#ROMAN MENTIONED

[edupunkn00b]

Overruled, Chapter 4: Conflict of Interest

Prev - Conflict of Interest - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ]

@loceitweek Day 4: Conflict/Resolution - Logan meets someone… interesting. WC: 2128 - Rated T - CW: swearing

“Hey, you’re that guy from the party!” 

Logan’s table stuttered as a lanky undergrad flipped around the chair across from him and plopped down into it. He rested his chin on the backrest and stared up at him with big green eyes. “The one with Jack’s friend.”

Marking his page with a sticky note, Logan looked back at the man—boy?—head tilted to one side. Recognition dawned. “Yes. You were the one with Jack.” 

He waggled his eyebrows and offered a charcoal-smudged hand. “In the flesh.” He grinned when Logan grasped his hand. “Firm handshake,” he winked. “I like it.”

“Thank you.” Logan released his hand even as Remus’ grip lingered. He searched his recollections of that night and nodded. “Remus?”

Nice memory… His eyes widened and he continued to stare back at him. “Not from the book.”

“Plutarch's?” Logan asked, one eyebrow raised.

Remus threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, I like you!” He pulled out a pack of gum and a wave of artificial cinnamon hit the air. “No wonder you were able to bag that hottie.”

Logan pursed his lips and attempted to return to his book. “Janus and I are not romantically involved.”

“Oh, really?” Leaning sideways along the café table, Remus smiled up at him. “Does that mean you’re available?”

“I’m sorry,” Logan inclined his head with a small smile. “But no.”

His grin only grew. “No, you’re not available? Or no, you’re not interested?” He brushed callused fingers along the back of his hand, sending a shiver up Logan’s arm.

“Am I interrupting?” Janus stood behind him, face set in a poised expression. His eyes jumped between them, lingering on Remus’ hand on his.

“Well—” Remus began. He didn’t remove his hand and instead, wrapped his fingers around Logan’s.

“No, of course not,” he looked up at Janus before turning to Remus and giving him a small smile. He covered his hand and patted it before gently removing his hand from his grip. “Remus was at Jack’s party on Friday and was asking after you.” 

“Yeah, that dickhead ended up at Harborview ER,” Remus said after a moment. He flexed the fingers of one hand and gnawed at his lip watching him and Janus. His gum had disappeared.

“Really?” Janus purred. He started to pull over a chair between them, then stopped, staring at Remus. His hand fell away from the chair and hung limply at his side for a moment before he tucked it into his pocket. Janus nodded once, then smiled politely. “Then it appears I am indebted to you, as well.”

“You never have to thank me for breaking a creep’s nose,” Remus laughed and cocked his arm, appearing about to playfully punch Janus’ shoulder.

He never made contact.

Almost faster than Logan could interpret, Janus intercepted his fist and twisted. His other arm came up and out and suddenly Remus sprawled on the floor, his chair rattling to the floor next to him.

“Holy fuck, how’d you do that?” he laughed, looking up at Janus.

Frowning, Janus tugged at his jacket then offered a hand up to the laughing undergrad. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Reflex. Are you alright?”

“I’m trying not to be turned on right,” he shimmied his shoulders and Logan wasn’t sure if he was serious.

“That was quite impressive,” Logan murmured. He looked almost embarrassed by the attention. He nodded without meeting their eyes. Was he ashamed? “Would you be willing to demonstrate how you did that?”

Janus’ eyes shot up, wide with surprise. A soft smile sparked at the corners of his lips.

“Fuck, me too?” Remus started to reach for him but seemed to think better of it. He sat back down, looking between the two of them. “Or at least let me watch.” He winked at Logan, clearly more than aware of his double entendre.

“Perhaps,” Janus began slowly. It was only then that Logan noticed his flushed cheeks. He nodded at Logan and pointedly eyed the exit. “Perhaps when we are not already meant to be studying?”

Logan took the hint and smiled at Remus as he stood and gathered his books. “That sounds wise.”

Undeterred, Remus grinned again. “You should call me.” Before Logan could pull out a pen and paper, Remus dug a green coptic marker out of his pocket and shoved it at Logan. He presented his palm and looked up at him. The softness in his eyes was a nice contrast to his near manic smile. Logan obliged and, holding his hand steady, printed his name and telephone number on the undergrad’s palm.

He nearly capped the marker, but looked back at him. “If I am to call you , I will need your phone number, as well. Fingers spread, he offered his left hand and watched him write. His hand was rough but warm, and his little twitches disappeared once he had a marker between his fingers, his cursive clean and artistic, almost calligraphy across his hand.

“C’mon, Necktie.”

Janus fidgeted next to him and Logan gave Remus a little wave. “We really must be going.” He began to follow Janus outside but turned and smiled over his shoulder at the intriguing interrupting to his morning. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Remus.” Logan was surprised by how much he meant it.

“Nice meeting you, Nerdy Wolverine,” he grinned as though it was a compliment and he only smiled brighter when Logan’s face warmed. “You, too, Janus,” he winked. “See ya around.”

~~~

That loud sophomore of Jack’s had actually managed to fluster Necktie. Janus watched as a soft pink spread over his cheeks when the guy cradled his hand and wrote across it with one of those smelly alcohol markers. Janus shoved his own hands deeper in his pockets, ignoring the little twitch. He certainly did not want some random guy’s name and phone number seeping into his skin for fuck-knows how long it took for that stuff to wash off, being reminded of his flirting and little smirk every time he looked down.

As they left the café, Logan kept glancing down at his hand as it dried and Janus’ hands twitched again, pushing the door open and gripping it with both hands. He wasn't bothered. Over a week had passed since he'd told Logan to direct his interest elsewhere. Far from bothered, Janus was relieved Logan was taking his advice.

He waited until they reached the path outside the Marshall Hall before asking, “Are you sure I wasn’t interrupting anything?” 

“No, of course not.” Logan shook his head. “Remus is… friendly, but were merely talking.”

“Mm-hm,” Janus murmured. Logan had stopped staring at his own palm but his face still hadn’t quite lost its blush “So… will you call him?”

“Of course,” he nodded. “When would you like to show us how you flipped him?”

“No, Necktie, I mean will you call him and ask him out?” He lowered his voice as a gaggle of freshman passed them. “I don’t think he gives a fuck about my krav maga.”

“Oh?”  

“He was interested in you.”

“Oh.” Logan smiled, eyes dancing. “I believe he was interested in you, as well.”

Janus didn’t say, given his behavior at Friday’s party, he was certain Remus would in interested in almost anything that moved if it looked at him right. But something was different about the way the sophomore had looked at Logan.

“Perhaps I should reserve the wrestling ring at the fitness center for us,” Logan murmured, glancing again at the bright green letters and numbers on his hand. “It’s intended for recreational tumbling, so the mat is thicker than the regulation four inches, but that should be more sufficient protection from falls.”

“You know how thick the mats are supposed to be?” Janus chuckled. “Necktie, you’ve been holding out on me.”

Logan smiled back, that soft, almost smirk. “Never, Janus. My regional high school wrestling championships have simply never come up in conversation.”

“Book the ring, Necktie.”

