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theredofoctober · 9 months ago

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The Sand Violet: A Fallout Dark Fic

Cooper Howard (The Ghoul) x Mute Female Reader fic

Synopisis: The Ghoul known as Cooper Howard kidnaps Reader in an attempt to sell her for medicine. When she escapes and humiliates him he has his revenge.

The Reader insert is female and mute. Other features not described

TW and CW: noncon/rape, violence, death, cannibalism

Words: 6,899

Read after the cut ✂️

It’s quiet in Filly, or as quiet as it gets, the afternoon so hot as to bake the earth dark and to drive its milling residents back indoors.

Store holders draw their shutters down against the sun and crouch, noiseless with exhaustion, over whatever toil pays their way in the world.

Dogs loll snoring in doorways, and bartenders find themselves elbowing old punters aside to serve the new and many stumbling in to wet their mouths and take refuge from the warm.

You and your husband, Gray, idle in one of several junk shops in town, having little else to do until the heatwave dwindles into night.

A thick-shouldered man sits drowsily at the front desk, squinting as you traipse about his wares for your fourth or fifth rotation of the room.

“Clear out if you ain’t tradin’,” he mutters, but as you loiter with stubborn aversion to the sucking heat beyond his doorstep the man does not rise to chase you out.

Gray lays a gentle hand on the crook of your arm.

“Let’s go pretend to be interested in that thing over there,” he murmurs. “Keep the old guy happy.”

Talking Gray’s elbow, you obey, looking at his turned, freckled cheek with a want to kiss it. You’re as in love as two people can be in such times, and though the days are hard and the nights harder still, with Gray they do not feel so.

You sleep rough in sand dunes together, eat canned fruit with one spoon between you over fires you put out before the radroaches come.

Tonight you’ll find a bar and drink with what stray caps you’ve each left in your satchels, and later lie as one until the sun scrapes the night away, still tasting the rum on one another’s breath.

Or so it would have been, had fate not cracked a backhand blow across your hopeful faces.

The junkshop door bangs open against the wall, setting its bells thrashing in an angry fairy chorus. As a mean silhouette moves into the light like an eye gouged from the face of God Gray steps ahead of you by instinct, his right hand grazing the knife at his belt.

“Ah, shit,” says the shopkeeper, half-rising from his seat. “You ain’t allowed in here.”

“Says who?” drawls the stranger, kicking the door shut behind him. “I know you ain’t about to get your ass up and stop me, Davey, else the taste of lead’s startin’ to sound mighty flavoursome to you.”

Davey sits down slowly, his broad face wincing and resigned.

The newcomer is a hairless man in an ancient cowboy hat and a coat whose tatters trail, wisp-like, at the spurs of his boots. His face is like that of a red moon, sunken and cratered, and without a nose to speak of, his skull gleaming with the scars of some ancient burn.

A ghoul.

You know of such creatures, so changed by radiation that some no longer think them men, though they are human, still, for all their deviance from that race.

The stranger’s dark eyes switch the store with a slow calculation, dismissing its contents before turning at last to Gray and to your shielded figure behind him.

“I heard there was two Vaulties in town,” says the Ghoul. “And lucky me: I just happened upon them.”

“We’re not Vault Dwellers,” Gray says, curtly. “Not anymore.”

Six months ago he’d gotten into a fight with another man he’d perceived to have disrespected you, and had been turned out of the Vault on that account. You had followed, seeing no life there without your husband, though you knew little then of what lay beyond.

Quickly you and Gray had learned the way of the wastes, casting much of what softness you’d had aside but that which you held for one another.

Evidently it is not enough, for the Ghoul looks at your husband with a grin full of sly yellow teeth.

“Hell, look at you,” he says. “Those hands of yours are as tender as a new-born’s. Once a Vaultie, always a Vaultie. You ain’t built to step outside those fish tanks you lock yourselves up in.”

The Ghoul turns to peer at you, his eyes narrowed to earthen slits as Gray pushes you further behind him.

“What do you want with us, anyway?” Gray asks. “We’re just minding our business trying to live up here, same as anybody else.”

Sneering, the Ghoul says, “Yeah, well, let’s see how long that lasts. Now who’s this shrinkin' violet you’re trying so damn hard to hide from me?”

He shunts Gray aside with one rude shoulder and stands over you, eyeing you up and down as he might a saloon whore, his hands resting at his belt.

You’re glad of the cotton dress that covers you from throat to boot top, allowing him nothing of the skin that restless stare likely seeks.

“Now, ain’t you pretty,” says the Ghoul. “What’s your name, sugar?”

Trembling with anger, Gray says, “Leave her alone.”

The Ghoul shifts his jaw in an irritable motion.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you, kid. I’m askin’ her.”

“She can’t talk,” says Gray, and you nod at the Ghoul, who tips his hat back from the crenellation of his brow in mock surprise.

“That so?”

With a trembling hand you sign, yes.

“Sorry, sweetie, I don’t speak your language.”

“She’s mute,” says Gray, quietly. “Has been since she was a baby.”

You echo the statement with cradled arms, and the Ghoul’s head tilts aside like a jackal watching a man die at some lofty distance.

“So you’re tellin’ me this beautiful lady right here can’t make no noise?” he asks, slowly. “Well, ain’t that convenient. See, I’m lookin’ to make some easy money, and as it so happens there’s a whole lot of folks chompin’ at the bit to buy a woman of just that description.”

