#fic: crescent & redwood

[luvwich]

tagged by @merge-conflict and @wanderingaldecaldo to share some in-progress stuff; thanks chooms!

the only WIP i'm active on these days is crescent because the end is in sight and that always makes me pump the gas soooo here's mike and sol having a Manly Chat

Then, Reed asked him something nobody ever had. "What would have made you stay with the Claws?" He set the last few sips of his whiskey down on the gouged tabletop. "Anything?"

"Honestly? Dunno. Don’t like to concern myself with what-ifs that've already happened. Got enough of those waiting for me in the future, Sol." He tried out the nickname and came away from it ambivalent. "I'd like to be able to say somethin' like, oh, if the Claws didn't harbor psychopaths like Shobo, things woulda been different. And it's true I didn't like that shit at all. But the reason I left was just freedom. Grew up enough I didn't need their protection anymore, and I just kinda looked at the world and decided it was better not to take on any loyalties other'n the ones I was born with." Mike finished his drink and splashed out another, knocking the bottle against the side of the glass unsteadily. "Anyway, what woulda made me stay, in practical terms? Maybe if the price of leaving was my dick instead of the arm. Don't trust those Mr. Studd things." He raised the glass to his lips, eyes narrowed. "That answer your question?" Reed nodded with a half smile planted in the corner of his mouth. "Sure. Appreciate the honesty." "You’re thinkin' of leaving the Agency," Mike said, and Reed said nothing. Mike shook his head. "Well, that ain't gonna happen, but I hope you're having a good time thinking about it." That drew Reed forward in his seat by a centimeter, the bulk of his frame hunched like some regal beast in retreat. "Why say that?" The pitying look Mike gave him hit Reed like a flash grenade. "Everything they made you do," Mike said. "Everything they’ve done to you, man, why would you leave now? You're lookin' to a lowlife like me for advice on this? Means you ain't serious." He chuckled. "It's fine. Quit worrying. Stick with your master. That’s what’s getting you through life. Pretending to have my freedom's what's gettin' me through mine. Cheers, dude."

[luvwich]

ahhhhhHHHHhhhhhhhh

na, thank you for taking my vague descriptions and kooky idea for the background and turning it all into such beauty 😭💕🌲

so, i first wrote vania and mike as a fun-n-sexy little fic with a bittersweet ending. then phantom liberty came out, with all its gorgeous heartbreak and despair, and in the dead of winter and seasonal depression i decided i wanted to write a more hopeful vision for these made-up people and for myself. i mean i also wanted to write about a weird threesome and butt stuff

the coast redwood Sequoia sempervirens is a motif in my story of these characters, and an enduring source of inspiration in my life. this tree can live for thousands of years. its bark resists fire, its needles capture moisture from fog, and it was generally just born to win. despite impressive adaptations and favorable climate, we've managed to fuck up their forests pretty good in our never-ending sprint of progress.

"sempervirens" also plays off of the cyberpunk gig title "Who Wants To Live Forever." though endangered, i have hope for redwood ecosystems, and for V too :')

you should commission this brilliantly talented person asap

Sempervirens . 2024

Commission done for @luvwich . Great name you've come up for this piece, I learned something new today!

________ Timelapse will open on June 19th for Patreon members (https://patreon.com/nananarc). Commission Info on my website (https://nananarc.art)

Credits of under the cut.

Painting by Aleksandr Neliubin on https://www.artfinder.com/artist/oleksandr-nelyubin/

Painting by Osnat Tzadok on https://osnatfineart.com/painting/9317-original-textured-abstract-city-art-on-canvas-colorful-modern-decorative-living-room-painting

Photo by Laurie Bartley for Numéro Magazine on https://anneofcarversville.com/style-photos/2018/1/31/2i7qhlxergk2jnh8nih02mqmyxcyfc

[luvwich]

wip whenever

tagged by @dreamskug here to share some work; thank you, choom! sharing another cut from my current longfic, a chapter i'll be pushin' out sometime this week.

The notion of V flitting around in that hellhole was too much. Felt like pressure building at the back of his eyeballs and a worm chewing through his stomach. She's too fucking green for this. Little chickadee barely out the nest, now she's flying through a snowstorm with raptors?