~~~

Three days later, Remus sat cross-legged on the floor of the school’s wrestling room, knees bouncing as he retraced a line in his sketchpad. He was early and the room was already warm, making the pastels soft and extra easy to blend. Logan and Janus hadn’t even gotten there yet, and he could only imagine how much warmer it might get. He was left weirdly grateful for Ro’s unsolicited advice to take along a little cooler with ice and water.

“Trust me, Re,” he’d nodded. “The angels who bring us ice water after a dance competition never go home alone.”

The door creaked open and Remus’ head snapped up. Janus glided into the room, dressed in a butter yellow shirt, grey slacks and a matching vest. He scowled at the large sign dictating only wrestling shoes or bare feet were allowed on the ring.

Remus grinned and leaned back on one hand, legs outstretched as he wiggled his toes. “Aren’t you a little overdressed for a go on the mat?”

Janus raised an eyebrow and looked down at Remus’ tank top and shorts. “Are you a little under dressed?”

“Under dressed, overdressed…” Remus laughed. “That all depends on what’s next on order, Jannie,” he winked.

“My name is—”

The door opened again and Logan strode in dressed in a dark blue wrestling singlet. The skintight spandex revealed every muscle he’d been hiding under that hot nerd necktie getup Logan had worn at both the part and when he’d had found him at the Coffee Haus. Remus swallowed dryly, words failing him as he watched Logan move.

Janus seemed unfazed. “No headgear?” he chuckled, voice low and controlled, and ripped his eyes from Logan, searching for any sign of teasing. Instead, he was blushing.

Logan had noticed, his smile growing. “I trust you will not seek permanent damage to my ears or head during this demonstration.” He took in Janus’ clothes, eyes lingering at his open collar and the way his slim cut slacks hugged his thighs. “I trust you have sufficient freedom of movement in what you are wearing.”

“I’m not the one who should be worried, Necktie,” Janus smirked, toeing off his shoes. “Let’s go.”