The Ghoul seizes you by the arms with a motion so sudden that you do not protest, only stumble against him, feeling a sash of bullets like some torn out length of spinal cord upon your own.

“You’re comin’ along with me, darlin’,” says the Ghoul. “Hope you don’t mind.”

His breath is hot against your ear, smelling of cigarettes and some strange chemical.

“You’re not taking her anywhere!” snaps Gray, his lean frame tense with fury. “That’s my wife!”

The Ghoul looks sideways at him, his narrow lips upturned.

“Not no more she ain’t.”

Gray pulls his knife from his belt and lunges forwards, halting only at the raised snout of a gun protruding from the Ghoul’s calm grip.

Davey stands up once more, yelling and waving one arm ineffectually.

“Hey now! Hey now!”

Caught up between two men you find yourself oddly collected, as though by desperation fear has made you the sole point of calm.

Perhaps the Ghoul feels the racket of your heart against your bones; it does not matter. You cannot allow Gray to know it beats so, nor to bound, reckless, into a bullet on your behalf

Looking into the jailhouse madness of your husband’s eyes, you sign, I’ll go with him. I’ll get away. I’ll find you. I love you.

Gray flinches, and sheathing his knife, he says hoarsely, “She says she’ll travel with you. Don’t let her get hurt.”

Davey drops to his seat in palpable relief, a single vein writhing like an albino snake along his forehead.

The Ghoul tucks his gun away with a satisfied ease, his other arm still clamping you to him.

“Oh, I won’t let a soul leave a scratch on her,” he says. “’Cause if they did she wouldn’t be worth shit to me.”

He twists you ahead of him, nudging your ankle with the toe of his boot.

“Come on, Violet,” he says, as you attempt to look back at Gray over your shoulder. “We got places to be.”

As he propels you out of the store you hear Davey half-whisper, “What hell were you thinkin' pullin' a knife on him, kid? That’s Cooper Howard, for fuck’s sake.”

The Ghoul pauses abruptly, as though jerking from the dream of some sunken childhood horror.

“Ain’t gone by that name in years,” he says, gruffly. “Don’t you go raisin’ the dead.”

Then he jostles you onwards, and the sound of his spurs and the closing door become the same funeral song.

The Ghoul directs you through the town into a quarter of parched woodland, his gun trained lazily at your back. He speaks little, only snapping occasionally at your unrushed pace, which through dull spite you’ve no interest to change.

The shock of your abduction morphs into a watchful cunning in which you await your moment to revolt, your silence lending greatly to the effect of submission.

Still, you are not trusted to fall behind or even aside of your ruthless captor. The Ghoul has likely walked a hundred cringing hostages to their demise at organ shops or dens of ill repute, and from those journeys knows what tricks he might expect from even so pliant a charge.

In time you’re driven on into desert terrain that goes on unbroken for miles, the afternoon heat crushing strength and moisture from you like the blood of some small animal mercy-killed beneath a stone.

That land, as you have glimpsed before, is wrought of death and casual evil.

You see one man dragging another on a leash, the latter’s knees worn through to the bone from crawling so long in the wastes.

You see ferals beheaded and lashed to sun-bleached fences, only letters marked by stones in the earth denoting what, in life, they’d been.

You see a pack of dogs eating a woman’s entrails in the remains of an old shack, one of which raises its head to watch you pass with one viscous eye like the orb of some addled sorceress.

The Ghoul observes all with the same grim cynicism, smirking occasionally, as though gleaning something blackly comic from this show of ugliness.

He only stops when the sun collides with the skyline, setting up camp in what remains of an old gas station.

You loiter by an old pump, thinking that to run or to attack the Ghoul outright would not end in your favour.

Rising from his work, The Ghoul says, “Come here, darlin’. Let’s see if you have any weapons on you.”

You shake your head, thinking of the knife in your boot and the others in your satchel as the last thread by which you might escape.

Please, you sign. I need them.

The Ghoul strides across the camp and outstretches a leather clad palm.

“Hand ‘em over or I’ll pat you down and take ‘em myself. You’ll be waitin’ for the chance to gut me in my sleep. I ain’t takin' no chances with you, sweetie. “

When you hold back he snatches a handful of your dress and begins a rough search of your body, feeling you all over from breasts to groin with a scowl on his wizened lips.

It’s only when he raises your skirt to retrieve the bowie knife from the back of your boot that something of ordinary male desire crosses his face, his stare crawling the smooth plane of your calf.

He does not touch it, though from the stillness of his observation you perceive that he would like to.

“Gimme that satchel,” says the Ghoul, gruffly. “Let’s see what you got in there.”

He rifles through tinned food and RadAway until he finds the three blades sewn into the lining of your bag.

“That’s one hell of an artillery, Violet. You know how to use all this?”

You nod shortly.

“Well, at least that’s somethin’,” says the Ghoul, and he dumps the open bag into the earth. “Pays to know how to survive in this place.”

Producing a length of rope from somewhere under his coat he takes hold of your wrists and binds them, ignoring your mouthed words of dismay.

“I’ve seen you eyein' that desert,” he says, “tryin’ to figure out if you can slip past me. You might not talk, but your face sure does a lot of yappin’ for you.”

Satisfied with the knot, The Ghoul sits on an upturned barrel and hefts a flask of water to his mouth. Your cracked tongue pushes forth in hopeless want of moisture, watching beads of it run in a careless spill upon his chin.

