#a desperate thing

[coldresolve]

Moneymakers: A Desperate Thing // Part 2

Previous / Next (coming soon)

There’s a sharp smell in his nostrils, like that of freshly poured asphalt, so bitter it almost makes him gag. He blinks open his eyes, and is immediately blinded by a low-hanging sun, tearing at his retinas with hot white light, as Davin retracts his hand holding a cloth with whatever he just used to make Renee wake up.

“All set,” Davin mutters.

Reeling, Renee blinks around as he waits for his mind to catch up to him, more so utterly bewildered than alarmed. The seatbelt is a steady pressure on his heaving chest, his head is spinning. It takes him a while to remember he was chloroformed. That was a while after noon – now the sun is setting outside, painting the sky in hues of pink and orange.

They’re parked in a field next to what looks like an old farmhouse. Vines creeping up the outer walls have dug ledges into the white plaster, making it come off in chunks, exposing the brickwork underneath. The windows, all brown from years of dust and grime buildup, have either cracked or completely fallen from their frames, making Renee think of the grin of a skull missing a few teeth. The accompanying barn doesn’t look much better. Red and white paint is flaking from weathered wood, boards crooked and tearing from their frames. All the metalwork, from the barn door hinges to old farming equipment lying abandoned outside, is brown with rust.

“Where are we?” Renee asks hoarsely.

Davin snorts. “I thought I told you, you don’t need to know.” He opens his door and gets out, and Renee watches him walk around the front of the car to open his own door. “C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Renee isn’t much for admitting it, but the man’s casualness rubs off on him, makes this whole thing feel less fucked in a way.

He clicks his seatbelt off and steps out, but as soon as he’s standing up straight, a wave of dizziness hits him, and he staggers, grabbing the car door to keep himself from falling, knuckles white in their tight grasp.

Davin waits patiently for him to regain his composure.  “Steady?”

“I’m fine,” Renee mutters. He takes a deep breath. “Is it, uh… is it going to happen now?”

Davin hesitates at that, eyeing him with a more reserved expression. “Yes,” he says after a while.

Renee nods, swallowing. “Alright, then.”

As soon as Renee is steady on his feet, Davin leads him through a long since overgrown path toward the face of the abandoned barn. He lets Renee stand back as he opens the rusty hatches and pulls open a door almost thrice the height of himself.

The inside of the barn looks just as dilapidated as Renee would have expected. Chunks of the roof have collapsed over time, letting light cascade down to illuminate scattered piles of debris on the large open floor. Haybales are stacked by the dozens along the walls, alongside farming equipment, sacks of grain, pitchforks, and scythes.

In the middle of the floor is the setup that, upon beholding, finally makes Renee grasp the reality of his situation, makes him halt in his tracks. In stark contrast to the abandonment and ruin, a modern diesel generator hums as it powers a set of servers and a computer with dual monitors. Four separate light boxes are pointed at a table in the middle of it all, on which restraints have been mounted, ready for use. And there’s just not one camera. There’s three.

“Last chance to back out, Renee,” Davin says behind him.

Renee swallows thick. He feels dizzy. As if the withdrawals weren’t bad enough, he feels like he’s losing his mind actually agreeing to go through with this. It’s a desperate thing, being this close to money, seeing a way out – but still knowing approximately what might be in store.

He looks over his shoulder at Davin, who is watching him with that same calculated look he had on the street earlier. “Should we have a safeword or something?”

Davin raises a brow. “I thought you said you were tough.”

Renee laughs, if a little tensely. “I know, man, but, shit.” He looks at the table again, a grimace on his face.

“You getting cold feet?”

Renee swallows again. “No, man, I just… Just give me a minute.”

This has to be a new low. He thought he reached it after that incident with Lazarus, when he genuinely thought he could barter drugs for sexual favors, but this is something else. It feels like prostitution, in a sense, obscene, lewd. This is cosmically low.

“Alright,” Renee says before he can stop himself. “Get it over with.”

“Table’s all yours, then,” Davin says dispassionately.

Renee grimaces. He feels somewhat detached as he walks toward the set-up, dream-like, not entirely unpleasant. He tries not to think about it too hard as he reaches the table, and pushes himself up to sitting on it. The unforgiving spotlights are already starting to make him sweat.

“Lie down,” Davin directs.

Breathing through his nose, Renee does. The hard table against his back is only cushioned by the thin fabric of his t-shirt. One of the cameras is in his periphery, its hungry eye reflecting light from the spotlight, lens blank and cold-looking. Above him, the rafters of the barn loom menacingly, thick beams crisscrossing to hold up the roof.