His phone chirped again.

"Hello." His blood frothed at the sound of her lovely voice, her voice like a harp with two strings missing. "Found a quieter spot," she said.

"Fantastic. So," he said, "tellin' me I've gotta either come up with four generators out the damn blue, or smuggle some Barghest losers outta town. Nova. What's behind door number three?"

"I believe those are our only options, yes. Christ, I know it's a lot to ask, Mike. I — I won't blame you for saying no."

"Shut up. Just need you to tell me one thing. Why're you putting it all on the line for these morons?"

An ambient explosion rang muffled over the line as V paused before saying: "They will both die if I don't."

As he listened in on the distant pandemonium, Mike remembered the haunted distance in her stare a few nights ago: Someone died today. Suicide. Messy.

Oh, Vania, he thought. Don't you know once you start playing that game, the game don't stop? Trying to neutralize guilt's acid burn with good deeds. Tryna outrun something without understanding the thing isn't chasing you, it's under you, all around you. It's the ground you are running on, and it's a soft fertile loam that sinks your heels, that nurtures guilt and regret into eager thistle weeds.

Baby girl, he thought, that's a race you won't ever win. You kill sons and daughters for eddies. Your heart's never gonna get lighter. Heaven is beyond our reach; Osiris ain't picking up our calls.

Instead of saying a word of it he said, "Send me your coords."

tagging w no pressure @baublekute @dani-the-goblin @fly-amanitaa @ghostoffuturespast @merge-conflict @miss--river @nananarc @pozerjacket @wanderingaldecaldo — watcha working on? 👀

[luvwich]

wip whenever

tagged by @ghostoffuturespast to share something i'm working on - thank you, choom!

i'm closing out the last few chapters of my current longform WIP, which has interweaved a few flashbacks to the previous generation. this one’s about vania’s mum :3

(Friday, December 11, 2048, 7:14am. New York, Central Harlem.) "Miss Perez?" It's the kind of question she doesn't feel the need to answer, because it ain't no kind of a question at all. If this gonk didn't know exactly who she was, he wouldn't be camped out on the steps of her brownstone at seven in the godforsaken winter morning, now, would he?

Her stride doesn't break. Her gaze doesn't flicker. She's good. "Miss Perez!" Oh, now it's not a question, huh? But the young man might be forgiven for throwin’ an exclamation point on her name. If you'd've seen her — that bubblegum bob of sleek hair, those wintergreen cat eyes, the exquisite tawny flesh laced with twenty-two karat cybernetics and, jesucristo, that outfit draped over that sculpt — you just might get to exclaimin', too. "Miss Perez, do you have a moment?"

She twirls on a spiked heel. The man’s got pale brown puppydog eyes and the sugared face of a prom king, but he's wielding one of the latest holocam models like it’s an automatic rifle. Piece of shit's designed to capture every dimension of the unwilling subject, right down to the damned pore. Miss Perez didn't do a full hair and makeup sesh this morning. Miss Perez wants no part of that fucking camera. And she doesn't have a moment, no. Hasn't had a moment since '41, really, for a no-name, lowbrow, bottom-feeding media turd like this guy. A doe-eyed, kind-hearted, perfectly polite paparazzo is still a fuckin' fly at the end of the day. But the thing is, it's 2048. She's twenty-nine: no longer the ingenue she was just a few years ago. She hasn't had a headline in three weeks, and her manager's starting to drop hints. She looks up in the air, sees nothing that can aid her, and sighs deeply. "Yeah, fine, whaddya want?" We're not in the Bronx right now — we're in Harlem, 121st Street, kitty-corner to the park, you know the one; we are eight solid New York City miles west of Castle Hill, might as well be a different continent — but Miss Perez's accent is still in the Bronx. That thing won't budge even after getting hauled across the Atlantic and being parked there for life. Nah, her voice stays exactly like this until she dies, too young, a few decades down the line in her cluttered South Kensington flat, years and years away from any headlines, chrome-sick and wasting. "¿Qué quieres, huh?"