Catching your eye, the Ghoul says, “Want somethin', Vaultie?”

With knotted hands you gesture to the flask. Sneering, the Ghoul takes another noisy mouthful of water and pours the rest onto a grimy rag with which he wipes his face, a waste of precious contraband.

You turn away, refusing him your despair.

“Here, sweetie,” says The Ghoul, gesturing the sopping fabric. “You want water? Come get what’s left of this.”

Still you do not look at him, attempting not to think of the liquid falling drop by silver drop upon the sand.

The Ghoul scoffs.

“Think you’re too good for it, huh? Well, you ain’t gettin’ anythin’ else all night. Maybe not tomorrow, neither. So come on, Violet. Drink while you can.”

He tugs the rope cuffing your wrists until you’re forced to your knees and holds the cloth to your lips, allowing the water to drip between them. Thirst awakened, you snatch a corner of the scrap in your teeth and suck the fabric dry, aware of the Ghoul’s eyes upon you.

“Now ain’t that a pretty sight,” he says. “Just for that I’ll give you a little more.”

He takes the flask from your own bag and again soaks the filthy cloth. This time you rip it from his hand and squeeze its contents down your throat with knotted hands as though pulping some browned fruit.

“You got spirit, Vaultie,” says the Ghoul, drying his hands on his coat. “I can see you ain’t gonna be easy to tame. But I’ve had dogs before. You ain’t no different.”

Snatching the cloth back, he shoves you into the dirt with a boot squared to your chest.

“See, I told that husband of yours I wouldn’t let you get hurt, but that don’t stop me teachin’ you a lesson, sweetheart. Just as long as I don’t leave a mark on you your value won’t shift a dime.”

You lie on your side, breathless and hateful, watching through half-open eyes as the Ghoul slouches nearby to settle in for the night.

“Get some shut-eye, Violet,” he says. “We got another day or so of walkin' ahead of us.”

You keep sentinel for hours, not trusting his appearance of sleep. Once, when you inch away from the Ghoul across camp, the rope at your wrists is tugged smartly taut as he reels you in across the sand.

“Stay close,” he says, opening one eye to squint at you through the dark. “I ain’t riskin’ somethin’ eatin’ you out here. What the fuck would I sell then?”

You awake to the Ghoul’s hand on your shoulder, turning you onto your back as though to identify a cadaver. From the luggage draped on his shoulder you guess he’s keen to leave, compelled by some urgency not yet detailed.

“You hungry?” he asks. “I ain’t openin’ the cans till we need ‘em, but I’ve do have this.”

You glance at the strips of dehydrated meat hung from his bag and shake your head, thinking how easily it might be the flesh of a man, being that the eating of them in the wastes is not uncommon.

“Don’t say I never offered,” says the Ghoul. “I’d wager you’ll be beggin’ for it in a couple of hours.”

As he pulls you to your feet you reach towards him with your wrists, mouthing a plea to be released.

“Now, you know I can’t do that, sunshine,” says the Ghoul, not without humour. “I must have heard that one a hundred times.”

Just one. Please.

The cowboy hums under his breath, thumbing the knot that joins your arms in a display of consideration.

“What do you need a hand for, Violet?”

You shift in discomfort, and to your relief the Ghoul gets the message.

“Alright. You get two minutes to do your business. Then we’re on the road.”

Slipping your dominant hand free of the lasso he turns in the other direction, whistling as you squat in the dirt. You’re coldly surprised that he allows you this dignity.

Once both arms are unified by the rope the Ghoul nudges you before him into the desert again, uncaring of the limp you’ve developed in your fatigue.

On your way you pass a church, repaired after the bomb by some follower of that old religion, or else inherited by the new.

Beyond it lies a boneyard, brittle skeletons set up like headstones across the plane.

There are wandering salesmen naming their wares in croaking shouts as they wheel forth shopping carts before them. There are hardened men and women the Ghoul claims are bandits, firing warning shots before they get close enough to attack.

“They’d eat you up, doll,” he drawls, cleaning off his gun. “Right down to those pretty white bones.”

You cross paths with groups of whores who lift their low-cut dresses and holler at your captor, who tips his hat, but otherwise ignores their attempts to woo him. Families stagger along with children whose faces are like rotting taxidermy, mutated, or else merely warped by whatever horrors they’ve encountered on their endless walk.

At the bottom of a sloping dune you come across the remnants of a massacre, bodies cut down into gelatinous morsels afloat on a lake of blood. When you halt, trembling, at its edges the Ghoul spits at your feet.

“What’s the matter, Vaultie? Don’t you know your Great-Great-Grandpappy and Grandmamma had a hand in making the world the way it is? Your ancestors didn’t give two shits what happened to the rest of us. That blood’s on your hands, darlin’.”

You stare at him without comprehension, thinking how closely his visage resembles the dead.

Suddenly the Ghoul bends over in the throes of a coughing fit, one hand scrabbling in his bag for a vial of liquid he decants into his mouth with a feverish need. He stoops, gasping, for some time, his lashes fluttering helplessly.

As you stare on it occurs to you that you know of this illness, the thing that chars the minds of ghouls away with its dread madness.

It makes Cooper weak, and thus you know what you must watch for in him to slip his hold.

That night, camped out beneath a blasted tree, the Ghoul coughs again, a wheeze like that of some punctured machine at work. As he falls sideways, his hands spidering for his pack, you see the precious bottles of elixir skid across the dirt out of his reach.

