Discover Top Posts Tagged with #dibs.

Jul 28, 2025

TIMING: Current (late July) PARTIES: Owen @bladesandtrades and Daiyu @bladesbounties LOCATION: The 3 Daggers SUMMARY: Daiyu calls dibs on Flappin' Flann. Owen thinks that's stupid. CONTENT WARNING: Sibling death

The three daggers remained one of Daiyu’s favorite spots to date. There had been that bit of time where she had struggled to make it through the bar’s doors, the parking lot stained with bad memories (aside from the usual and metaphorical blood) and the people inside having been privy to her being weakened. But that time was over now. It was in a hunter’s nature to move on from things like that fast, swift and without mentioning it again. And so they all had.

All that remained of that night were her scars and Rafael’s name carved into the bar among all the others. She wondered if Killian ever thought about the blood in his car, but she didn’t ask. She just got her cherry cola and went to the bounty board, as she always did.

Daiyu approached it while sucking on her straw, not looking forward to pushing past the tall guy standing in front of him. She’d seen him around a few times — Owen, he was called, and it was not just his height that got on her nerves. He was bent close to the board and she followed her gaze. Nope. He was very clearly staring at the biggest, bestest bounty of all: that of Flappin’ Flann. The one that was hers.

She moved forward, slapping her hand on the bounty’s description. “Sorry, dude, that one’s taken.”

—-

If it wasn’t proving such a fucking nuisance for Owen, he would have been impressed by Siobhan’s ability to create the most perfectly wretched situations. Just the basic concept of needing to be stuck in her presence was bad enough to start with but everything else - the useless hunt, needing to seek out information from The Three Daggers… Obviously, the bitch fae didn’t know just how little Owen liked frequenting the bar that was supposedly a home base for those like him. Even with the part of his sordid past that Siobhan was privy to, there was no reason for him to want to avoid other hunters, avoid the bar littered with the names of those no longer around, a list that Owen had actively made bigger. None of them knew or suspected, why would they? But Owen knew, making his skin crawl as he perused the bounty board, hoping to make this quick.

The poster hanging here, much nicer and less wrinkled than the one Siobhan had provided, didn’t offer any further information. It wasn’t exactly new, either, the edges of it frayed. Everything about this screamed fool’s errand but there was no going back on this damn deal now, was there? As Owen considered the pros and cons of asking around, the cons being that he would have to field questions about a slayer going after something so silly, most likely suffer through a bit of mockery, too, someone made the choice for him.

Owen didn’t startle as the hunter laid claim on the poster, simply raising an eyebrow at her as he tried to place her features. Not someone he’d hunted with before, nor someone he’d slept with (nor a family member of someone whose life Owen had watched fade from their eyes, something he knew thanks to a bit of drunken research one particularly torturous and vulnerable evening) so Owen was entirely blanking on a name. “That’s not how this works, dude,” Owen shot back, straightening out as his lips quirked upwards. Oh, she was short short. Looking her over with no lack of judgement, Owen cocked his head. “Ranger?”

—-

There were traits many hunters seemed to share — viciousness, pragmatism, brashness and of course, stubbornness. Daiyu wasn’t sure why that was, and had never put in much work to consider it in the first place. Maybe it was the fact that they were raised to kill but inevitably also be killed that made them so. Or maybe the dogma that they were fed that made the convicted of their righteousness. It could also just be part of their DNA, like their enhanced strength and healing.

Owen was proving that he also held this particular trait. If he wasn’t stubborn, he’d just relent and step away from what was rightfully hers. But he didn’t. Daiyu was more stubborn though, she decided, and kept her hand pressed against the description of Flann. She almost knew it by heart now, with all the time she had spent wistfully looking at its obscure picture and the price attached to its head. She dreamed of walking into the bar, pulling a cart behind her flaps of Flann, being cheered and heralded by all those around her.