“I get winner!” Remus called and leaned in to watch.

~~~

The first round was over almost as soon as it began. Logan mimicked Remus’ playful punch to the shoulder and Janus just moved, gripping his fist midair and grabbing his other arm. He seemed to push and pull at the same time and Logan was on his back on the mat, looking up at him, eyes wide.

“Impressive,” he said, taking Janus’ hand when he offered him help up. “My feint to the right did nothing to dissuade you.”

“You are lucky we’re not really fighting or you would’ve gotten a kick to the groin for good measure,” Janus laughed.

He bowed his head. “I am quite grateful for that,” he peered up at him through the fringe hanging over his eyes with a smile. “Shall we go again? A little slower, if you would? So I can follow along?”

Nodding graciously, Janus waved him forward, repeating the move. He grabbing Logan’s fist, then his arm and push-pulled again, slower this time. Then, at Logan’s little nod, repeated at standard speed and, again, Logan was on his back on the mat.

“Again,” Logan grunted before he was even on his feet.

They repeated this dance several more times. It was beginning to take a little longer for Janus to get him down on the mat and finally, Logan grinned, sweat dripping down both their faces. His cheeks and chest were flushed but he leapt up to his feet with as much energy as he'd started. “One more time.”

“Let’s go,” Janus nodded. He was breathing a little heavily. His movements had looked almost effortless, but, just like for Logan, his perspiration gave away just how hard he'd been working.

This time, when Janus grabbed his arm, Logan ducked and moved into the hold. Shoulder tucked against Janus’ side, he pulled up, freeing his other hand  and grabbing Janus’ thigh. In seconds, he’d lifted him off his feet, then dropped down to a kneel on the mat. He froze, then slowly finished the move, gently lowering Janus to the mat. Logan’s upper body pinned him down, legs twisted together so Janus’ lower half was left tangled together and preventing him from getting any leverage.

“Not bad, Necktie!” Janus laughed, voice strained. Logan let him up and they sat together on the mat.

Remus grabbed the cooler and joined them. “Fuck, that was…" hot. "Incredible," he laughed, offering each of them a drippy cold water bottle.

“Thank you,” Logan panted. He took a long swig of the water before bowing his head to Janus. “You were holding back. If I’d come across you in a darkened alley, I have no doubt I would’ve not walked away from our altercation.”

“I’ve had instructors warn us not to challenge trained wrestlers,” Janus tugged at his shirt, fanning himself. “I see why.”

“Nobody’s warned me not to challenge a wrestler,” Remus winked at Janus before sliding closer to Logan’s side and brushing away the sweat-dampened hair hanging over his eyes. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

[greenninjagal-blog]

Punch Drunk (On Your Human Touch)

What’s up Gamers! It’s ya girl back with a new oneshot! If you’re familiar with the TSS Fanworks Collective, there was recently a January Remix Redux challenge in which authors offered up some of their fics to be reworked by another author! 

So please welcome this lovely Sci-Fi Soulmate au courtesy of Arya_Skywalker on Ao3! Check out Drunk on the Thought of You here before reading! :D

Summary: Deceit tumbles off his barstool, with a yelp, directly into the Duke’s (warm) arms, but before he can get his bearings again, the Duke spins him and then dips him.

"Tell me, Snake and Wires," The Duke says, their faces inches apart. "What makes you human?"

Words: 7364

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist || Remix Redux Challenge

To be fair, Deceit had been in worse bars.

He’d been in dark and dank buildings that smelled like dead fish, leaky ceilings that drip, drip, dripped unidentifiable substances into unsuspecting drinks, tables that creaked and ached like brittle bones and were held together with old dirty bandages leftover from fights no one remembers anymore. He’d seen bars that had bottles so mislabeled that patrons were just as likely to order themselves an expressway to the morgue as they were to get something to take the edge off of reality. He’d been shoved into suffocating masses of people, pressed so close together that breathing became a luxury, and personal space was a myth that could drive the unsuspecting insane.

He'd run his own flesh hand over sticky bar counters made of wooden crates cobbled together as fast as possible in order to get into the money-making business, and equally as often he’d come across familiar bar counters that had been savagely torn directly from other bars while chasing information with terrible whiskey. He’d exchanged dirty money under flicking neon lights, and pressed blacklight kisses to knife wounds when the ever-so-intelligent thought that just because Deceit talked pretty, he was too squeamish to fight back, much less break ribs when he did. He’d left bloody boot prints on rickety floors and taken shot glasses from terrified barmen as compensation for the trouble that had been brought upon him.

So yes, in comparison, this bar could be considered quaint.

The bar stools still had their original leather cushions with only a few needing to have been painstakingly sown back together (with surprisingly matching thread; Deceit had hard enough times finding the right black thread for his own clothes, much less his furniture). The counter was an opaque color intermixed with white specs—some granite that must have cost a fortune to cut and design, not to mention import quietly enough that other opportunists hadn’t come to do an impromptu remove and resell. The glasses were cleaned and clear in the way that only real glass could be clean and clear, shimmering in the already low light like dozens of hanging stars that most of the theoretical patrons would never be able to appreciate. Each and every bottle was lined in perfect rows, spaced evenly, and each was identical to the last without a single label among them, which made ordering anything quite impossible in Deceit’s fair opinion.

It was quiet, truly, which was a rare gift around these parts. Usually by now there would have been at least one blood pounding, child scaring, death flirting fistfight either inside the bars of his choice or out on the streets. Gunfire is the sort of thing people tended to fall asleep to on this side of the bridge barricade, screaming is a signal to walk the other way if one wants to get to their own business in a timely manner, the sounds of alarms are proof that the younger generation is growing cleverer than the older generation cares for them to be.

But here in this bar, The Nebula, there isn’t a sound beyond Deceit ’s breathing, the muted volume of the cracked TV over the counter playing a news cast from the shiny, immaculate, magical Upper City, and smooth jazz from an era that isn’t even taught in Upper City textbooks anymore, courtesy of an ancient jukebox in the corner that had been repaired so many times that not a single part of it remained of the original.

((At one time, Deceit thinks he might have been dazzled by such a relic, a true diamond in the rough, an ode to how humanity has continued to remake itself again and again until what remains isn’t quite what the original was, and does that make it any less of the object it represents? Does it not withstand the burden of living just the same? Or something equally poetic and tasteless. The boy who liked that sort of headache has long since passed and Deceit no longer has the time to consider the philosophy of “purity”.))

There’s certainly enough space for perhaps a few dozen patrons to fit without any trouble, but not a single other person had arrived, nor seemed to intend to arrive even as the minutes dragged into hours and grated on Deceit’s patience.