Davin starts at his right arm, wrapping the leather restraint around his wrist, taking his time to make sure it’s secured properly, tightly. When his fingers accidentally brush against Renee’s skin, Renee can’t help but shudder slightly at their coldness. As Davin moves on to securing the buckle of his right ankle, Renee tries moving his arm a bit, testing out how much his movement is restricted. He can wriggle it a tad, but not much. At least the leather is soft against his skin.

Their eyes meet as Davin has made his rounds to the other side of Renee’s body, as he’s buckling up his left wrist, and for once, Renee doesn’t look away. Instead, he tries to gauge Davin’s blank expression, looking for any semblance of sadistic joy or glee, finding none. If he wanted to double cross him, this would be an opportune moment. Renee’s core is in revolt at the helplessness of being in this position, being at the mercy of a total stranger.

Two final straps. One that spans the width of Renee’s chest, securing his upper body to the table, while Davin fastens the other over his thighs, making it impossible for him to buck his hips. Renee lifts his head to watch the man’s handiwork, feeling anxious at seeing the leather and buckles wrapped around his body. Adrenaline is already making its presence known.

At last, Davin hums, a sort of de facto, finalized sound.

Renee grimaces, dumping his head back on the table. Looks up into the rafters, eyes missing against the impossibly bright spotlight. The dust in the air tickles in his throat. “How’s it going to be, then? You just… do what they say?”

“Odd time to ask that question,” Davin chuckles. “But yeah – I’m doing the highest bets.” He’s out of view, readying his own equipment. “No cutting off limbs, no permanent injury. I don’t intend to deviate from our agreement, but you’re still not going to have fun, you know.”

Renee laughs nervously. Flexes his arm a bit, but it stays restrained at his side, as his bicep pushes against the strap across his chest. His breathing is picking up, he notices, and he tries to calm it by only breathing through his nose. “If this turns out to be snuff, I’m haunting your ass.”

Davin only chuckles.

He makes his way around the table to turn on the cameras, and when he comes into view, Renee feels himself stiffen a little bit, seeing the way the man has dressed. Face obscured by a windbreaker and a cap drawn down over his forehead, hood drawn up, he has even donned black fingerless biking gloves, making the only slice of him visible the small slit where his eyes are, and the tips of his fingers. Renee watches as he adjusts one camera’s angle, placing it to look directly at his face. His movement is precise, but still has that casualness to it, which is seeming more and more out of place.

When all the cameras are on, Davin leaves his field of view toward the monitor stand, and Renee hears the clacking of keys.

“Audio test,” the man says. “What’s your name?”

Clearing his throat, Renee carefully says his own name.

“All good.” A pause. “We should be live.”

Renee grits his teeth.

Davin walks into view, fingers nonchalantly tracing up the length of the table, and stops by the side of Renee’s head, looming figure silhouetted against the spotlights behind him.

“Let’s begin,” he says.

Previous / Next

[magentasnail]

I'm absolutely obsessed with the book of bill, best thing i've ever read and it no joke gave me actual nightmares !! 100/10

[happyheidi]

𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥 & 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥

[theeroticlover]

You, me and the 🔥 within.....

[violetsandshrikes]

this poor woman ended up in hospital because she ate cayenne + cinnamon coated orange (unpeeled) because there’s a health and wellness influencer with millions of views who recommends it for digestion - she burned her oesophagus

i always saw a few really good other additions of similar things on the comments

please be so, so careful taking advice from these people online, as many of them are not formally trained or educated, brand ambassadors, deep in pseudoscientific rabbit holes and unfortunately, there are many out there who struggle with disordered eating habits

(not mentioned here but another one worth noting: i have personally known people who have burned their oesophagus with viral apple cider vinegar shots and drinks. don’t do that. a burned oesophagus is not fun)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[tubbytarchia]

I told you I never stop thinking about merpearl

[coldresolve]

Moneymakers: A Desperate Thing // Part 1

This AU takes place before (or instead of) the events of Moneymakers. I’d encourage you to read Moneymakers before this anyway, as it’ll give you some context as to what the characters are like. If you want to read @suspicious-whumping-egg’s take on this AU, that can be found here.

Masterlist / Next

It’s five minutes past noon, and Renee Vaughan is getting nervous.

Left and right, busy people rush past him, high heels clacking on the pavement as their scarves flutter in their wakes. Hot dog vendors and newspaper stands respectively call out their prices or the latest headlines, dog walkers are dragged along by the leashes of their animals, and city joggers huff with their last thread of effort. The reflection of the sun in nearby skyscrapers is blinding to behold directly, and several people waiting by a nearby bus stop shield their eyes against it, hands gloved in lieu of natural warmth.