“Uh, it is? I called dibs, you know,” she said, stopping herself from adding how long ago she called dibs exactly. That wasn’t a fact that complimented her hunting skills. But Flann was evasive, despite being huge and flappy. Not even she had been able to find him yet. Sometimes she wondered if it was all a prank. “And dibs is sacred.” Daiyu moved to lean against the bounty wall, hand still obscuring the listing as she twisted her body. “Yeah, thought you knew that … Slayer.” She said it in a tone that suggested she thought him lower than her, which she kind of did. Slayers were the laziest hunters, everyone knew that. “Not your area, anyway.”

—--

Petulantly, the short ranger kept her palm firmly plastered against the poster, as if that would somehow stop Owen from having read it and retained all the information. Owen’s arms crossed over his chest, clearly unimpressed with the whole debacle. He hadn’t reached annoyed yet but he had a feeling the woman in front of him had a talent for getting people there. In a further display of petulance, she claimed dibs. With a faint hint of amusement, his eyes narrowed. “I’m an only child, I don’t respect the authority of fucking dibs. Also, I’m a fucking adult and bounties are first come, first serve. Should have spent more time looking for your bounty instead of calling dibs.”

In what couldn’t be a comfortable position, the ranger leaned against the wall and Owen sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t need to have this conversation but if there was a sliver of a chance this ranger could give him some information, he’d rather deal with this stubborn asshole than spend more time with that fucking fae. “Why would I bother knowing anything about you? I don’t even know your name.” Glancing over his shoulder, Owen caught the bartender’s eye and gave a quick nod. He definitely needed a fucking drink for this.

“Maybe if you rangers were fucking better at your jobs, everyone else wouldn’t have to pitch in,” Owen argued, which definitely wasn’t the way to get this woman to give him information but well… he had always been a bit shit at playing nice .

—

“You don’t hear that often in these circles. What, your parents didn’t fuck around enough to put a batch of hunters onto the planet? Seems kinda selfish, if you ask me.” Daiyu didn’t buy into the rhetoric that hunters should procreate with other hunters, but she knew plenty of others that did. It was why her parents had gotten kids, she figured — it wasn’t like they were particularly keen on raising them with love and care, after all. But being a hunter was a duty, and making sure there were more hunters out there once you died … well, to some that was part of it. She just wanted to get on his nerves was all. “Dibs goes for everyone, by the way, and that includes only children and adults.”

The fact that he clearly did not remember their previous interaction made her feel belittled and unseen. It wasn’t bad per se, to not be known, but she’d let him know that she knew him and so it wasn’t fair. “Well, we talked before, exchanged specialties and everything. Oh,” she continued, gesturing around, “And this is a place where people like us meet and socialize. Not our strongest suit but we make do.” She extended her hand. “It’s Daiyu.”

She squinted at him for a moment, then let out a snort. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? Okay, cool. What about all the vampires and other undead freaks on this wall, huh? You’re not going to take any accountability for that?”

—---

Even though it was, in a way, his own fault for bringing up the topic, Owen felt a strong sense of animosity toward the mouthy ranger as she questioned his parents’ breeding methods. She obviously didn’t know just how badly the Lundkvists had fucked up the family lineage - well, had past term, with their two new would be slayers already in training to hopefully erase the legacy Owen had left in his wake - but the words hit a little too close to home all the same. It didn’t show on his face aside from an unimpressed huff, followed by a shrug. “Got it right in one,” he lied smoothly, latching onto the subject of dibs instead. “Dibs applies if you say it does. Which I don’t.”

At Daiyu’s unoffended offense and reminder that they had indeed met, Owen tried slightly harder to remember her. Faintly, he recalled a discussion outside the Three Daggers, both of them lingering in the parking lot, not wanting to venture inside for (presumably) wildly different reasons. Owen doubted there was another hunter who had also killed dozens of their own in a futile attempt to save his… whatever, group of people. He also recalled going home and downing quite a lot of alcohol following that failed attempt at entering the very bar he was now standing in, which explained why the ranger had slipped his mind. Owen wished more things from that time would. “Guess I maybe remember you,” he answered vaguely, if only to annoy the already slightly irritated ranger.