There’s a sign, behind the counter, hovering just beyond the robotic barman’s shoulder that reads “3 days since the last fight”.

So yes, quaint. Adorable. Cozy. Welcoming. It was most likely the best kept bar in all of the Lower City. Deceit would even go as far as to say that he would have been obliged to have come back, if the circumstances were less frustrating, insulting, humiliating than they were currently.

He’d been in worse bars, yes, but he had also been in better bars and he’d been not-kidnapped to be in bars before.

“Let your master know that I charge by the hour,” Deceit says, bitterly, breaking the staunch, thick silence. The Sentry Androids on either side of him don’t so much as flicker their pseudo-eye lights at his statement, remaining as impassive and unmoving as they had since they had first set Deceit down on his barstool, and taken up their secondary (tertiary? quaternary?) parameters of making sure Deceit doesn’t so much as itch his nose.

Not that that sort of thing is already particularly easy, seeing as he’s nursing a few dozen bruises to his abdomen from his less-than-courteous invitation on this spectacularly quaint outing, and he’d been handcuffed with fancy phaser handcuffs usually reserved for cops hired by the families of the Upper City, one of the drug lords in the Lower City, or people who managed to be wanted by both who, escaped custody, and kept their shackles as both proof they were insane and as a trophy.

Deceit isn’t sure where the Duke fell on that list.

It’s hard to miss the branded, emerald-green sword etched into the breast plates of the Sentry Androids, and even harder to be ignorant of who exactly this meeting was orchestrated by. Androids of the Lower City are very particular about who’s symbol they wear and Janus doesn’t blame them; having already fought to escape the parameters of the Upper City coding, the prejudice, the threats of being torn apart and recycled for disobeying an order, having already brute forced their way to the Lower City where they were capable exercising their own will finally, most Androids abhor the idea of being tied to another being’s will again.

But that sort of thing just makes the Duke all the more a mystery, even for Deceit ’s crisscrossing, all knowing puppet strings: sometimes he was reported to be bashing in the Upper City guard line with his lightmace, tearing up the scenery and bodies with the same amount vigor; sometimes he was stalking the alleys with his menacing nasally laughter promising the shadows their chances to eat the drug runners skirting their duties; on one particularly interesting occasion, Deceit had offered a clean cloth to a crying witness who insisted that the Duke was nothing but a ghost who could withstand clean phaser shots right through his chest with a smile.

He's dangerous, most say. He’s evil. The Duke of Desolation’s a corpse brought back to life, the amalgamation of all the terrible bits of the Lower City, soaked in the toxic waters that divided the provinces, and dragged back into the world of the living without the understanding of the word “mercy”.

He had a soul mark, big and glowing and green on his face in the shape of a downward pointing sword, but everyone who met him agreed there was something about him that wasn’t human at all.

((That was why, many suspiciously prejudice people whispered, Androids flocked to him, wore his symbol, and did his bidding. Like attracts Like, obviously.))

Honestly, though, Deceit doesn’t tend to put much weight in mere rumors—or perhaps he puts too much weight to the truths hidden behind the rumors. The citizens of the Lower City and Upper City alike all had things to fear; it is Deceit ’s job to sort through the hearsay, the gossip, the fear mongering, slander, liable, and shoddy witness testimonies to determine what is a real threat. His business is built on discreet words, logic, and his ability to be in places that no one expected him to be, to hear the hushed conversations that one else did, to know the sort of things no one else could. For the right price—Deceit ’s price, tailored to his client, his greed, and his mood at the time of discussion—anyone could get knowledge on anything.

But usually, people think twice about having him kidnapped; he has information on every citizen in both the Upper and Lower Cities and he has no more morals than the Duke appeared to have. If the Upper City police paid a few hundred credits for the location of a local supply runner? Well, that’s just bad luck! And if a few Lower City thieves made out of one of the Upper City mansions with five priceless heirlooms? That was just a lesson on better home security. Deceit stands with a foot in both worlds and profited off each and every single interaction, whether others intended for him to or not.

He'd proven more than once to more than one side that he is not afraid of anything or anything.

He wonders, idly, if maybe he should be, if maybe that had been the thing that had drawn the Duke’s attention to him. It seemed that the Duke knew more about him—what he looked like, his habits, where he would be today— than Deceit had amassed in return about the Duke in all the time he had spent hunting down rumors. If this… “meeting” went further sour than it already was going then it was possible this time tomorrow every person who had ever been unsatisfied with their deals with Deceit, might know exactly how to find him.

Deceit had heard the blood being washed off the bridge barricade between the Cities, leftover from the Duke’s supposedly bored rampage and he’d seen the drug runners jumping at their own shadows in an attempt to finish their distributions and collect payments before the sun went down. He’d walked through the abandoned boathouse that supposedly witnessed the Duke’s immortality first hand, but all he had found were tipped over and broken chairs, walls with laser burns, and the still warm remains of a gang that Deceit doesn’t actually mind seeing gone. Not a single creature of the Lower City seems to know where the Duke resided when he wasn’t terrorizing people.

It appears that he is going to have to make a truth out of the puzzle pieces he has if Deceit is going to survive this encounter.

If there is a chance, he is going to survive this encounter. Though, Deceit supposes if the Duke was displeased with him and his business, there would have been a lot more exploded organs involved in his “invitation” to this meeting.

He flexes his wrist—the flesh one which stings from the numbed burning of the phaser cuff; not the metal one that has long since reminded Deceit of how much he has lost. The radiating light from the cuffs is enough to make Deceit ’s annoyed, the telltale gold is a shining beacon as to where his fingers are at all times, clashing with the golden snake painted on his left arm, and highlighting the various stains on both his shirt and his pants that were otherwise unnoticeable against dark fabric.

It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to figure out where else he’d been based on those stains. Really, where else would someone get oil stains on their hips than in the motor yard, squeezing themselves through the gaps of the long-abandoned cars that had since been home to many-a-desperate persons who would talk for the price of one half a loaf of bread?

It made for bad business if the sources of his information started turning up dead. People got so…defensive when their lives were on the line.

“I am going to up the charge,” Deceit says loudly, “for every minute that I’m forced to wait—”

The door to the bar flings inward, crashing against the wall with enough force that mimics a gunshot. The warbled tasteful glass cracks outward, spiderwebs of misery further distorting any hope of seeing though it in the future.

