I’m getting too emotional to read it back. And I hope you enjoy what’s coming next.
To the folks who might still be following here: I started a new fic recently!
It’s an original story, but the main characters are all familiar faces from OC stuff and tolsmol stuff. It’s a story about a Mars colony, and it’s a really fun passion project of mine.
The first chapter is here: I hope you all enjoy!
You don’t have to delete this blog, but have a new one that this one exists as an archive for. A fresh start, but everything remains.
Honestly? I was just thinking about doing this. I came on to privatize this one a bit more and set up a new one and here you are lovely. I’m thinking that’s probably the best option. I’m going to make myself a new space where I don’t feel weird about enjoying multiple fandoms again and maybe spend a few days reposting some of my favorite mainedoc things there, and then I’ll let you all know about it. Somewhere new for all of us, yeah?
So...yeah. Not a great last few days, emotionally speaking.
I'm not going to talk about my own opinions. I've hashed those out with friends already and frankly just thinking about any of this right now puts a little shadowy pit in my heart. But here's where I'm at. Here's the conclusion I'm coming towards.
Part of me just wants to leave, because this is the longest I've stayed in a fandom and I've had other fans and creators in it alike let me down, but I have five fucking years of heart and soul built into this little orange webpage here, and I think it would honestly devastate me to leave it all behind. I've thought about starting a new blog, but that's a similar emotion.
So here's the beginning of the conclusion I'm coming to. As of this moment, most if not all of the old AUs are abandoned. ROS is...abandoned. It hurts me so so much to write those words but I don't know if I can touch even thinking about writing in this fandom right now, much less using certain...characters. Just going through my notes to store away all the unfinished WIPs because I didn't have the heart to delete them hurt. I still have an entire inbox and so many drafts to clear away. Writing for things here is what I've done for so long to relieve anxiety and so many things are just...worthless now.
But I think I'm going to spend the next few days going through the tags for writing and...unlisting everything that I no longer want to have. I might make a new tag entirely for OC stuff. I want to keep writing them and if that means excising them into their own AU, so fucking be it.
You'll still see Maine and Doc here. Maybe a bit more often. I always go to them when I'm upset and I was...excited for Zero before this. And I found some old NSP stuff when I was cleaning out my drafts. So who knows. Maybe you'll see some new fandoms entirely here once it feels like the right time. But that's the plan for now.
The one last thing I've been thinking of is...Well...my URL came about when I first joined this fandom in an attempt to impress someone I'm no longer around. I've made it my own and this is my fucking blog but...maybe it's time for something new. We'll have to wait and see.
Part of me just feels like I should just...make a fucking new OC account or something. I love this blog so much but??? I don't know what else to do. fucking almost everything I write....
I'm thinking I might hang onto it until it's done or at least close to done and then release it in parts, simply because I still haven't hammered out everything I want to with the first section and I want to be able to do so if I change my mind later, but also I don't know what 20k+ of words would look like at once in this horrible orange hellpit
He finished his book almost an hour ago, yet he didn’t put out the candle flame illuminating his desk.
He didn’t know exactly why, maybe he thought the way the little flame flickered was pleasant, perhaps he enjoyed the way the thin trail of smoke danced above it.
Perhaps he was distracting himself from going back to sleep, the latest nightmare still fresh in his mind. He could almost feel the cold water invading his lungs.
So he distracts himself with the little flame.
“For how long, I wonder, can I keep this flame alight?”
He stayed awake all night, observing the little flame, feeding it small scraps of paper when it flickered too weak, gently patting it down when it consumed it’s candle too fast.
Exhaustion was creeping on him, he could barely keep his eyes open anymore, his common sense telling him he should put the little flame out before he fell asleep on top of it.
He ignored this advise.
Instead, he so carefully moved the little flame from it’s almost completely melted candle to a new, unused one.
Hopefully big enough to last quite a few hours.
Almost fearfully, he collapsed in bed, waiting for the horrible and familiar feeling of the icy waters encasing him on his sleep.
Instead, he dreamt of warmth.
—
Another day went by, then another, then a week, then two.
He learned how long each type of candle lasted, what sort of fuel feed the little flame the best.
It was now a bit of a pet project, to see how long he could make it last.
He remembers fondly how the little flame once encased the entire candle at once, flickering almost playfully.
Or how it hissed almost in annoyance, when he had to flicker it with water dropets to get it to a manageable size again.
He wasn’t sure when the pet project became just a pet.
Perhaps it was when he caught himself thinking up names for the little flame.
Perhaps it was when he decided on Orion.
In the following months not once did he dreamt of all encasing cold nor the impenetrable darkness of the depths.
He dreamt of warmth and light.
—
It was a holiday night, the kind that had most houses empty as entire families flocked together.
He was alone with Orion when the burglars broke in.
They weren’t expecting witnesses, just an easy job.
Though a single terrified man wasn’t too hard of a job.
They bought him down easily, and violently, demanding riches he didn’t have.
Orion gave a fearful flicker with each hit, it shook with each threat.
But when the bored and disappointed burglars took out the weapon, Orion roared.
The candle was ablaze in one second, the desk in two, and the burglars in three.
The little flame, now a massive, enraged inferno, embraced him fully and protectively.
He felt as much heat, as one would fill drinking hot chocolate in a cold winter night, with the company of a fully stocked fireplace and a warm blanket.
Orion’s body grew and grew, soon encasing the entire house, the flames growing so high and wide, and flickering so violently, they almost looked like flapping wings.
Later they will find nothing but an empty, charred plot of land, and blackened trails following the direction of the wind.
He left with Orion that night, never to feel cold again.
—
There’s the common misbelief that dragons hatch from eggs, when in reality, the infant form of a dragon is so frail, so small, that a misplaced breath might be enough to extinguish them.
But if one were to care for them long enough, love them long enough, the dragon will grow big and powerful, and return the favor.
If you're honestly looking for input, I lean towards gaps cause I love the idea of getting these snippets of story with gaps and time to process it all.
I am genuinely looking for people’s input. I’ve bothered my friends about this already but while I am absolutely delighted to be writing it, this fic is a massive undertaking, even with a concrete beginning, middle, and end already laid out for it. It’s currently sitting at just over 7k for them to just be hired and get to the hotel where they’re staying, no meeting the other spies, no other murder or intrigue. I expect this to be a long fuckin’ fic and I keep finding myself going back and working over what I already have as I tinker and rework things for the next part and so like....I should set this part in stone and get a move on. But does that mean I post this first part for everyone to see, or do I wait and polish the whole thing and post it all as one giant fic? Therein’s the struggle.
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