This year, I joined the @cp77nyexchange event once again! And am so happy to draw Viridian with the beloved Jackie for @theviridianbunny💖💖
I hope you like it!! It was such a pleasure to draw them, especially as someone who adores Jackie and wanted to ship their V with him, I get to live vacariously through you ☺️💖
My exchange gift for @ghostoffuturespast :) I hope you like it! I was inspired by your ff and I hope I did your V justice. 2nd one I kept a bit intentionally more raw/messy considering the aftermath of what happened! @cp77nyexchange
Took part in the @cp77nyexchange again this year and had so much fun writing this up for @jasakime using their Vance and Kerry with a very interesting and very sad dynamic. It inspired my angst fueled soul to write this lil ditty. Title and theme inspiration is from Coffee by Chappell Roan.
Happy New Year Jasakime, thank you again so much for the opportunity to write your babies!
If I Didn't Love You, It Would Be Fine
"Of course it's Kerry's luck that the one time he goes out to shop on a random Tuesday afternoon that the one person in the city he wants to avoid would be the same stupid store looking for an outfit of his own."
I took part again in this year's @cp77nyexchange, which I look forward to every time! I drew @Lhugbereth this time around, and adored the possibilities in the wish list.
Lhugy, I hope you enjoy this one. I wrote up a Jackie/V fixit ending with lots of humor and fluff. I had a lot of fun writing this one. Not as much angst for a change, which is a gigantic departure from my usual writing, so I hope you enjoy it! ❤️
Royce/Male!V, also Android!Delamain and lots of Dum Dum
Summary:
As if V isn't hyper aware already. Maybe, in a way, that's what keeps bringing him back here, the fucked up depths of his psyche seeking to let go for a while, to relinquish hold of his own fate for a few hours at least. Out there on the streets he's an upstart merc, a wannabe solo, a chrome-plated gunslinger facing his own mortality at every turn. But here in Royce’s world, he can be no one, nothing, like all the other high, faceless bodies thrashing to the music downstairs. It's easy. Dangerous, but easy.
Or, V spends too much time with Maelstrom, and everything goes horribly wrong.
V wants flowers, but not during a stickup and not when Kerry is in the middle of it. Or, not your typical flower shop story. @cp77nyexchange
For @jasakime, featuring their V (Vance) and Kerry Eurodyne. Contains flower shops, blood and violence, and, believe it or not, a little fluff. Hope you enjoy!
Warnings: Violence, blood and injury (but a happy ending)
Also read on Ao3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Vance nearly passed by the little flower shop.
He’d passed it by a thousand times, acting as if he never gave it a second thought, but he always gave it a wistful side-glance. If he didn’t stop, he wouldn’t be tempted. RealFlowers were expensive, and he had better things to spend his money on than something that was going to die in a week. Or that’s what he always told himself. It came from a tough start in the biz, scraping, scrimping, saving. He had money now, but it still felt like a frivolous expense whether he could afford it or not.
It wasn’t as if he never spent money at all. He had cars, guns, clothes… things that would last. It didn’t mean he couldn’t look, though, even though Kerry always pestered him endlessly afterward for not just buying something he wanted.
But today, it was a commotion inside that caught his attention. Shouting, guns pointed at the owner who stood behind the counter with their hands raised in the air. The few patrons had their hands on their heads, some in fear, some openly glaring at the robbers. One bandit was outside acting as a lookout, but V had simply passed them by, far more interested in the goings on inside than who was on the street nearby.
Leave it to the fucking scavs to hold up a flower shop… although maybe it wasn’t such a gonk idea. Even with a couple of small sales, the shop would be holding a lucrative amount of eddies. It was too dangerous and stupid to rob banks, liquor stores, or CHOO2 stations, so would-be thieves had taken to raiding clothing stores and other luxury specialty shops. NCPD simply couldn’t keep up with the sudden spree of smash-and-grabs and old-fashioned holdups.
It was still risky for the criminals who tried it, because it usually meant crossing over into some other gang’s territory. If they caught wind of it—and hadn’t pre-approved the robbery—there was going to be hell to pay, and gangs were much more efficient than the cops. No trial, no jury, just an execution.
But what really caught Vance’s attention was a silver-haired patron inside that looked an awful lot like one Kerry Eurodyne, rockerboy, chaos incarnate, and, most importantly, his input. V stopped walking while his brain caught up with what his eyes had seen and he backed up slowly, peering in through the edge of the window without catching the attention of the lookout. Yep, it was definitely Kerry, glaring holes into the scav who was holding a gun on him. They were having some kind of conversation… no, scratch that. They were shouting at each other, which was only serving to make a tense situation even tenser. He could only hear muffled words, but he could guess fairly easily the dressing-down they were getting from the famously foul-mouthed rocker, with his “do you know who I fucking am” and “you will be hunted down to the edges of the earth if you fucking dare.”
The scav reversed the direction of his rifle, striking Kerry across the temple and the rockerboy went down in a heap. Whatever plan Vance might have been formulating short-circuited at the sight of Kerry hitting the floor, vision going red with rage. He drew his gun and, barely aiming, fired a shot through the shop window. He half expected it to shatter at this close range, but the glass held, the bullet punching a neat hole before finding its target. The front of the scav’s head exploded in a spray of blood and bone and brains, splattering the patron who had been standing next to Kerry. She hit the floor as well, but in self-defense rather than any kind of injury, and her sense of self-preservation saved her life as one of the robbers pulled the trigger in her direction rather than aiming where the shot had actually come from. Ceramic vases shattered, sending a deluge of flowers and water showering across the shelves and the downed customers. The thieves were waving their guns and shouting vague threats in all directions, trying to figure out who had murdered one of their own. The shopkeeper hunched behind the meager cover of the counter and register, empty hands still raised as if in a silent plea and to prove to the robbers that he was not the one with the weapons.