[luvwich]

wip whenever

happy friday! just sharing a little WIP excerpt from this chapter i'm workin on

He moves. The moist earth gives beneath each bootfall (heel toe heel toe), pressing shallow, boot-shaped divots in beds of needles. The needles yield their aroma to each measured inhalation. The salt of unseen waves chimes in, and beneath this melange, he finds the fragrance of his target before he's seen or heard it. A warm, bestial, bristled smell. A scent-signature of matted fur and the ferment of musk. The target moves. The moist earth gives beneath each hoofstomp. Plucky, anxious rustles: this one is small. It'll be a fresh-snouted adolescent, short of tusk and tender. Far overhead, sunbeams filter through sap-dressed branches to become shadows, shifting, projecting abstractions to the earth and the needles below.

The chrome in his spine tingles and warms. Silicon convenes with nerves in an electric language. Within him, around him, time elongates: expanding, contracting just slightly, expanding again and unfurling, buoyed. Time coils and uncoils, serpentine, as he moves. His boots are a blur, arms a blur, mop of hair a pale, untamed blur. He moves like a bullet between raindrops in the fragrant shade, skimming the undergrowth, boots barely disturbing the bed of needles. The tingle in his spine is a blue heat. Time is a choking kingsnake. He navigates tenths of seconds like a drop of rain dribbling across the snake's temporal scales. Now, he meets his target: short of tusk and tender, immobilized by the snake of time. When his arm curls to embrace the young boar, he communes with its heat. Feels three mournful heartbeats deep in the bristled young chest, padum padum padum, and his own heart responds in between, slower, in two-thirds time, like (bomp….) padum pa(…bomp)dum padum. His chin nestles between soft, tapered ears that heard his boots too late. The blade in his free hand is high-carbon steel, a curved gunong with a pistol grip, and when, in between the tenths of seconds, blade meets throat, he whispers his gratitude into one velvet ear. The serpent of time seizes, stiffens, and turns to ash. The heat in his spine cools. Back to ninety-nine degrees, back into the slipstream of time; back pressed against the bed of needles as it warms and reddens with blood. One heartbeat remains, grieves, and gives thanks until he draws himself to stand and begins the ritual of field dressing.

[luvwich]

i’m curious about bitter opal hymn (also, thank you for tagging me in the wip game) ♥︎

(wip game here) -- thank you for the ask! 💙 that one is the next chapter of my tiny mike fic - the chapter’s pretty all over the place right now but i like this little scene and will probably keep it:

“Yeah, I know. You’re thinking about her. Your merc girl." Christine's laugh was drier than a Wasteland dune. Always had been. "Wishin' I was her, huh." His face twisted up. “You know about V?” “Everyone does. Think I live under a rock?” “Sorry, 'Teeny.” The vintage nickname made the corner of her mouth quirk to a tenuous smile. He'd come up with it while stoned to the rafters one night, back when their nights were more playful and less transactional. Christine. Teeny. "Tiny and Teeny." Stupid, but cute, just like him. She rummaged on her nightstand before sitting up in a loose slouch against the wall. A cigarette crackled the silence as she lit the end and breathed in. “It's fine, Tiny, really.” Her plume of smoke billowed out the crack in the window. “Maybe there’s someone I’m wishin' you were, too.”

(christine is that components vendor in cherry blossom market who river and V go to about horvath, there's a message on mike’s computer referring to her as his ex lol)

[luvwich]

"Labyrinth tempo" for the wip game <3 (i love idea of anagam btw !!)

[WIP game here] -- thank you for asking! context i'll provide here is that "Bahala Na Zoku" is a Filipino gang briefly mentioned in the cyberpunk lore and i'm working that into my current longfic 💕

"Bahala na." You could say it one way, with an up-and-down lilt that landed on a minor chord, to indicate a flavor of hopelessness. Whatever happens, happens. Can't do shit about it. It could ring of apathy, pessimism, defeat. Torchsong in the chambers of a broken heart. Bitter tea that you drink because you're thirsty. A face beneath a boot forever. But you could say it another way, with a triumphant major chord and a bang at the end. "Bahala na!" Whatever happens is definitely going to happen, so fuck it, we're doing this. That's an anthem. That's a song that goes chorus, chorus, chorus instead of verse, chorus, verse. That's ice water. Que sera, sera. Alea iacta est. Bahala na. Chorus, chorus, chorus.

