ruby or val! she/he/neos. i am eighteen years old :P i am a massive fag and a pretentious loser who will overanalyze every piece of content i receive for my favs <3
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An apple a day keeps the mice at play... no wait... an apple a day keeps the sharks at bay... you can lead a man to water but you can't teach him how to fish for a day
~2000 words, based on this dream, includes transphobia and misgendering!
The chapters are named after the Powderpaint songs I listened to while writing.
Ch. 1: Fall Together
The final piece, located at last. When this all started I never thought we'd assemble all six pieces and prevent the premature heat death of our world. And we still haven't, but god we're so close now. In a way that makes it worse. For the first few missions everything felt so hopeless, it almost didn't matter if we failed because we already were dead women walking. But now, if we fuck this up, well then we doomed us all. Or at least it feels like it. Of course, logically I know that it was the deceptively-named Better Tomorrow Corporation that did this, but it still feels like our fault if we can't prevent it, you know? Anyway, the last few hours had been agonizing. The tech guys had been running their fancy little search algorithms, looking for signs of the final piece and all me and my fellow agent Lea could do was sit around in the cold of the agency's waiting room while the excited murmurs of the tech guys rose and died down again, as another dead end was revealed. Feeling helpless was definitely worse than knowing that the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. That would have surprised the person I was just a month ago, but it wasn't she who now walked through the sparkly portal into an unassuming hallway building.
"You check the doors to the right," Lea ordered, "I'll take the left."
I nodded, and walked up to the first door, hacking its electronic opening-mechanism with my universal key card. I say that as if I did anything, rather the tech guys cooked this doohickey up and told me which button to press. You'd think with the fate of the world at stake people would just let us access whatever, but apparently most companies are still in denial or think we can figure it out without us accidentally seeing their corporate secrets.
The room was of course a bust, a janitorial closet filled with cleaning equipment and the golden gleam of the final piece nowhere to be seen. A bubbling of frustration fills me up, but I back off, close the door and check the next door. What if the tech guys were wrong, the final piece was on the other side of the world? What if the teleporter malfunctioned and we were on the other side of the world? What if the final piece works differently than the others, what if I'm not gonna recognize it? I will doom us all. The maelstrom of bad thoughts provides a strange and by now comforting background noise to my fruitless search of room after gleamless room. Stupid Better Tomorrow Company, could have at least tracked the fucking energy signature of these things, as they splintered and spread over the world, I allow myself a single thought of blaming others, before getting startled.
Ch. 2: Constellation
"S-sorry", I apologized for being startled, while awkwardly trying to hold open the door, "I didn't realize anyone was still, you know, working here?"
He smiled, "Did you really think everyone would just stop working just because the world is about to end?"
"Uh, yeah?" I reply non-chalantly, immediately cursing myself for letting my voice go down a little too much.
"Well, some of us still have integrity."
"I, uh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. What're you, like, working on? Like are there even supervisors to like, give out work?" I knew I shouldn't waste time on this, but something just felt off, and my only recently-honed agent skills told me to investigate.
"Ah, I don't need a supervisor, I already know what to do. Plus, I hear there's some highly trained specialists who're gonna save us all, and then I'm gonna get a bonus for working through the apocalypse while everybody else hunkered down with their loved ones."
I don't know if it was the flattery (which he couldn't have possibly known was directed at me, right?) or the audacity, but I felt compelled to smile, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. Fuck, when did I even last do my hair? I probably look like a mess oh god. And this was the only guy in the world where 'it's the apocalypse' would apparently not be a valid excuse. "And uh, so, what's your job, like specifically?"
He smiled, clearly happy to talk about that. "Wait, I'll get a second chair and show you." I hadn't realized how tall he was, until he awkwardly tried to brush past me at the door to get a chair from one of the rooms I had just broken into. I like that in a man, or maybe I just liked not being the tallest person in the room in myself. When he came back I more gracefully held the door open without standing in his way and then followed him in. After all, I hadn't checked this room yet, and some closed drawers could conceivably hide the final piece. It would be inappropriate not to investigate.
Anyway, I sat down next to him and started listening to his explanation of his job, which involved a lot of technical words for economic concepts, none of which I understood even remotely, but I nodded and smiled and kept looking at his nicely clean-shaven angular face, lit by the starkly blue light of the monitor. I wondered if working in the dark was a preference of his, or if that was just to keep a low profile during the apocalypse. It probably helped me, I mean not just was my hair a mess probably (and not in a cute 'just woke up' way, but in a 'have been fighting the apocalypse for a month' way) but I hadn't even touched make-up since like finding the second piece, and my tight agent suit was certainly not flattering on me. God, I really had nothing going for me, huh? Fuck, he asked me something. "Uh, sorry, can you repeat that?"