Not that she needed a whole lot more antagonizing as it seemed Owen had done a good job of that just by eyeing her bounty (the bounty, it was neither her nor that bitch Siobhan’s). “I’m versatile, I can’t clear this whole board and do everything else I’m doing,” he argued without any real heat, looking over the board again. “And it’s wildly outdated, just to be fair. That one left town months ago. Pretty sure that one’s just a fucking weird human with an aggressive biting kink.” With a grateful nod, Owen accepted the glass of whiskey that was handed over to him, not wanting to back down from this ridiculous stand off Daiyu had started.

—-

She looked him up and down (mostly up) and raised an eyebrow, “Sure they did.” There could be more there, but she wasn’t going to press too much on the matter of family. A jab was fine, but continued banter often lead to the knives being pointed back at her. Daiyu did not want to argue about her own family, because she was too busy pretending she had none. And of course she knew that there was no dibs system with bounties. That wasn’t how this worked. Everything was fair game, first come and first serve. “Well, then you’re no fun.” That also wasn’t how this worked. Hunting wasn’t fun, or at least not supposed to be, though she and plenty hunters before her had found their ways of having some.

There was something to be liked about not being memorable, especially by someone who had changed their last name to the obviously fake name ‘Blade’, but Daiyu would still carry a grudge. It was easy to be annoyed by the other anyway, with the way he was gunning for Flann and especially his obnoxious height. Another thing she could jab at his parents for, but then he might wonder if hers had been awfully tall. (Her mom had been, her dad was irritatingly tall as well.) “Well done, good job turning on your brain.”

She looked at the rest of the bar for a moment as Owen had his drink delivered. She rolled back her shoulders as she let her arm drop, opting to lean more casually against the bounty wall now. She already had a bit of a reputation about being possessive about bounties, so she shouldn’t press it too much. “Skill issue,” she quipped, “An aggressive biting kink that’s gotten so out of hand someone would pay to have them dead…” She shook her head. She would take note of that and not chase the bounty, even if she hadn’t been interested in a vampire anyway. “There’s still plenty of other vampires and zombies you could go after, though. Sounds like you’re just making excuses.”

—--

It wasn’t a very convincing lie and it didn’t even need to be. Most hunters knew better than to take shots at family shit, mostly because that left them exposed to receiving shots right back. In here, Owen would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t have an absolutely fucked up childhood accompanied by a shitty family. Sure, sometimes the shittiest family member was the person inside this bar, the one that had run off to a town that had high death rates for humans and hunters alike, but there was always shit to take shots at. Daiyu, in the way she backed off, proved herself part of the rule. Owen, similarly, didn’t push for the discussion to continue, settling for giving her a sickly sweet smile instead. “I’m fun when it benefits me,” Owen explained simply, and this situation with Flann was neither fun nor beneficial for him.

Sarcasm dripped from Daiyu and the more she spoke, the easier it was to remember her. Did Owen particularly remember what they’d talked about? Not really but he had an inkling it had gone… pretty much the exact same way as this conversation was heading. “It’s on, I just give rangers a very limited space on there to begin with.” Not the full truth - the ranger he had fought way back when still took up some real estate, so did fucking Rick, and the others whose names Owen tried very hard to forget. If Daiyu had been one of the unlucky ones, he definitely would have remembered her name, her face. Downing a bit of the mediocre whiskey, Owen raised an eyebrow as Daiyu backed down. Just a tiny bit. trying to reclaim some sense of chill that she obviously didn’t possess.