Renee stands in the middle of it all, on the corner of Madison and Central Avenue, exactly as agreed upon. Curbing his restlessness by rolling on the balls of his feet, his hands are clenched into anxious fists in the pockets of his jacket, as his eyes scour each passer-by for any semblance of recognition – though, truth be told, he isn’t entirely sure who he’s looking for. His newfound partner sure seemed to revel in keeping things mysterious.

He's on his first day of withdrawal from snow, and on the third day of withdrawal from benzos, creating a mess of rapidly alternating restlessness and exhaustion, which only solidifies itself by each passing hour. It’s a feeling not unlike having a bad case of the flu, a general unrest which does nothing to mitigate his unease. On the seventh minute past meeting time, he lights a smoke, hungrily sucking it down as he waits, paranoid of every stranger who so much as looks at him sideways. He must look insane, standing there staring, but he can’t help it. This isn’t your average rendezvous, and it frustrates him that the man is late.

He’s about to call the wait off when he locks eyes with a stranger across the street. Someone who appears to be looking at him, with no small degree of curiosity. The man is on the shorter side, dark hair flowing past his shoulders almost as far as his waist, wearing all black clothes, a typical metalhead look. His features are vaguely Native, high cheekbones and a hooked nose, a calculated look in his dark eyes.

Renee lets the eye contact linger until there’s no doubt in his mind that the stranger has zeroed in on him. Then he breaks the eye contact, scurrying through blearing traffic to cross the street.

The stranger does a bit of an elevator look on his approach, sizing him up and down and nodding to himself. “You must be Renee?”

Renee nods.

“I’m Davin,” the man says. “C’mon.” Then he turns on his heel, fully trusting that Renee will follow along.

Renee does follow, if a little uncertainly. The Davin guy walks surprisingly quickly for a short guy. “You said twelve o’clock,” he says as soon as he’s caught up.

Davin shrugs a shoulder. “I wanted to make sure you were alone.”

He leads Renee down an alleyway which, thankfully, isn’t particularly barren of people. Little cafes have fenced off dining areas reaching out onto the sidewalk, the odd bicyclist trails past them on the road, the clicking of their gears echo off the nearby buildings. Renee’s anxiety rises for every step.

Eventually, they reach another main vein of the city, an avenue on which cars are parked in single file along the side of the road. Davin walks up to one such car, a relatively new-looking gray four-wheel drive with tinted windows in the back. He nonchalantly opens the driver’s side door, nodding at Renee to get in the passenger seat.

Hesitating, Renee eyes the car. “Where are we going?”

Davin smiles. “You don’t need to know,” he says as he ducks into the driver’s seat.

A moment of apprehension passes, in which Renee looks up and down the busy street, chewing on his lower lip. The last thing he wants is to be alone with some shady stranger, but he supposes that moment had to come sooner or later. He doesn’t like the thought of not knowing where they’re going, though. It feels like it could be a trap.

But none of this is going to feel right, is it?

Although every cell in his body revolts against it, Renee pops open the passenger side door and climbs in, feeling a pang of regret when he shuts the door. Thankfully, the doors in this car don’t automatically lock.

He carefully watches as Davin starts the engine and pulls out of the parking spot, joining traffic. “So that’s just how it’s gonna be, huh?” He remarks. “Me in the dark about everything?”

“For now,” Davin hums, slightly distracted by driving, although he, too, occasionally looks sideways at Renee, as if gauging his reaction. “I don’t trust you either, you know,” he says.

Renee chuckles tensely. He looks out the passenger window at the city which slowly grows less dense around them, trying a little too hard to come across as casual. His leg is bouncing on the floormat. “Why do it this way, then? Why not just take someone?”

Davin snorts. “Too much of a hassle. I can’t do it on my own.” He lets out a sigh. “It’s much easier with a willing participant, no?”

Renee feels his stomach drop at that, with something akin to shame. He grits his teeth, eyes scouring the landscape. Factories and auto mechanics whiz by off the side of the highway, soon to be replaced by suburbs. All the unknowns dance around his head like a swarm of flies, pestering him with uncertainty about his current endeavor. “So, uh,” he says. “Have you done something like this before?”

Davin chuckles softly. Markedly doesn’t answer.  

Renee nods to himself, sniffing in a quick breath. “Alright, then.”

The highway gets fewer and fewer lanes the further out of the city they drive, and soon, the landscape changes as well, from suburbs to farmlands and forested areas long since withered and dead-looking.

After about half an hour of driving in tense silence, Davin slows down, blinking his way off an exit ramp to a rest stop. This time of day, apart from a few trucks scattered here and there, the parking area is relatively empty.

Renee tries not to let the steadily inclining rush of adrenaline show in his features. “What are we stopping for?”

Davin doesn’t answer. He finally brings the car to a halt in a parking booth, in a secluded part of the rest stop.