Starving, half-crazed with tiredness and thirst, you drag yourself up with aid of the tree and approach the Ghoul, watching his face upturn in desolate recognition of what you mean to do.

First you snatch the bags from him, finding a knife to cut your tethers. You spread your hands, gasping at their stiffness as you roll the joints.

Being untrained in the use of firearms you carry his gun to a patch of scrub and throw it amidst the foliage, far from sight. If he turns feral he will not think of it; if he survives the fit it will at least take him time to recover.

The Ghoul’s eyes prod your back with bleak resentment as you work.

Returning to the fallen man, you point your boot at the three glass bottles left of his supply.

You want them? You sign.

The Ghoul nods; you see that he expects nothing, and that lends you a cruel edge of power.

Taking care to look into his browless gaze you raise one boot and smash the vials beneath it, letting their contents leech away into the sand. Still the Ghoul inches forward in an attempt to lick it from the dirt, forgoing his dignity in the face of survival, as is surely his habit.

You draw back a foot and kick sand into his raddled face, burying the last of his medicine in its spray.

Fuck you, you tell him. You son of a bitch.

Then you turn and begin the long walk back to Filly, and to Gray.

You march, bow-legged with muscle cramp and blistered ankles, both day and night, pausing only to take your RadAway or drink from the flasks the Ghoul had filled at a well the day before. The dried meat you devour in segments, knowing that you must make your food stock last, or else starve before you reach civilisation.

You no longer care where the strips came from, or tell yourself that you do not. Guilt will inhibit your survival, and you’ve seen enough of the land to acknowledge that all men here are for themselves.

On the second day of solitary travel you are followed by a grinning stranger attracted to your stumbling vulnerability. He whispers as though to a lost love as he shadows you, licking at his mouth with his cracked tongue, one hand in his pocket, upon his cock or a blade, their end all the same to you.

You have not killed before, but from what you’ve known in your six months beyond the Vault you are sure in your knife hand as you turn on him and slit his throat. It is as though some sun burned doppelganger commits the act, so little do you feel as he stills, gargling, in the earth.

Only later, taking rest in a rundown cabin, do you look at your killing arm and wonder that it has taken you so long in the desert to have spilt your first blood. You are not sorry for the stranger, knowing from his mutterings what he would have done with you beneath him.

Still, you feel yourself altered, knighted by death as its champion.

In the morning the man’s body is gone, dragged away from the road by animals, or else by people so like them that their differences are irrelevant.

You begin to ask passers-by if they have seen your husband, all of which shake their heads, or send you on false leads that weary you to the point of sickness in their length.

There is no doubt that Gray would have followed you here; his overzealous sense of morality would not abide the notion of remaining behind. Yet there seems no trace of him in this thankless land, and through your savage tutelage in its ways you doubt that you will find him.

The miles are eaten by your splitting boots, and yet more come, as though in some sequence from nightmare they will never conclude, only expand into a formless frontier. You’re in such pain from walking that you can think of nothing but its grip upon you, raising one foot after the other only through the terror that in resting you may never rise again.

It’s afternoon when you come upon the old church once more, pale as a dead tooth in the gum of the horizon. You lope towards the double doors and knock, hankering after the cool shade within.

An elderly man answers, peering out at you without expression. There is a gun in his hand, aimed in a discreet fashion at your stomach.

Raising your palms, you mouth, Safe. I need shelter.

The old man lowers his gun without apology.

“I see. Come on in, sister. I’ll see about finding you something to drink.”

You are led through a hall in which rows of dirty wooden pews face the carved figure of a martyr nailed to a cross. His carved eyes seem to dog you as you sit and accept a cup of water as though judging you for the sin of taking a life.

You look back at him, dispassionate, untouched by He you do not worship.

The priest asks, “You’re troubled, sister. What is it you’re looking for out here?”

Taking a notepad and the worn-down stub of a pencil out of your bag you write, I’m looking for my husband. His name is Gray Freeland. He’s tall. Blue eyes. Freckles. He’s from a Vault. You’d know him.

The old man reads slowly, following the text with his finger.

“Well,” he says. “I haven’t seen many living folks pass through here in a long time. Mostly I keep my doors locked, since the only people I do see are man eaters. Wildmen.

“Just the other day I chased a few of them off a body they were dragging along, thinking to cut pieces from it whenever they were hungry, I suppose. I brought the poor man into the crypt so as I could give him a decent burial.”

Again you glance at the man on the cross and see that he is weeping. Your own eyes are dry, raw from the sand winds, a travelling cynic’s.

Take me to see the body, you write, and the old priest leads you down a narrow stairway like the coil of a shell into a cool basement of stone.

On a slab there lies a corpse, the ribs opened out and plucked clean of organs, the face half devoured, marks left on the skull from scraping teeth.

The other eye, the sloping cheekbone. These, intact, you know.

“You recognise this man?” asks the old man. “Is he your husband?”

You don’t answer, just look at the body as you did the massacre, stunned beyond grief by the cruelty of the wastes.

In the notebook you write, I want a funeral for him. A burial.

“You weren’t parted from your husband by the hand of God alone,” says the priest. “Someone came between you two.”

Yes, you say. The Ghoul. Cooper Howard. He wanted to sell me for caps, or medicine, I think. I ran away.

A twitch tugs the old man’s eye like a fishing line.

You write, you know this Ghoul.