“Stop projecting, ankle biter,” Owen shot back, even though she did have a point. There was an obvious skill issue when it came to Owen’s productivity as a slayer. Even when there’d been a single minded focus of culling the town’s vampire population for reasons that had nothing to do with helping humans or honor or hunter bullshit like that, he’d still been fairly effective. Now he was just a… different kind of effective. One that couldn’t be used to quip back at other hunters, fucking annoyingly. “That’s what I heard. Haven’t personally vouched for it, though. One of those Macabre type idiots almost got themselves killed a few years ago, fucking around with plastic fangs and red contacts.” Owen hadn’t shoved a stake through that particular human’s chest and the way the story was told made it sound like he’d never done anything of the sort. Which was a nice reality to live in.

“I’m picky. And busy going after your bounty.”

—

She raised an eyebrow, “I’d argue being fun always benefits you, actually,” she quipped, “Improves your quality of life and everything. But then yours can’t be that good if you can’t even respect the concept of dibs.” She shook her head mournfully as if she pitied the other for his lack of whimsy. It wasn’t a trait commonly shared between hunters, one that barely lived within her. Daiyu would gladly try and lord it over the other though, and pretend she was the most fun girl in the entire bar.

She snorted. Owen was quick-witted at the very least, which was an improvement from all the angry grunting plenty of hunters at the bar did. A talkative hunter was always one Daiyu liked. She’d been around plenty of silent types in her life. “Oh wow,” she said, making a jerking off motion, hand bouncing off her crotch, “Is your dick as big as your dickish behavior?” There was something at the edge of her eyes, something of amusement. Yes, she still absolutely intended to kill Flappin’ Flann before the other and would feel victorious when she saw his disappointed, heartbroken face when she delivered it’s flappy head, but at least there was some amusement.

The insult was almost too accurate not to raise suspicions, but then Daiyu figured she just gave off ankle biter vibes. Someone of her stature with her general attitude pretty much fit the dictionary definition. “You’d wish I’d bite your ankles,” she said, before snorting at the story laid at her feet. At least you didn’t get as many freaks for werewolves in her area of expertise. Teen Wolf had never managed to do for werewolves what Twilight had for vampires. “Not the plastic fangs … they should at least invest in some porcelain ones, if they wanna commit to the bit.” She wasn’t sure if there were fake porcelain fangs but it sounded about right. She sized the other up for another moment, shrugged. “Fine. May the best hunter win — and if you wanna make it more interesting than just that –” She tapped the bounty, “– reward, let me know.” She worked best when there was competition, after all.

—--

Owen inhaled deeply, taking proper stock of the situation now that Daiyu had (momentarily, Owen doubted she would actually forget) let go of the Flann deal. He was notoriously bad at hunter relations, aside from the ones with the mutually beneficial ‘we both know hunters are shit at relationships so this is good for a night’ type of deal. Actually, too many of those had gone to fucking shit too for Owen to properly exclude those. Eve forced herself to bear his presence to keep an eye on him, Jade was some sort of insane to actively try and keep him around and the rest… “We’re hunters. Did you miss the memo that we’re actually not supposed to have fun? Look at that fucking sad sack of shit.” Owen jerked his head towards one of the bar’s dark corners, to an indeed sad sack, sulking and nursing what seemed to be his fourth glass counting the empty ones on the table. “I’m working my way towards that, actually.”

As if shifting her attitude at around the same time Owen decided to maybe slightly lower his hackles, Daiyu laughed. Not a proper laugh but it was the equivalent to one and it felt like a win. And in return, Owen couldn’t be bothered to stifle the smirk at Daiyu’s crude gesture, eyebrows raising in a show of mock offense. “Hmm, bigger actually. About…” Owen trailed off, moving his hand slowly away from the one holding the glass, making a show of trying to accurately measure out some ‘incompatible with fucking life’ length of this hypothetical dick. “It’s where I keep all my attitude, actually, so needs plenty of space.”

Shaking his head with a huff, Owen downed the rest of his drink before discarding it on the nearest table. “Kinky. You think I’d let a ranger touch me?” he asked, which was a moot question as quite a few rangers had, and only some of them had done it just to punch him in the face. “Fuck, yeah. Those would be way more satisfying to break than the plastic shit.”