Teeth on edge, Renee’s hand instinctively sneaks down to clutch the knife in his pocket. “I’m serious, man, if you’re trying to pull a fast one on me—”

“Relax,” Davin says nonchalantly. “I’m not deviating from our agreement. You’re still here on your own volition.”

Renee warily watches the man shut off the ignition and reaches into the back seat for something.

“What’s the catch?”

Davin just snorts, pulling forth a cloth as well as what looks like a brown bottle, like the ones used on old apothecaries.

“What is that?”

“Chloroform,” Davin says.

Renee opens his door and steps out into the cold autumn air.

Laughter. “I thought you were in,” Davin calls after him.

Sneering, Renee spins around, gestures at the bottle. “Why the fuck would I agree to that?”

“Because you need the money,” Davin says easily, giving him a vague smile. “I don’t want you to see where we’re going, in case you nope out on me later.”

“Give me a fucking blindfold, then, fuck!”

“That’s not good enough. It’s this, or we say our goodbyes, and I leave you on the side of the road.”

Renee grits his teeth. “What the fuck, man?” he hisses. His eyes hopelessly glide over the desolate rest stop, as if anything there would help his current dilemma.

Because Davin is right: Renee desperately needs the money. He hasn’t slept for over 48 hours, and his chest yearns to a painful degree for a fix of something, anything, to get his mind off how fucking terrible it feels to be sober. And bar actually going out there and mugging some poor father of three, who probably needs the money just as much as he does, this is his last shot, even if it is a shot in the dark.

Renee lets out a sound of frustration, biting down the urge to attempt to tear the car door off its hinges. Jaw set, he ducks back into the car. He can’t bring himself to look Davin in the eye. “You’ll let me go if I say I want to leave,” he says, and he doesn’t phrase it as a question.

Something more solemn flashes over Davin’s face, and he nods seriously. “Of course. That’s part of our agreement.”

“And you don’t touch me while I’m out, you hear me? Or I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Laughing, Davin shakes his head. “I wasn’t planning to.”

Renee nods to himself. Then he leans forward in his seat, holding his head between his hands. “Fuck, man, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

Davin lets him stew in that misery for a while, silently waiting.

Eventually, Renee takes a deep breath and leans back. “Alright. Fucking… do it before I change my mind.”

Davin nods. Screws the lid off the bottle. Renee deliberately looks away as he pours a bit of the liquid inside onto the cloth.

This is fucking insane.

“Try to sit still,” Davin says as he screws the cap back on.

When he finally reaches across the center console to put the cloth over Renee’s mouth, Renee can’t help but reel back a little, grabbing onto Davin’s wrist with one hand – not pushing it away, exactly, just really, really wanting to.

The smell is sickly sweet, with a tang of something more pungent and chemical-esque, and the effect – well, that’s almost immediate. Renee can feel the energy tapping out of his limbs, as if his whole body is filled with lead, weighed down by gravity. His fingers slip from around Davin’s wrist, hand landing slack in his lap. He makes a last feeble attempt at jumpstarting himself, writhing somewhat in his seat.

“You can’t fight it,” Davin says, more clinical than gentle.

His vision is clouded by a vignette, one that slowly expands from his periphery. His chest rises and falls more slowly, his breath heats up the cloth around his mouth. With one last glance out into the rest stop, to freedom, he feels his eyes roll back in his head, and that’s the last sensation he has before the world finally disappears, and Renee Vaughan sinks into the black mist of unconsciousness.

Masterlist / Next

[divorcedfiddleford]

hold shifty gentle like hamburger

[sunderwight]

What if the plant body hadn't worked out, and the Holy Mausoleum solution had actually taken a long time to sort of "fix" Shen Qingqiu's body and fully call his soul back to it, so that hundreds of years passed and civilization in PIDW/SV world progressed to the point of something like the "modern era"?

Imagine Luo Binghe trying to delicately introduce his shizun to such strange concepts as smart phones and credit cards, while Shen Qingqiu is just desperately trying to figure out how dumb he should play this. Would it be believable for him to get everything on the first try? There have to be some differences between what he knows and this world's versions, right, because of the demons and cultivators and things? Right?? But it's not like any of this actually IS difficult for him to grasp!

Luo Binghe: Shizun already discerned how to type using a keyboard...?

Shen Qingqiu, sweating bullets: what, like it's hard?

[bruciemilf]

Dick Grayson would pretend to be a mutant just to be part of the X-Men. I know it heart and soul

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

a couple scribbles i cleaned up. also i think i like drawing him in varying states of distress

[heph]

Unstoppable Force VS Immovable Object

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

Homer!Odysseus and Epic!Odysseus would try to kill each other if they ever met

[courtmartialme]

you ruin everything you touch