“Yes. Everyone around these parts has heard of him. He’s a brutal man. He’s killed women, children, anyone to get what he wants. If he has any sort of code at all then it’s not one I know of.”

You stare into the eye of your dead lover and inherit from it his resolve to go on.

I should leave. If the Ghoul survived, then he may come here.

Placing a veined hand on yours, the priest asks, “What did you do to him, sister?”

Not enough.

You stay at the church overnight, given a meal of salted meat and hard bread, and a bath in a vast tin tub. You sleep on a palette bed in a back room with clean sheets, and drink cool water that tastes only of minerals, and not the filth of the wastes.

Yours is a slumber like that of the sick, or the long dead.

Then at first daylight you’re back on the road again, forced to leave your husband’s body to rot in its chill crypt.

With no purpose but to live you trundle forth past the grotesque landmarks that distinguish each stretch of earth from the other, walk until your boots are blood soaked and your hips ache like a crone’s.

Only when your knees give out do you resign yourself to set up camp by a defunct railroad, warming a tin of soup over a pitiful fire. You think almost of nothing as you drink, beaten flat as an ancient coin by the afternoon sun and the grinding nature of your suffering.

Slumped on an old box, you look at the fire, like some offshoot of your skyward enemy, and yearn for the cool of the Vault.

Footsteps crunch in the sand at your back, and a soft male voice says, “Now there’s my shrinkin' violet. Sittin’ out here all alone.”

Before you can dart away a weight strikes the middle of your back, pitching you into the dirt in a clumsy sideways roll. Winded, you find yourself peering up into the ravaged features of the Ghoul, and think that Death in his ragged coat could not appear so cruel.

“You’re tougher than I gave you credit for, sweetie,” he says, conversationally. “Meaner, too. Where’d that holier than fuckin’ thou Vault attitude go to?”

He must have hidden some vials amidst his clothes, enough to revive him from his lunacy. You had not thought to check his pockets, absorbed as you were in your revenge.

The Ghoul strips you of your weapons, tutting at the banality of routine. Then he looks down at how you’ve fallen, legs apart, your prairie dress gathered up like a tangled net about your knees, and notices the undergarments cupped with sweat to the cut of your cunt.

You see, then, a stain of thought spread through him like a thirst for blood, his eyes as black as the charred stumps of headless ferals you’d seen roped to fencing on the road.

“Well, now,” says the Ghoul. “Least I’ve figured out a way you can pay me back for all them vials you stomped on.”

His voice is low, a purr of heated malice.

With the nose of his gun he lifts your skirts up to your thighs and nudges the barrel against your cunt, Vault regulation underwear done away with in one taunting motion.

“Get up, doll,” says the Ghoul. “I’m gonna do something that dumbfuck husband of yours probably never did and teach you how to ride.”

He sits down on the wooden crate and gestures with his weapon for you to rise.

“Come on, Violet. Get that old dress off and take a seat.”

He pats his thigh, and you shake your head, signing with frantic hands.

No. No. Not this. I’m married.

He doesn’t yet know of your husband’s death, it seems, for when you gesture to your wedding ring the Ghoul’s expression sours.

“I had a wife like you, once,” he says. “Soft skin, and real beautiful, like a movie star. And just like you she screwed me over, so pardon me if I don’t take the sanctity of marriage too seriously no more.”

He moves the gun again, his fingers approaching the trigger.

“Now do what I said. If you make me shoot you I’ll be sure to hit you some place it’ll hurt. You want that, sweetheart?”

You glance over your shoulder at a universe of sand, contemplating how far you’d get before the Ghoul put a bullet in your back. Perhaps he’d let you run a bit for idle fun before he shot you down.

It’s as you’re thinking this that a weight falls about your neck and the Ghoul yanks you to him by a lead of rope, half throttling you in his malice.

“Damn it, Vaultie, you ain’t runnin’ out on your payment,” he says, coolly. “I ought to whip the skin off your hide for what you did.”

You’d be nose to nose with the Ghoul, if he still had one. In his irises you see your own face, still human, so unlike his. The beauty of it has taunted this man like water the many thirsting in the Wasteland, a mirage made real, and now owed to him through your slight upon his person.

It scares you, that bitter lust. He might kill you through the thing he means to do.

Stilled by one gloved fist on the lasso, you daren’t struggle as the Ghoul peels your dress up over your head, blinkering you with the fabric. His free hand trails from your quivering throat to both breasts, taking his time with the exploration.

He wants the glove off; you feel it in the labour with which he draws a path between your thighs, near awed by the delicacy of you against him.

You wrestle the dress off your head and glare with a spiteful terror into his scarred carapace.

“How’d a pure little Vault dweller like you change so fast?” asks The Ghoul, almost in admiration. “The Wasteland ain’t barely started with you yet. Maybe you loved that boy so much it drove you crazy. Used to be songs about that, as I recall. Songs about men like me, too, and what we do when we’re crossed by snakes like yourself.”

You sign you deserved what I did to you with expressions and hard gestures he understands.

“I admit I played with you a little,” says the Ghoul. “’Cause when I see a green, pretty girl like you I want to screw you into the dirt like a smoke. Just about the only way you’ll learn how things really are when you’re in a tough spot in the Wasteland.”

He spits on his gloved fingers and bars them between your folds, watching with his head inclined as you stiffen up in pain and disgust at his entry.

“Well,” he says. “Now I know what I ought to drink when I’m runnin’ low on water.”