The conversation returned to Flann, as it was always bound to do, but Daiyu seemed so much less stuck the fuck up about it. Probably pretending to be chill to try and make up for the very unchill display before. Fuck, it made Owen wish this really was just a stupid fucking rivalry and not a deal made for the secrecy of the thing that defined him and ruined him all at once. Fucking Siobhan. Fucking fae. “Publicly admitting slayers are better than rangers?” Owen suggested, because if he couldn’t find and kill this fucking thing than no way little miss short stuff would be able to. And to seal the deal, safe in this non-fucking-magic kind of deal making surrounded by wardens, Owen offered a hand for her to shake.

—

She followed his head to one of the many hunters drinking away his sorrows in the corner of the bar. Daiyu looked back at Owen, “Uh, I don’t think he’s being a particularly good hunter either right now. Besides, yes, I got the memo a lot of times and I’ve just opted to ignore it.” Her teeth showed as she grinned. For all her pessimism and short tempers, she did try to find a bit of fun in everything she did. And while the height of the hunt was often not a humorous place, there was plenty of time where there was room for jokes, banter, and poking the metaphorical bear. “What an ambitious plan.” It was probably not really his ideal future. Daiyu hadn’t met a lot of hunters who planned ahead, anyway, and those that did live long did seem a little aimless because of it.

She cocked her head as he moved his hands, as if seriously considering his dick size. Her facial expression shifted with every inch it grew, mouth fallen open when he got to the end of it. “Damn, you probably need custom made underwear to keep that thing around. I understand why you’re after dear Flanny, it probably costs a bunch.”

Daiyu raised her eyebrows, then gave her head one curt shake. “When I bite your ankles, you’ll see how not-kinky it can be — and non-consensual.” As most violence was just that. Done without agreement of the other. Of course, there were things like practicing and sparring, but she didn’t do a lot of that these days besides with Jade. She liked stakes. She preferred it when her foe couldn’t tap out.

His potential reward was a pathetic one, but one that would grate Daiyu to no end. Slayers ranked third when it came to hunter types to her. Dealing with half-dead creatures that disappeared upon success was just so easy compared to the large list of foes a ranger had, never mind the trickiness of fae. Most days she thought rangers were the best type of hunter, but sometimes she had to admit that wardens might be the most demanding of the bunch. Slayers, though? Lazy, spoiled and annoying. She bristled, “Fine. And if I get him, then you’ll have to do the same but for Rangers.”

—-

“Well, no one can be a great hunter all of the time, give the bastard a break. And that’s not including me because making a comparison between imported goods would be very fucking unfair for you guys.” As much as the thought of being a hunter, belonging to this community, gave Owen horrible fucking feelings of his chest constricting, talking shit about being the best one still came easy. At least relatively easy, it was definitely more fucked up now that he’d quite literally showed his superiority over some hunters by way of claiming their lives. But Daiyu would simply see it as some good old fashioned big dick hunter ego.

As fun as Daiyu was to mess with, the thoughts Owen was usually very skilled at keeping at bay were gaining traction with every moment spent in here, so much so that he couldn’t even really appreciate the ranger’s dig about custom underwear. Definitely better to leave while he was ahead. “I’ll wear my shortest socks for easy access,” Owen managed to shoot back despite his distracted state, pulling all of his focus onto the stupid bet. A stupid bet was nice. No real risk, probably no chance of a reward, either. From the sound of it, this fucking Flann creature was a ghost (relatively speaking). At least just the idea of the bet was making Daiyu bristle, which was a reward in and of itself. “Only fair. Especially since I’m not worried in the slightest, rebellious teenager from the 90s,” Owen made one final dig as they shook on the bet, looking Daiyu (and her outfit) over with amused disdain before slipping away. So now he had two reasons for wanting that wrinkly monstrosity dead - and no new ideas how to actually fucking achieve that.

#owen.#owen: writing.#threads.#dibs.#wickedswriting