Vance used their panic to his advantage.
While they were still spinning in useless circles, trying to find their attacker, Vance darted over and kicked the lookout through the front window, which cracked and then gave way, opening fire as the next nearest thief ducked to avoid a face full of broken glass and his flying buddy. He was the next to go, dropping his gun and grabbing his throat as blood erupted from between his fingers. It was an ugly way to die, and the third robber stared in disbelief as his partner’s life gurgled away, making the floor slick with blood and the water from the broken vases which had decorated the previously beautiful window scene.
These guys were not professionals. But that same lack of skill made them unpredictable.
One of the last two standing fired in the direction of the window, but the shotgun spread caught one of the owner’s hands, and he went down behind the counter, screaming in shock, holding his shredded hand in front of him like he couldn’t believe it was still attached to his arm. One of the patrons tried to make a run for it while chaos ensued, and caught another shotgun blast to the back. She didn’t make a sound as she dropped to the floor just in front of the door. Vance shot the gunner through the eye, ensuring he never hurt anyone else again.
“Vance!”
He’d been distracted for only a second by the fleeing patron, and in that time, two more had come out of the back. They were either lookouts at the back door or trying to find the shop’s safe. One of them had dragged Kerry up from the floor and had him in a chokehold, barrel of a revolver resting against the side of his head that wasn’t already bleeding. Kerry, to his credit, didn’t look scared, but did look pissed. Vance narrowed his eyes, trying to mentally will Kerry not to say something that would end up with his brains all over the floor. Kerry wasn’t stupid by any means, but he had a tendency to let his emotions control his mouth.
“Stay where you are! Drop your weapon or the old man gets it!”
“Old man??” Kerry huffed, even though it was entirely true.
Vance raised his hands, but didn’t drop the gun. “You don’t want to do that. You know who you have, don’t you?”
Both of the scavs glanced at Kerry, but only one of them seemed to recognize him. “Holy shit!”
“Yeah. Kerry Eurodyne. Which means you two gonks are in a whole shitload of trouble, especially if anything happens to him.”
“Fuck you,” spat the scav who was using Kerry as a shield. “Your music sucks anyway.”
To his credit, Kerry only flared his nostrils in another huff of irritation. He met Vance’s gaze, then closed his eyes and dropped. Just let himself go completely limp, pitching both himself and his captor forward with the a sudden dead weight. As soon as Kerry’s head was away from the revolver’s barrel, Vance aimed and fired at the one who had been holding his input hostage. The bullet punched a neat hole directly between the scav’s eyes, who stood swaying on his feet for several long seconds while his body caught up with his death.
Another bullet whizzed past Vance’s head, close enough to nick his ear as it passed by. He barely felt it as he let loose another volley, punching three bullets in quick succession into center mass and a final one into the scav’s head.
Kerry sat up slowly, making sure that really was the last of them, holding the side of his head where blood ran freely down the side of his face from the earlier strike with the rifle butt. V tried not to panic at the sight of it, reminding himself that head wounds bled worse than almost anything else even when they weren’t that bad. Nonetheless, he could hear the distant sirens that meant Trauma Team was on the way. Of course Kerry had a subscription, Platinum if V had to guess. Kerry’s record label probably made it mandatory as part of his contract, if they didn’t foot the bill themselves. Had to protect their biggest investment, after all.
“Ow,” Kerry deadpanned, his hand pressed against his head. “I can’t believe he actually hit me.”
“That last guy was about to do more than that. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What the hell were you even doing here?”
“Me? What the hell were you doing here?”
“You know I used to live around here. And good thing I happened to be walking by today. Now answer my question.”
“I answered!”
“You did not, you gonk. You… this isn’t even your side of town.”
“Fine.” Kerry gave him a pained smile, reached over and picked up a handful of flowers that lay on the floor, shaking the glass shards out of the petals and handed the crumpled, crushed buds to V. “Happy birthday?”
He’d completely forgotten…not that it was his birthday, but that Kerry told him to come over later on pain of never being spoken to again because he had an epic gift to give him. Kerry had been planning something special, and apparently flowers had been a part of it… before he’d been so rudely interrupted by a bunch of gun-toting thieves. Now V felt like the gonk.
“Kerry…” He was touched, taking the flowers from him. It would have been so much more romantic if they hadn’t both been splattered in blood and weren’t sitting in the middle of what looked like a very brightly decorated war zone.
“No, that’s not all. I… might have bought the shop for you.”
“What??”
“You said you wanted something else to do, and I know how you try so hard not to stare at this place every time we drive by, so… I bought it for you.”
“I don’t actually know anything about flowers.”
“So? That’s what your partner is for.” Kerry gestured to the former owner who had stopped screaming and had gone to whimpering, peering cautiously from behind the counter as if he couldn’t quite believe that things had gone from bad to worse to done. In V’s estimation, the shopkeeper had gotten off light. He wondered if the guy would even want to stick around to help run the shop after today.
“You really did that for me?”
“Of course I did. Happy birthday, Vance.”
“Thank you? Just…”
“What? Do you not like it?”
“I do! Just no more getting caught in the middle of a hold-up!”
Here's my gift to @myfoggedreality for the @cp77nyexchange! I'm really happy with this scavenger hunt idea and am so pleased with how it turned out. Hope you enjoy!!
I'm With You, All The Way
“Hey cutie pie. Tired of you not returning my calls or texts so let’s try something fun. Since you’re so sleepy all the time, drink this and meet me now in the place where we first met.”
