For the prompts thing “fuck off. i mean it.” w Cib/Steven?
“Steven. Steven. Steve Steve Steve Steve.”
Steven felt his eye twitch, but he stared resolutely at his computer screen, not wanting to give Cib the satisfaction of having drawn his full attention. “What,” he said, jaw tight as he continued clicking through floor plans of various banks nearby.
“Steve,” Cib groaned, drawing out the vowels from where he lay on the floor, back flat on the ground, starfished out like he was making a snow angel. “Dude, I’m so bored.”
“Well,” Steven said, hand clenching around the computer mouse, “there’re easily about eighteen things you could be doing right now that would be helpful and productive. But, twenty minutes ago you told me they were ‘fuckin’ stupid’ and that you ‘just wanted to shoot things,’ and now here we are.”
Steven heard Cib shuffle around on the floor, and a sigh sounded from the floor. “Well, in my humble defensive, they are stupid,” Cib said, in his nasally impersonation of a smart person that made Steven want to bang his head against broken glass.
Spinning his office chair in a one-eighty, Steven finally turned to face Cib. The man in question had sat up from the floor, now in a criss-cross position, hands flat against the hardwood floor of their office. His hair was mussed, his headband off-kilter, and his eyes wide.
“Steven,” Cib repeated, “all of this planning is a waste of our precious time. I wanna run willy-nilly-pilly into a random bank and shoot the shit out of the teller. Bathe in the blood of our newfound enemies. Y’know,” Cib placed a warm hand on Steven’s knee, a cagey grin on his face, “like old times.” Cib’s hand gently squeezed and something in Steven’s stomach jumped up before he could clamp it down.
“Yuck,” Steven said, voice flat, “never touch me.” He reached down and encircled Cib’s wrist with his hand, moving it off of his knee and pretending like the warmth of Cib’s skin didn’t leave a comforting heat on Steven’s cold fingers. Because it didn’t. And even if it did, Steven definitely wouldn’t have noticed.
Cib gave an aggressive pout, lips tilted so far down that it verged on a grimace- which Steven ignored, of course. It didn’t affect him in the slightest. Of course.
Fuckin’ Cib.
“And also,” Steven said, remembering the reason he was having a conversation with Cib in the first place, “we can’t run into a bank blind because you know we don’t work like that anymore.”
“Don’t work like what, with violence?” Cib frowned, sitting up taller, a hint of actual irritation showing in his furrowed brows. “Are we even a gang? Or are we just… crime planners? Crotch planners. Cream platters.”
“Jesus Christ,” Steven said, turning back to his computer in an attempt to end the conversation. “Of course we’re still criminals, idiot, we’re just trying to be… careful ones.”
“Steven,” Cib said, voice wounded in a way that would have run a chill up Steven’s spine, you know, if he gave a shit. “I wanna rob a bank now. I wanna do reckless shit and-”
“Fuck off. I mean it,” Steven said, turning once more to Cib, and he knew his voice sounded harsh, harsher than he meant it to. He took a deep breath, and his hands clenched around the arms of his office chair. “We’re being safe, right now. All of us. No more reckless shit.”
Cib had stopped shifting around on the ground, the room was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning, and Steven knew that he had given too much away.
Exhaling softly, Steven slid his fingers under his glasses and pressed them over his closed eyes as if trying to rub something away. When he opened them up again he jumped back. Cib was still on the floor, but close, much closer than Steven remembered- right in front of him, actually.
“Oh, shit,” Steven said, hands reaching to the sides of his chair once more. He ignored the shake in them. It wasn’t important.
Cib’s face wasn’t blank so much as carefully neutral, eyebrows raised slightly as he stared at Steven. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” He said, slowly, and Steven’s heart pounded loudly in his chest.
“What wasn’t my fault?” Steven asked, but it didn’t sound like a question, and Steven knew it was because he knew the answer. Knew the answer was the drinking and the car ride and the lack of a gun and the crack of a skull on unforgiving concrete-
“Y’know. Parker,” Cib said, his voice solid, and Steven pretended not to feel the anxious jump of his pulse and his heartbeat in his lungs because he didn’t feel it in the first place.
Steven cleared his throat, a wetness in it that wasn’t there before. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I know,” he lied. He knew, inherently, that it was his fault- Parker, and everything that happened afterward. Of course it was, he was the leader, anything that went wrong was on him. Hearing Cib, though, and knowing that at least someone believed he wasn’t a complete fuck-up, well… it didn’t hurt.
Cib stared for a moment into Steven’s eyes, blue on brown, and even if Steven wanted to he couldn’t look away. He gulped, loud in his ears, and Cib’s eyes followed the motion of Steven’s adam’s apple.
He didn’t know if Cib found what he was looking for on Steven’s face but his own softened as he stood up from the ground, the tension that had built in the air dissipating like fog. Steven let out a sigh that he was sure Cib heard, but blessedly ignored.
Emotions were so annoying.
“I’m gonna run to get a pizza, for when the rest of the salt pines get back,” Cib said, sounding light, as if nothing had happened at all. He turned back to Steven. “Any topping requests? An-ko-vee, perhaps? Sugar-pine-apple?”
Steven took in the sight of Cib, his grin wide, eyes bright but knowing, shoulders relaxed, and felt himself breathe again. This was what Steven did best- pretend. He shook his head, leaning back in his chair. “Pineapple on pizza is a hate crime,” he said, “get literally anything else.”
Steven felt more than saw Cib laugh, and he was absolutely not comforted by the sound. Absolutely not.
“No pineapple,” Cib said, nodding, the corners of his eyes crinkling, “got it.”
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