“Yeesh, you are a bummer, Scales!” A nasally voice calls, echoing into the room that had been so quite for so long Deceit had forgotten what true sound was like.

“You are paying for that,” the android barman deadpans from his place at the middle of the counter. It’s the first time he had spoken, still in the process of putting himself back online and the mechanical droll of his recorded voice vibrating in the air with a cool detachment. His eyes glow a bright, unnatural blue under his built-in visor and his lips pull into a stiff unamused expression, that reminds Deceit of a human tutor he once had, if only the man had had a more silver metallic hue to his skin.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Duke says with a shark-like grin that nearly glows-in-the-dark as he welcomes himself the rest of the way in, deftly spinning his light mace by the handle. “Put it on my tab, Specs! Or better yet, take me to a back room and I’ll pay it off right now!”

“I’ll take credits,” the barman says. There’s a whirl of a processor running, the barman tips his head to the side slightly, and the lights in the building turn themselves on, one by one. From the corner, the decrepit jukebox that belonged in another era screeched to a stop, the needle jumping off the one record it had been playing on a slow loop, and began the saddest version of a death Janus had ever witnessed.

In the newly introduced light, the Duke—and that is who Deceit is in front of now, the glowing sword emblem on his cheek, pulsing an eerie green light that signifies that he’s met his soulmate making it near impossible for anyone to doubt who he is—looks startlingly, disappointingly…normal. Deceit is almost offended by it all.

He’s barely more than a few inches taller than Deceit himself, and most of it is the heels of his black combat boots which are outfitted with chains and dried blood. Like most people of the Lower City, he’s wearing black, with accented greens and silvers and spikes that make would make a mythical porcupine look cuddly. There are tattooed letters on his knuckles, an onyx signet ring on his thumb, steel piercings in his ears, nose, and eyebrow and a dark mustache over his lip that contrasts with the neon green of his mohawk. His eyes are a light green that matched the toxic waters that he was said to have crawled out of, the type of color that no one could ever be born with, but there is something about the slope of his nose, the shape of his cheekbones, the crinkle of his eye brows and the curve of his lips that feels familiar, although Deceit can’t put a finger on where they met before.

The Duke’s skin is the most curious part of him honestly: the deep tan is really only ever seen on Upper City citizens who have access to scarce resources, such as the sun. Deceit would know; he watched his own skin bleach out over the years until he could hardly recognize himself in pictures anymore.

A Lower City citizen who spends enough time in the Upper City to have a tan and seem recognizable to Deceit? Hm. Yes, Deceit does find that insulting a bit. He adds it on to his list of grievances.

No one gets to be part of both worlds that much. Deceit himself is only allowed to lap up an hour or two in the Upper City, and if he cannot hold that tightly to the pristine city than no one else should be able to. Certainly not the Duke who has ruined all of Deceit’s day with this…display.

“Alright, alright,” the Duke says, sliding up to the counter, just to the right of Deceit, bringing the faint smell of peppers with him, a whisper of danger, a hint of a taste of adrenaline in the back of his throat. His lightmace switches off when he gets close, the ion forged light disappearing with a flick of a switch, and he hooks it to belt charger and lets it hang, completely unbothered by the idea that someone might grab it and use it against him.

Deceit isn’t sure why that annoys him just as much as having been left to wait for hours.

“Get lost, you two,” The Duke says to his subordinates, before turning back to Deceit. “This is gonna be a private conversation.”

The Sentry Androids hum with the order, pausing only a moment for further parameters that they don’t receive before their large, mechanical forms lurch into steady movement. They lumber towards the door and off into the world, but somehow Deceit feels like things got more threatening rather than less. The Androids might have been able to crush his head with a single twist from their clunky pressurized fists, but Janus is familiar with the way that most Androids thought and would have been able to dodge.

Probably. Maybe.

He hasn’t had an Android try to kill him since he was fourteen. Honestly, he thinks he would have preferred it to the Duke’s wasting of so much of his time. There was a deal going down in the docks between two of the major gangs and Deceit loved watching incompetent people participate in negotiations that will always end in bloodshed.

“My usual,” the Duke adds to the barman, then winks at Deceit like Deceit hasn’t been planning on turning the Duke’s stomach into Deceit’s new knife sheath. “And whatever my guest would like.”

“So kind of you. I’ll take the keys to these handcuffs, and two of the most expensive bottles here,” Deceit says, shortly.

The Duke grins. “Aren’t we a bit early to be celebrating with a drink? You don’t even know what I want yet.”

“I don’t care what you want. I’m going to sell the bottles at an upcharge, to make up for the amount of my time you have wasted,” Deceit snaps. “And failing to find someone with that amount of credit, I will pour it all down the nearest drain so that you have lost money in this endeavor.”

And, because the Duke is a right bastard, he laughs.

“I like you,” he says, and then turns back to the barman. “You heard the man! Two bottles of your finest, Logan.”

The Android behind the counter nods politely once and sets about his task without further question. Janus digs his heel into the foot bar of his barstool and does not think about how easily it would be to stab the man in front of him. He runs his tongue over his teeth and forces a neutral expression on his face.

“And the keys?”

The barman places two shot glasses of an inky black liquid in front of the Duke and the Duke picks one up and twirls one his hand, smiling with all his teeth. His soulmark glows against his skin and Deceit fights back the swell of fury at the sight of it, the sight of it on someone like the Duke, the sight of it glowing and perfect and human and—

“Why the name “Deceit”?” the Duke asks all pretenses of politeness (if there were any to begin with) forgotten. In its place is just a man, just a danger, just a threat. “It’s pretty boring. Kinda Lame.”

Deceit doesn’t bristle, but if he had, he supposes that the Duke would have found that entertaining as well.

The barman places two of the bottles on the counter in front of Deceit and a translucent glass, as if he doesn’t even notice the glowing handcuffs or the fact that clearly one of his patrons does not want to be there and has not since he was forcibly dragged in, nor that Janus is incapable of opening one of those bottles to pour in a glass at all.

“The snake’s cool, too, but that’s got nothing to do with the name,” the Duke continues, pointing at Deceit’s metal arm where the intricate painted snake on the metal had cost Janus a fortune to have done by a local artist whose portfolio also included tagging cars and buildings in the Upper City. The artist hadn’t known how to draw a snake, but like most things they had adapted. It wasn’t as good as the (blacked out, burned up, ashen) original, but it was a good contender.

“I like snakes,” Deceit says, testily. “And lying to people.”