You think to strike him, but the lasso is braided across your windpipe merely at the flash of your eye.

“Don’t be stupid now, Violet. I know you’re a smart girl. I’d hate for you to prove me wrong.”

He takes his gloves off with his teeth and spits them in the sand. With one bare palm he touches you all over, the rasp of his strange skin like grit against your own. The other hand struggles with the opening of his pants, starving to have them open.

“What’s the matter?” asks the Ghoul, as you look down at his cock, which is as coarse as the rest of him. “Ain’t nothing to be scared of.”

He tests your opening with two fingers, and you convulse with a silent agony at their insertion, and the betrayal.

“Aw, now come on now, sweetheart. It ain’t that bad. Still, I’d use that mouth of yours instead, only I know you’d bite like a mare.”

His skull-like features press close to yours. He smells of smoke, of sweat, as most men do in the Wasteland.

“Now open those legs of yours and sit,” says the Ghoul, “before I pick some other hole.”

When you merely stare in sickened mutiny he forces you up onto his lap. You cringe as he punctures your cunt with his length, twice that of your husband’s, breaking you upon him like the bones of an enemy.

The Ghoul looks at you from under half lids, his lashes as lush and beautiful as black reeds, a surprising feature amidst such ruin.

“Hurts, don’t it?” he asks. “That’s what you get for crossin’ a fella in these parts.”

He ducks down and licks the sweat off your tits up to your neck, smacking his lips with a pop.

“Salt and tequila. Makes me miss the good old days.”

You grip his tattered coat for stability as he jounces you on his cock, thinking of the sinewy flesh under his collar, wondering if your blunt little white teeth could prise out a vein. Wondering if he still bleeds like a man, or gives but dust.

“Come on, now, little lady,” says the Ghoul. “Why ain’t you puttin' in no work? Get to it.”

He slaps your flank, but you don’t move, in too much pain from walking and the girth of him to do much but wince as in the rhythm of his arms you fall and fall upon it.

“Hope you ain’t tired already,” says the Ghoul. “We’re just warmin’ up.”

You mouth ‘ugly’ into his face, emphasising the syllables.

Your attacker leers.

“That may be, but you’re still wet for me, ain’t you? Maybe you ain’t so opposed to fuckin’ a ghoul as you let on.”

Enraged, you try to spit at him, cannot rally enough moisture to defile the smirking cheek.

“Don’t waste your water, Violet,” says the Ghoul. “I sure won’t be loanin’ you any.”

He turns you on his lap, one arm across your breasts, another at your hip, squeezing the meat there with lusting appreciation. You struggle in his hold, your joints like troughs of magma, and the Ghoul laughs against your neck.

“Still want to fight, huh? Ain’t no skin off my back.”

The Ghoul shoves you forward into the earth, and you roll there together like men. With ease he could overpower you, yet he allows you your digs and attempts to inch out from under him for the sake of some bastard fairness.

His heat, his heaviness upon you incurs a panicked need to buck him from your back. You almost succeed, except the Ghoul yanks you to him through the dirt and stones like a prisoner drawn and quartered.

Then, turning you under him, he casts a palm full of sand into your face, watching you choke and fight to rub the grains from your eyes with a vindicated pleasure.

“You know, Violet,” he says, “I may not speak your signs, but I can read some. There was a deaf fella out in Truth or Consequences I used to have dealings with, and I picked up plenty from him. I know you’ve been cussin’ and cursin’ me since the day we met. Makes it all the better knowing I can fuck you.”

Again he fills you with the rot of his existence, growling as he does so, a gleeful torturer at work. You kick at him with your boot heels as you might some mad horse, but he keeps at you, unrelenting, his grinning teeth like the cracked plains of soil after drought.

The friction of the Ghoul within you, rough skin to the soft, builds a cave there in which pain shambles out as something else.

He groans as he feels that change around him, wetness in a land so absent of it. Not once in this attack had he intended your desire, had expected only your abjection on the pumice of his want. His hands go back to your body then, to your breasts, your outstretched neck, and he touches you as a husband might, as he did his own bride, long ago.

You bury your fingers into the burning sand and pray to what God, if any, rules the wastes. By now you know Him as a man, not the weeping idol of crucifixion but one of greed and brutal caprice.

Climax—yours and the Ghoul’s—ride together like two prey animals grown to hunt in symbiosis, his just ahead of yours. He fucks you with his half-hard cock until you cease motion around him, and still does not pull loose.

The way he looks at you no man ever has, not even the rough ilk of Filly.

The Ghoul’s eyes are hellfire and tenderness; he had loved a woman like you, and hasn’t forgotten who he’d been when he’d done so. But he can love like that no longer, and though there’s something nearly gentle in the way he moves to cup your face in his hand you are only appalled by the radiance of his desire.

The fight snaps free of you in a bracing instant, and the Ghoul watches it go. Watches your face in all the motions of defeat.

“Those lips of yours,” he croons. “Even cherry pie ain’t sweeter. Now I’ve got to have me a taste.”

Then he kisses you, softly, at first, after the ripping winds of his fucking, and then with a grunt like some rooting boar he sets at you with the aggression of before, consuming you with tongue and borderless mouth until what thought there was of past romance is chipped from the gravestone of him.

The Ghoul’s hat fell off sometime in the scuffle; as he rises again you see that the weird planes of his skull are beautiful, as the rest of him must once have been.