"I asked if you got that."
I frowned. Internally. Externally I just made what probably looked like a very awkward expression and laughed and said "I'm highly-trained in a different specialization," which was certainly true.
For a moment he turned his head directly to me, half of his face bathed in the blue light of the monitor, while the other was shrouded in darkness, except a glint in his eye, both of which were intensely focused on my own. Instinctively I moved back a little, my mouth having seemingly opened at some point and not closed yet. My heart was beating faster and I was probably blushing. "I, uh," I got out, internally cursing myself that this would happen now and not two months ago or in two months.
He turned back to his screen. Curse me and my inability to say words. He had no such affliction and politely asked if I wanted him to explain the internal mailing system, and I just nodded. Resolved to actually do my job I tried to collect myself by not looking at him, leaning back on my chair and breathing calmly for a moment. Then I would get on with the search for the final piece.
My calm breathing suddenly turned sharp, when my hand intercepted the cause of a sensation on my thigh. Only too late did I realize that he had put his hand there and in my instinctual attempt to remove it, I had only ended up holding his hand. "I, I, uh," I stammered, as I realized how cold my hand was, and how warm his. My tensed body relaxed, maybe all I needed was a little warmth, ironic considering the way our world would go down. Maybe, it was just all those weeks of training in the agency's frigid facilities. Slowly, my fingers clasped his hand and a grin hushed over his face, which leaned in and kissed me.
A sensation my touch-starved body had long forgotten overcame me, a wave of almost embarrassing pleasure and relief flooded me as surely as my anxious thoughts (which were now all but forgotten) did earlier. I didn't even notice when his muscular arm wrapped around me. The sound of my own heavy breathing and the sparks that were going off in my brain at most of my field of vision being filled by his face prevented practically any thought. He leaned in again and held me closer; an exciting warmth emanating through my body from his arm on my back to my front brushed up and rested against him. I honestly don't remember the kiss that followed, but I remember the pain of my hip hitting the ground and the cold rushing back in to replace human-made warmth.
I didn't properly process every word said, still dizzy from the kiss, not the fall, but I saw that Lea had entered the room, the final piece in hand and a huge grin turning into a frown as she appeared to be shouting at him. I do clearly remember him saying that "he came on to me, I didn't want it," before the man stormed out.
Ch. 3: For A Moment
Lea propped me up and gave me a sad smile, before flashing the final piece. I was relieved that she had found it, I really was, but not even a world saved could fill the hole left in my heart at this moment. Surprisingly few thoughts passed my mind on the way back. I found the mental strength to walk unaided halfway through the corridor, and Lea and I came back to base heroes. Champaign corks popped as Lea carefully handed some tech guys the final piece to reassemble with the others and thus finally ending this threat. The agency watched as the assembled pieces ascended to the heavens and thermometers everywhere began their slow descend. At least i think that happened. I wouldn't know for sure, because I immediately rushed out of the control room into the empty locker room, leaned against a wall and collapsed. The muted but still loud shouts of victory echoed through the walls, but none of their joy reached me, my head hanging low, my arms wrapped around my legs, trying to protect myself from the world. I didn't even feel my tears dropping onto my chest, as the impact wasn't forceful enough to get through my stupid suit. Not that that stopped me from feeling his touch earlier, I thought and immediately regretted it. I did not want to think about that at all, but I couldn't think about anything else either.
I don't remember how long I sat there, I don't think the partying had died down yet, then again we-just-saved-the-world parties rarely die down fast. I also don't remember hearing the creaking of the door opening. But when i heard a familiar "hey", I cursed myself for my first thought being "I hope it's him." Of course it wasn't, it was reliable Lea, who looked down upon my sad, curled up figure. "I just wanted to check if you were alright."
I snorted. We both knew that I wasn't, but it was nice of her to ask anyway. "Just a lot of feelings. We saved the world." I tried to force a smile.
"We saved the world," she echoed slowly, as if in disbelief, before sitting down next to me. For a while we sat in silence. "I know what that guy said wasn't true."
I curled up a little more.
"I saw him kiss you and everything, it was pretty obvious what was going on. I'm… sorry you had to hear him say all that."
"But why, why would he?"
"I… I should have just left. We could have collected you later, then this could have been—"
"No, that wouldn't have changed anything. I mean, like, it wouldn't have changed him. I don't want to be with someone like that, but, but I do also." I turned my head to Lea, tears streaming down my face. "Isn't that awful?"
Leia looked sadder than even before, and I felt guilty for making her feel like this on the night we saved everyone. To my surprise she leaned in and hugged me (or at least as much as you can while sitting on the floor like that) with no regard for the tears and snot that had accumulated on my uniform or her usual very strict boundaries of touching people. I spend some more hours crying that night, but I also knew that it would be okay.