[luvwich]

snippet from a future chapter of crescent & redwood — i've got this whole b-plot cookin that i'm not totally sure i'll be able to pull together, so this may or may not make it into the final draft. but it's AVney time!

(prev post about AVneys here)

(Thursday, June 16, 2044. Manila, New Philippines.) Manila, Summer of '44. The QuantaDaan Market pulses like an oversized heart in the broad chest of the Quiapo district. Neon sprinkles the canvas tent-tops beneath which vendors hawk batteries, duck eggs, cyberdecks, and rice-flour desserts of every color and shape. Hundreds of feet overhead, airborne jalopies clank in wobbling trails, resembling floating tin cans, half-crushed. Their dented bodies are splashed with stickers covering gaudy, chipped paint jobs. These tin cans are called "AVneys": an evolution of the landlocked jeepney. The parade of colors marching through airspace looks as though Christmas, Diwali, and the Fourth of July all barfed into the sky and got stuck up there.

Beneath the festive traffic jam in the clouds, a young woman navigates the human maze of the marketplace. Her lavender hair blends in with the sea of fashionable pastels worn by others her age. "Thea," calls a vendor as she passes, "oxtail today! Good price for you." "Save me a kilo," she says, without stopping. "Thea?" Someone else waves from the crowd. "Not now." The woman, no older than twenty-five, chops a zigzag path toward the taxi stands where folks queue up for transportation by ground and air alike. One of the sky-jalopies descends to the landing pad, rotors humming, its prismatic paint job grasping the tropical sunlight without letting go. The woman, whose name is Althea, swings herself into the cabin of the AVney. "Hi, miss," says the pilot. "Saan po kayo pupunta?" She speaks before fully catching her breath. "Does this vehicle have clearance to enter San Miguel airspace?" "Yes, miss," says the pilot. Her voice is clipped and lilting like a broken-legged bird of paradise. "Let me see your license, na." He produces it from the glove compartment, whistling a pop tune as he tilts the vehicle to a higher altitude. "Salamat po." She takes the lacquered rectangle, inspects it, and slides it into the front pocket of her vest. "What are you—" The handle of a revolver meets the man's nose in a fountain of red. The sky is interrupted by a straight, screaming line as the pilot plunges to the teeming streets below. Blood splatters the kiosks, the marketplace closes early, and above it all the cheerful AVney swings in a wide U-turn toward San Miguel as Althea Torralba takes the wheel.

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter twelve

He moves. The moist earth gives beneath each bootfall, pressing shallow, size-eleven divots in beds of needles. The needles yield their aroma to every measured inhalation; the salt of unseen waves chimes in.

The redwood tree's bark resists fire. But the rest of it succumbs and, like most living beings of this world, burns.

🌲 on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter eleven

Hamstrings wailing, lower back shrieking, he leaned forward into a squat. The roof's slope proved too steep for setting up the tripod, so he shouldered his rifle hard enough to bruise and crushed his eye to the scope with a grunt. Down below, Watson was looking shabbier'n ever. A rambling rot trickled through the city, some nameless depravity more savage than any of its forebears. Another war was knocking at Night City's door, sniffing around in its putrid trash heaps.

Fuck. This is—fuck, I dunno if I can keep doing this. . . starting to feel fucking insane. Like I'm talkin' to a ghost. Guess you know the feeling, huh.

on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter ten

One of the mantras out of Arasaka she'd once internalized, grafted into the fiber of her being: the principle of least privilege. It meant limiting access — to knowledge, resources, anything — to the bare minimum necessary for performing one's function. That's how systems stay secured, how the lights stay on, and how power protects itself.