Like some Martian fiend he appears as he crouches over your quivering nakedness, tugging your gown back on over your head as though dressing a stiff little corn doll.

“Now we’re just about even,” says the Ghoul. “And if you put even a foot wrong I’ll keep on evenin' that score.”

He sets about tying the lasso about your neck to a stake of wood in the dirt. That done, he sits back on the box and looks at you again, dusting his hat off absently with one hand.

You stare through him and up at the bile of deities that is the golden afternoon sky.

“Now you’re gettin’ it, Violet,” says the Ghoul. “The Wasteland ain’t no place for a Vaultie housewife like yourself.”

Later, one of your hands outstretches to pen letters in the sand.

I-A-M-A-W-I-D-O-W.

The Ghoul blinks.

“Well, shit. And there I was thinkin’ I’d wrecked a decent home.”

S-H-O-O-T-M-E.

“After all the fussin’ I’ve been through to get you back you ain’t goin’ nowhere. And don’t try to kill yourself, neither. I sleep with one eye open. You’re worth more to me alive, and I ain’t about to forget it.”

The Ghoul lies down beside you, arms folded under his head, content in the desert’s justice.

Only when the night slaps like a dripping cloth over you both does he speak to you again.

“I ain’t gonna sell you, Violet. You better learn to earn your keep.”

#the ghoul #the ghoul x reader #cooper howard x reader #cooper howard #fallout tv series #fallout fic #darkfic #dead dove do not eat #tw cannibalism #tw noncon #tw rape #tw violence #inspired by Blood Meridian #angst

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duffyyy911 · 1 month ago

Text

𝙰 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝙱𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔: 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 2 - 𝙰 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚗

Summary: The detective makes quick work of following up on the shimmer lead. After an encounter with an autoshop chem dealer, the detective makes their way back to their boss. As they meet up and relay the information, they begin to realize that they have a hard time actually connecting with their employer.

Content Warnings: Mild violence. Mentions of tobacco and alcohol. Mentions of (fictional) hard drugs.

Word Count: 9.2k

Author's Notes: Chapter two woo!!!! I loved writing this chapter, although it does feel a lot slower paced than my initial one. Which might be a good or bad sign? I felt like there needed to be more dialogue, especially cause the next chapter may be a bit shorter on it. Ty for reading!!!!

Proofread by: @madschiavelique @6selkie

Masterlist: Here

The levels up near the pump stations were deafening. The loud cranking and droning of engines churning away to push gargantuan fan blades spinning within the massive vents of the fissures were almost deafening. The rich, sickly stench of diesel and lurid carbon oxides funneling through exhaust ports and feeding into the air turned your stomach ill. It dirtied your lungs and stung your nose and eyes, a barrage of putrid senses hitting you all at once. The Promenade level of the underground was usually one of the more breathable areas, but over here? You practically had to wear a hazmat suit if you would linger for more than an hour. You had always heard stories of pump workers dying young. How years of prolonged exposure would develop cancers in their lungs, redness in their nose, and deep black marks under their eyes. You had walked past too many funerals of young families mourning fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives, all taken by the treachery of such labor. You always told yourself it was better for just a handful of unlucky few to die from diesel exposure than entire cultures in the sump being wiped out due to the Gray. It had to be this way, it was just how life underground struggled. Piltover used to house the pump stations above ground, in large warehouse buildings with real regulations and standards. Genuine pay and affordable insurance. But the council had shut them down years ago, declaring that they were too much of a drain on the city’s economy. How they barely kept afloat with such a low employee count, and how all it did was invite the unwanteds of the underground up into their glorious city to spread some vague idea of crime and injustice. And so the pump stations were moved underground, far away from the prying gaze of a council of billionaires who thought themselves kings. You knew it was all an excuse, however. It was just a way to keep the ugly things away from the eyes of the citizens of Piltover. Nobody could afford to have sympathy, not down here or up top.

You rounded the corner to Leftpoint Street. It was more like a backstreet than an actual extension to any of the main gangways in the fissures. You had climbed a few levels of the juttings in the earth, crossing tottering rope bridges and ramshackle overpasses that bridged the gap of the left fissure. The iron shack buildings of the underground reached up and across the ravine, clinging onto the edge of the rock like a bundle of baby raccoons would leech onto their mother's back. It was the only way to expand down here. If you couldn’t keep building out, you just built up. And Zaun never stopped building up. The hope above the city drove people to keep climbing, that maybe one day they’d be able to leave the hell they were born in.

You ambled past a straight and narrow lane of aggregate sandcrete huts sandwiched together shoulder to shoulder in the narrow offshoot of the fissure. They were a linked chain of the most basic of structures, squarish with undetailed walls and large open passageways that were modified by each owner of the divisions. You passed by a cheap junkshop with its large gated door open to the stuffy draft, airing out wheelbarrows and trolleys full of interesting but mostly useless parts stripped from the down-and-out machines in the sump. Driveshafts, brass piping, and strips of aluminum plating jutted out from rusted barrels, advertising a sense of uselessness that the store brought.

You looked back behind you, checking if Lyric was still trailing you. He skipped along behind you, absentmindedly humming one of the sailing tunes he learned from listening to you. He’d stop once in a while to pull the lid off a trashcan and root around the first layer of garbage in a childish hope he’d catch a good find before returning the lid and catching up to you. He was a good kid, really, just one that was molded for this kind of living. He always held a youthful hope of optimism that collided with the jaded realization of his destitute life. Yet he pushed ever on, following after you like he always did. Like you knew what you were doing or where the hell you even were headed. You looked back to the lane in front of you, watching your step carefully as you put one boot in front of the other as you kept your coat close to you and your hands glued into your pockets.