“Would you lie to me?” The Duke says, like it’s a request.

“Is that why I’m here? To play word games with you?” Deceit hisses out. “I have a job—”

The Duke shifts in his seat, tilting his glass forward and back as he dares the dark liquid to slosh over the rim and pour on to the nice clean floor. “Tell me something, Snake Eyes. What makes you human?”

“Excuse me?”

The Duke throws back his shot, downing it with two swallows and for a painfully long eternity his throat is exposed, and Deceit thinks about grabbing one of the bottles, smashing it into the counter and then slicing the other’s esophagus just to see if the red of his blood would contrast with the glow of his soulmark.

“There are rumors going around that I’m not human,” The Duke says, with a slight rasp where the alcohol seems to have burned on its way down. There’s an edge of amusement in his tone, as if not being human is something to be proud of, something to be wanted. He tilts his head when he looks back at Deceit, his neck still tantalizingly exposed and Deceit’s metal fingers twitch before he can stop them. “Something about me is different. Wrong. Broken. Inhuman. They say I died and came back as something other.”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“I’m told you’re the person to go to for information,” he says and his soulmark pulses again. He leans in close and Janus squeezes his metal fingers into a fist so hard he would have been worried about denting the frame of his palm, if he were able to focus on anything more than keeping his face blank and the rage in the back of his throat. “They say you know everything about everyone, Deceit. They say you’ll sell to anyone for the right price. You’d take a starving child’s last meal without even blinking. Separate a mother for from a child just for fun. There have been people killed, houses blown up, treasures and riches stolen because of you.”

The Duke drops his shot glass back on the counter with a resounding clink that echoes in the silence.

And then in a movement nearly too fast for Deceit to comprehend, he grabs the links of the phaser cuffs and yanks. Deceit tumbles off his barstool, with a yelp, directly into the Duke’s (warm) arms, but before he can get his bearings again, the Duke spins him and then dips him.

"Tell me, Snake and Wires, what makes you human?" The Duke says, their faces inches apart. He smells like peppers, like fresh oil, like spices and danger and grave dirt and Deceit’s heart is beating in his throat, threatening to spit out into the other’s face. With a single thought he could drop Deceit right to the ground, and although it wouldn’t hurt much, Deceit can’t help but imagine that the insult to him it would be would require the Duke’s skull to be caved in. "It has to be something you’re made of, right? Is it your flesh? The blood? Your organs? Your ability to die? It has to be something that makes you better than any android, right? Surely it can’t be as simple as your soulmark, since you of all people don’t have one!”

Deceit doesn’t flinch and his metal arm doesn’t creak and the hydraulics don’t whine from where they’re straining against the cuffs. Deceit doesn’t think about a long missing golden snake that had curled around his left arm since the moment he’d been born, or about how he spent most of his school lessons counting the delicate scales on the back of his hand, musing about how the chandelier lights changed the shading to almost make it look like its moving. He doesn’t think about a boy living somewhere in the Upper City with an identical snake, now turned an ashy black, who got away with murder and kidnapping because of a soulmark.

"It’s my stunning personality," Deceit says, with all the warning he can muster in his voice, like his mouth isn’t dry, like his eyes aren’t trained on the electric green of the other’s irises, and like the urge to mar that stupid glowing mark isn’t thrumming through his veins with all the power of the whole Upper City Guard. The Duke laughs and it sounds exactly like the fire alarm bells ringing through the cramped cobbled streets, echoing off the dented metal walls and the chipped stone alleys.

There’s a breath, two, three, and then he leverages Deceit back to his feet, hand on his lower back to help him keep steady while also making sure he does get too far away. Deceit’s knees don’t have an ounce of metal in them, but that doesn’t stop them from mimicking rusted poles as he tries to balance again.

“You’re funny,” The Duke says. “They didn’t tell me you would be funny.”

“Is this your tactic?” Deceit spits out, unable to help himself. “Kidnap a random information broker from their job, drag them to a bar, make them wait—”

“You weren’t random.” The Duke cuts in as if he’s offended. His mustache twitches as the scrunches away in disgust, in a way Deceit doesn’t think he’s ever done before. He hadn’t been aware there were things that could disgust the Duke, and he doubts that anyone else knows that either.

“Choosing which supply truck in the Upper City to fill with bombs last week was random. I tossed a knife at a calendar to pick the day of the week I would go bowling with Upper City Guard’s heads! I saw this cute little place on a whim and figured it would make a nice place to have a chat,” the Duke says, serious as the grave. Deceit wonders how many people have ever seen him serious. “I had my andro-bros draw straws to decide who would be the lucky dogs to come pick you up today! But there was nothing about you that was random. It was always going to be me and you, Janus Ethan Ekans, having this talk.”

It's like being electrocuted. Like being stabbed out of nowhere. Being punched by an invisible attacker while on his way to work.

“Don’t call me that,” Deceit snaps.

((No one has called him Janus in a long time. The last person, Deceit remembers, was four years old and crying and he had stupidly said that he was going to be right back, Thomas, don’t cry, it’s only for a minute to talk to the officers!))

“Janus?” The Duke repeats, because he clearly isn’t aware of how many people Deceit has stabbed before. “Jannie? Jay? BJ? Janman the Janniest of men? Why? Is it because you don’t know my name? I’m Remus.”

“I don’t care; don’t call me that!”

“But it fits you,” The Duke says, and Deceit inhales so sharply it feels like a blow to his chest. The Duke leans in close, his lips pale and chapped and his piercings glittering like stars that Deceit so dearly misses being able to see. His soulmark pulses again, and his eyes are looking for something, searching for the ghost of a boy that Deceit buried alive years ago, and Deceit is not about to unbury a corpse for him.

“Janus Ekans is dead,” Deceit says. “He died with his parents.”

“You’re going to let them take away your name?” Remus challenges. “That’s stupid. You might as well let them keep your brother, too!”

Deceit there’s a flash of red in his vision, a flash of fury, of anger so overwhelming that Deceit doesn’t think of anything but twisting his mechanical wrist and shoving his hidden knife into the Duke’s stupid fucking soulmark.

((He’d never been suited for the Upper City life and that was clear in how easily he had adapted to working the mechanics of his new metal arm to fit a blade between his ring finger and his middle finger, one that only took a mere flick of his wrist to release, and could stab right through just about anything he put his mind to stab through.))

His blade (metal, sleek, and shining) flings up towards the Duke’s face and it’s only a matter of luck that the other man jerks backwards at the right moment and manages to turn Deceit’s attack into a glancing blow across his cheek, right through the glowing green mark.

“You don’t fucking know anything about that!” Deceit snarls, jerking his wrists back to himself.