The second song's spell tapered into a cloak of silence. It hung heavy on them, their bodies still swaying, like prairie grass remembering a recent breeze. Or like the way everything's always moving at the atomic level. Secrets and side-deals crept up the backs of their throats, twisted in their guts, and made the silence a slow poison.

on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter nine

Whenever he goes from speaking to not speaking, it's like someone's slammed the mute button on a contrabassoon. Leaves the air heavy and wanting, forlorn. Big Mike's eyes turn toward the percolator full of thick, stale coffee, looking past it, looking elsewhere, staring straight into the looming shadows of the future. "I don't wanna do this, either." His sigh's like a canyon wind. "Fact is, I'm as scared as you guys. But there's no alternative."

A mess of calculations tangled through his mind. Ultimately, he figured it like this: if he was right and this was a trap, he could prepare himself for that; could take on whoever awaited him. But if he was wrong and V needed help... well, the cost of such an error was not worth contemplating. Sometimes, you got no choice but to go all-in on a bad hand.

on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter seven

Darkness engulfed them. Stuttering hiccups of red light; deep red, like the maw of an ancient beast. A wallop of indescribable pain made V's body fold like cardstock. Like the sensation of being in the heat of battle, with all her RAM slots hollowed out, her brain sizzling from dispatching queues of high-powered hacks.

As bizarre as it felt to be dressing up for a date given what she'd witnessed earlier in the day, V welcomed the taste of normalcy. The opportunity to pretend for a moment that her most important decision concerned which of four identical crop tops to wear. The quiet dignity of applying her lipstick, her perfume; the ritual of her hair.

on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter six

When V answered Songbird's call, she'd still been under the wooly influence of Vik's sedative. The haze persisted even as she breached Dogtown's barbed borders; she hardly recalled that first night, clinging to impressionistic memories, a series of cobwebbed mementos. Her timeline folded back and in on itself like an impossible object: she was at Vik's, and then Misty flipped the Two of Swords. An unknown caller and then pain, scorching. Johnny gone; in his place, an ethereal woman who made V embarrassed to have ever called herself a "netrunner."

For a fleeting, monstrous moment, a moment he wasn't proud of at all, one he was truly ashamed of, he almost wanted her dead. Sounds horrific, but we must remember that snuffing the life out of things was how a lot of problems got solved in his line of work, and she was a problem. The shameful moment passed as a vicious flash in his eyes.

on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

🌙 crescent & redwood // chapter five

You ever been in a position of feeling like your life's about to change in a way you didn't choose and don't much care for? Did it feel like you were the epicenter of an implosion played at half speed, then? Were you the hinge of a heavy gate closing?

Misty flipped the third card to reveal a woman in a white robe, brandishing two blades: the Two of Swords. Above the woman's head, a moon waxed crescent. "Ah. Hm... This one speaks of a decision that marks a fork in the road. But, see, she's blindfolded." A black-lacquered nail tapped the woman's face. "She can't see what she needs to make her decision. Her information is incomplete."

🌲 on ao3 ->

[luvwich]

Bitter opal hymn for the wip game? :3c its a goddamn gorgeous title

(wip game here) ty for the ask 💜! i shared a different snippet of this chapter here, and here's a very different moment with Tiny Mike getting ready to go on the lam 🏃

When Militech’s got a bounty on your head, the only real play is to run. Disappear. Skip town and don't leave a forwarding address. His mind raced to map out what needed to happen next. Had a bag packed at home already — few years in the business, everyone's got one — but he couldn't remember what was in it. Probably some chalky protein bars, bottom-shelf ammo, and underwear that his glutes had bulked out of.

Mike squinted at the memory of raiding his go-bag for snacks sometime last spring. Fucking A, you’re really supposed to be better prepared for these things, champ. Okay, so he’d need to spend a minute packing. He could be back at his place in ten. Could afford twenty minutes to pack. (Should he tell V? Fuck that, no, cut it out.) Traffic was bad because it was always bad. (Your bike’s got a tracker on it, most likely, that you don’t have time to find.) Did Smiddy still know the guy with the budget AV service? Paranoia gripped his guts: could he trust Smiddy? Did he ever trust him? Should he call V? No, you stupid motherfucker, was probably her who sold you out to begin with. Paranoia gave his guts a playful twist. Maybe join his fuck-up brother out in Arizona; wouldn't that be a riot. Though he'd need to go further than Tucson to stay breathing if it was Militech on his ass. "Alright," Mike mumbled. "We're here."