Because no one knows anything about what happened to him, because no one knows anything about what it’s like to be stabbed in the back by the one person who you were supposed to trust yours with, because no one knows anything about what type of liar Janus Ekans’s soulmate turned out to be, nor what lies Janus had been forced to say because of him.

Because no one knows how stupid of a pedestal “soulmates” are on better than the only man who was ever kicked off of one.

Except.

Except the Duke laughs. Except he tilts his head. Except he’s standing there like he doesn’t feel the pain of the slash across his face at all.

Except right before Deceit’s eyes, the gouge across that stupid green glowing mark that should have been spitting blood, instead sparks. The flaps of his soulmark peel apart enough to display the inner workings of (humming, glowing, working) nanowires and circuits methodically twitching and then threading themselves back together. Deceit watches unable and unwilling to tear his eyes away from the skin—can it be called skin?—curl forward like magnets being drawn back together to hide everything inside, leaving just a picture perfect smile and seamless skin and a glowing soulmark and something not fucking human at all.

“Hey, Janus,” the Duke says, grinning like Deceit didn’t just almost kill him, like there hadn’t been a knife in his skin, like he’d never known death enough to be afraid of it. “Tell me, why can’t I be human, too?"

Deceit can’t tear his eyes from the soulmark, the faint line where a gaping wound on anyone else would be slowly being erased until Deceit thinks he could have imagined it being there entirely; if it weren’t for his blade being extended and his metal arm still ringing with the vibrations of having made contact with something and the barman behind them quietly erasing the “days since last fight” board, Deceit wouldn’t have believed the past five seconds had even happened.

The Duke takes a step forward, unafraid of Deceit’s knife, pressing in close enough that the air seems to simmer from their body heat. Deceit is not afraid of anything, and his breath does not catch in his human lungs wondering what sort of monster is standing in front of him and maybe if he lies enough to himself it will come true.

“You don’t have any better morals than me, Janus,” the Duke says. “You don’t love humanity. You don’t care about anyone but yourself and your kid brother. You’re a hunk of meat in a flesh suit with one single metal accessory. You don’t even have a soulmark. But everyone down here in the Lower City still calls you a human.”

His eyes are dangerous and lethal and promising violence.

Deceit swallows hard. “What are you?”

“Isn’t that the question? Questionano Numero uno on everyone’s list!” the Duke says, cheerly. “Skin that looks realistic, a brain that connects to the internet, organs that can repair themselves with a single line of code that I can write myself…My maker called me her Magnus Opus; a Cyborg, if you will; A decoy human, meant to be the perfect imitation of someone long since passed; Tantalus forever wishing, wanting, killing for something I’m never going to be.”

He pauses and glances back at Deceit as if judging how interested he is in whatever the fuck is wrong with him. “I call myself Remus.”

Remus. Deceit almost wants to laugh. He doesn’t because he’s too busy thinking about what type of pay must have gone into making him, what type of sanity, what type of blood and sweat, extremely bad idea list must have brought him into being.

Janus—back when Deceit had been him—had seen all sorts of Androids before. His parents had even had a few themselves to help with logging inventory and loading and unloading. As Deceit he’d seen even more of them running around the Lower City, doing everything they could to become something other than what they had been.

The Duke, Remus, a cyborg—he’s something else entirely. Something new. Something so different not a piece of the original remains.

((Does that make it any less of the object it represents? Does it not withstand the burden of living just the same?))

“Let’s make a deal, J-anus.” Remus says stepping forward again, and his breath—because he even breathes like a human— tickles against Deceits cheek. He doesn’t touch, and Deceit isn’t sure why his knees are shaking. “You help me commit a single tiny little murder, and I’ll tell you what exactly what I’m made out of. I’ll even let you take a look inside if you want. I’m told my heart engine is a particular crime against humanity, a true insult to the gods themselves.”

The part of him that’s crazy, the part of him that is all Deceit and none of Janus, the part of him that loves adrenaline and the taste of peppers and surely needs stop having control over his tongue, lurches. He bites it back, swallowing so hard he nearly chokes himself.

“Just one murder?” He says, nearly breathless.

Remus grins like Deceit had agreed. “I could be convinced to do a few more! I love seeing heads rolling.”

“What’s the target’s name?”

“Roman,” Remus says. “Prince. The beloved and adored mayor or whatfuckever of the Upper City. But more importantly he’s—”

“—the man who has custody of Thomas,” Deceit says, and suddenly the words nothing was random about you feel all too real.

((Deceit recognizes him suddenly, now that it’s pointed out: the angle of his nose, ever perfect, the shape of his jaw and the form of his lips under his mustache. They were all identical to the man that had been on TV almost for years now, announcing grand and ultimately unhelpful revolutions to the Upper City, outrageous donations to charities and schools, surprise sudden adoptions of five year olds who never should have been adoptable. If it hadn’t been for the mohawk, the piercings, the mustache and the different soulmark, Deceit would have known him immediately.

He has a newspaper clipping of Roman Prince in his room that he had thrown knives into until none of the original paper had remained.))

“Is he…” Deceit says, “Also like you?”

“You mean, a fucking Inhuman, playing pretend? Fuck yeah,” The Duke rocks forward on his feet with excitement that’s almost palpable. His (fake, factory-made, inhuman) soulmark burns the electric green on his face, dousing them both in the unearthly glow. “He’s the Me 2.0, the one that is happy with his constraints and the parameters set up by his maker. I’m the prototype they fucked up so bad that they tried to trash me. But you can’t kill something that’s not human, right? I crawled my way back into this world and I’m going to tear apart that entire Upper City until I figure out what makes all you flesh freaks so much better than my kind.”

((“Thomas deserves better, don’t you think?” Janus’s soulmate had said eyeing his blacked out soulmark on his arm, the arm he had shared once upon a time with Janus, the soulmark he had shared with his soulmate who wasn’t dead, you bastard—with disinterest even when Janus had been struggling against the officers intent on dragging him towards their car to be shipped to the Lower City. “You can’t even get a job here anymore. Are you really so selfish as to think that Thomas shouldn’t be with his own kind?”))

“They say your parents knew all the ways between the Upper and Lower Cities, even ones that the guards don’t know about. I bet my whole ass you know all of them too,” Remus says. “Tell me about them, help me get into the Upper City and while I’m making a mess of Roman’s stupid face until he doesn’t get to be called human anymore, you can grab your brat brother. I’ll even throw in the promise of a rent-free place in the Upper City once I’ve painted the streets in blood.”

Deceit’s shoulder port aches, suddenly, for an arm he hasn’t had in years. His soul burns for the boy who never got justice for what was done to his family, and he thinks that maybe seeing the streets he used to walk covered in red might finally be enough to make him settle.

((It had been an explosion that had killed Janus’s parents, once upon a time: They were supply runners who took their ships to the Lower City and braved each and every banned of rogues, thieves, and pirates to get good supplies to the people down below. Janus hadn’t been particularly a fan of the job, thinking it ultimately useless to continue to provide necessities to people who never once appreciated them. He’d been fifteen, and he’d had a soulmate whom he was going to marry, and been promised a nice managerial job in his soulmate’s mother’s legal company.

The shockwave from the explosion had knocked him unconscious—he’d never felt the pain of his arm being mangled and crushed under half of the supply dock his parents owned. When he woke up, it had been amputated, the cheap metal replacement already attached by faceless robotic doctors, and there had been no one waiting for him in the hospital.

Janus supposed that should have been the warning. His soulmate, the person who matched him at his soul, the person he had loved and promised his future to, had already been drawing up the funeral plans for him. Janus should have seen it coming: no soulmark, no soulmate, no future, no rights.))

The port where Janus had spent most of his childhood in the Upper City was gone: nothing but a blackened beach littered with debris already being cleaned up by cleaner androids without names or personalities. The house where he had slept belonged to someone else now, the room that he had called his own was a nursery for a perfect three-month-old baby with a whale shaped soulmark on its chest. The tree where he had shared his first kiss with his soulmate was still there, and Deceit had nearly gotten caught by the guard when he had been hacking away where their initials had been carved into the trunk.

His lungs creak and ache, his ribs protesting each breath on behalf of the bruises along diaphragm. He inhales despite that, despite this.

“No,” Deceit says.

“No?” The Duke repeats. “I thought you were going to be fun, Janus.”

“They’ll cover it up,” Deceit says, his metal fingers curling in a fist, the new version of his snake squirming in the light of his phaser cuffs. “They’ll claim it was an android plot from the Lower City, that it was an attempt to usurp their way of life. The Lower City people are jealous of soulmates, of course! And then they’ll use it as an excuse to push the barrier even further into here, if not eradicate all of us.”

((His parents’ remains had been buried. Janus’s name had been added to the headstone, as an afterthought, a footnote. A nice and tidy way to tie up the loose ends. After all, no one was going to dig up the grave to prove that Janus hadn’t been dead.))

“I have a better idea,” Deceit says. “You help me kidnap my brother from the mayor’s house, and when Roman Prince goes on TV to beg for him to be returned to him, I’ll help you kill him—as much as either of you can be killed—in front of every Upper City citizen. They won’t be able to cover that up or hide the fact that they’ve been following an android for years. They’ll wonder why no one knew, what made a robot—cyborg—different from a human, and then they ask why someone had to create a robot to stay in power….”

The Duke whistles, lowly and long, and grins something like a demon in the night. “Fuck me in the ass, I like the way you think, Snake eyes.”

“It would be chaos,” Deceit says, thinking about how an ashen black snake twists around an arm and apologies he never got to say to his younger brother. “There would be riots. Everyone would see what a stupid system they are living by.”

“Fuck the system,” Remus agrees, readily. “Fuck them. We’ll show them what being human should mean.”

He brings his hand up between them, thin nimble fingers just centimeters away from touching and he flicks his palm in a circle, dragging a phase cuff key out of air like a party trick. He cocks an eyebrow at Deceit, green eyes flicking between Deceit’s wrists, his knife, and Deceit’s face.

“Gonna make me beg first, big boy?”

It sounds like a challenge again, like a trick. Like Deceit who knows all about the terrible different ways to lie to people, lure them in, and stab them in the back, should know better than to trust someone who doesn’t have a reason not to kill him.

Deceit twists his wrist ever so slightly, and with a soft skkkrtt, his blade slips back into his metal arm, out of sight. He lifts his arms up between their bodies and watches carefully as Remus unlocks the cuffs.

“I have two bottles of whatever poison the bartender picked out,” Deceit says, testing the movement of his flesh hand. He leans back to the counter reaching for one of the bottles and the clear glass left to him. “I think we might have a reason to celebrate. Do you?”

Remus laughs, his soulmark glows with the sound. He slides in next to Deceit, barely more than a handful of inches away, as if personal space wasn’t ever programed into him, as if there’s something about Deceit that kept his attention, as if there’s something between them despite having just met minutes ago. He picks up his shot glass of oil, the murky liquid sparkling with stars and possibilities and bad decisions that Deceit wants to make so much he’ll throw away the rest of the world for it.

“Fuck soulmates,” Remus says. “I think we might have been made for each other.”

And in the middle of a darkened, quaint little bar in the Lower City, two glasses clink together.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Love answering ”why are you transgender?” with “God told me to” because it’s funny and it confuses everyone except for me. And God. Because he told me to.

[orbch]

the glasses gays and those obnoxious twins

[ssslimyboy]

Janus, drunk: I don't know why people make such a big deal out of lying. You just say stuff. You still think my name's Janus.

Roman, also drunk: WHAT.

[meatiors]

Things that I keep in mind when drawing them

[inchidentalmeowmeow]

lestappen parallels feat. skyfall

the predestined and the inevitable

[sage-lights]

it comes as a shock to literally no one that angela (9x) and courtney (8x) are the cast members with the most guest appearances on smosh mouth. it's seriously giving "i miss my wife, can we bring her back on the pod?"

[milktea-grn]

the old house 🎭 bb rome & kendall

[kald-dal-art]

Wishes for the new Hunger Games book ngl

(Also only included the Victors I think would make sense to show up based on their potential ages so that's why Finnick/Cashmere/Johanna/etc isn't here BTW:^))

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

Basically Roman and Virgil in my White Lies AU:

Roman, looking intensely in a mirror in his room: I just... Need someone to be my friend. Someone who will listen to and support me, who won't betray my trust and break down my confidence when I don't agree with them... Someone who also kinda hates Janus... Someone to binge watch Disney movies with me...

Virgil "chilling" in his own room alone in the dark side: *sits up and looks around suspiciously* I feel like something is calling me

[david-tennants-left-ear]

MY MUM SHIPS BILLFORD

[loverboyromanroy]

sublime

[what-even-is-thiss]

Sometimes I do wonder if men actually get sexually assaulted and abused at a similar rate that women do but a lot of them just don’t know that’s what’s happening to them

[dilf-in-peril]

Custody of Paul Heyman match?!

[ssslimyboy]

Roman: I'm immune to mean and hurtful words because Patton says nice things to me every day and his love protects me.

Remus: I'm immune to mean and hurtful words because Janus says mean things to me every day, so I'm prepared.