You look past the row of junk and down the aisle of the storefronts, spotting the barred windowed front of the liquor store you had mentioned to Lest. One of the more sketchier places, but you couldn’t blame them for keeping it safe in such a lawless state. And that meant before it was the garage to the Motorruners. You passed by a shining neon sign hanging to the cinder blocks by a closed metal garage door. You paused before it to read the words ‘Chopshop’ spelled out in cursive. You pause, staring at the neon absentmindedly as you struggled against the growing ill feeling in your stomach. The stench of the diesel was beginning to fight with your already existing hangover for who could make your brain hurt more, and you weren’t sure who was winning. Your mind lingered for a moment, drifting to a better thought and a distraction. The savory smell of sea salt, a low hush of water trailing up to the sands of a beach before being ripped back by the tide. The honking of seagulls trailing over your head, looking for a meal. You weren’t sure if you were just wishing you were somewhere else, or that the fumes were starting to make you hallucinate. But you just stared in silence at the glow of the neon, which was beginning to burn its image into your retinas. You were snapped out of the funk by the slapping of Lyric’s hobbled shoes against the pavement as he finally caught up with you after a short stint of digging through the junk barrels of the shop you passed before.

“What are you thinking about?” He asked, looking up to you with wide eyes and a never fading subtle smile. He subconsciously tried to stick his hands in his pockets to mimic your posture, but he rapidly blinked and looked down as he remembered that his coat had no pockets anymore.

“Have you ever seen a seagull, Lyric?” You murmured out as your eyes stayed glued to the neon.

“No.” Lyric chirped back, returning his attention back to you standing above him. “Is it an animal?”

“Right.” You sighed. You forgot that not everyone in Zaun knows what certain things are above ground. Even in the slums on the surface, not many people would know what a Seagull was. They had been overly poached years ago and now refused to return to the harborside. Sometimes you could see them circle above the ocean in the distance beyond the river, even going off towards Piltover to settle. But never on your side. Never even getting close. “They’re a bird.” You exhaled heavily, then finally peeled your eyes from the neon and down to Lyric. “White with a little yellow beak and gray wings. They never shut up and like to steal your food.” You give Lyric an uneasy but cheeky smile.

“You’re going to tell me I’m like a seagull, aren’t you?” Lyric frowned with a pout.

“Maybe.” You shrugged, returning to the neon as the outline of its letters stuck to your sight no matter where you turned your eyes. “Maybe-” You paused. “Have you ever been to sea, Lyric?”

“Like on a boat? No, not really.” Lyric contemplated the question, then perked up as he remembered something. “I once built a raft! But it sank before it made it past the pipes.” His expression faded to disappointment with a stir in his eyes. He was referring to the massive drainage pipes that fed out to the river in the harbor. It was best that it sank, because it would have been about a twenty foot drop into the icy river waters for him.

“Not a boat, Lyric.” You chuckled. “A ship. You call it a ship.”

“What’s the difference? Boat, ship. It all floats.”

“A boat is something you just ride in. Like a dingy or your raft. A ship? A ship is a beautiful thing. You can only steer her, not command her. No paddling or kicking can move her. You’re the one being taken for the ride, not the other way around.”

“Why’s a ship gotta be a her? Why can’t the ship be a boy?”

“I dunno.” You shrugged. “The guy who invented ships was a freak, I guess.”

“Who invented the ship?”

“Hell if I know.” You laughed. “John Ship.”

“John Ship is a bad name.” Lyric muttered as he joined your intent staring into the shine of the neon.

“Listen, kid.” You turned away from the sign for a final time. You knelt down, putting your hand around on Lyric’s shoulder as his eyes drifted from looking up to the wall to meet yours. “I know I said you could help, but-” You freeze on your sentence. You watched the twinkle in his eye, the way he would look at you with wonder and aspiration with a smile on his lips. You didn’t want to stomp on the kid’s dreams, you really didn’t. But this wasn’t his life, it was yours. And it would be wrong for you to let him follow you like he did. “I need you to keep watch on the corner.” You pointed over his shoulder and down to the end of the street.

“What? I thought I was coming with you.”

“This is gang territory, kid.” You sighed. “I need someone to make sure I’m not about to be snuck up on, and that’s you.”

“Okay.” Lyric nodded. You weren’t sure if he accepted the job in earnest or if he knew you were making him stick this one out.

“But if anything happens, you run. Okay?” You stick a finger into his collarbone sternly. The last thing you needed was for him to dive in after you if things went south. “You run and you don’t look back. Go find someone to tell them what happened, but you don’t get caught.”

“Got it, boss.” Lyric nodded, giving you a quick salute as if you were his commanding officer. You turned him about and away from you, giving him a gentle push as he began walking down the street to the corner.

You slowly rose to your feet as you watched him shrink away in the distance, far enough to where he couldn’t hear you. You turned back to the wall, drawing your attention to the closed metal garage door next to the neon sign. You stuck your hand back in your pocket and pulled out the cigarette butt you had swiped. “Wickrams” You muttered under your breath, then returned it to your pocket. You rapped your knuckles against the thin metal of the door, shaking its loose segments as it wiggled. You could hear the sound of movement from beyond the wall, the scooting of a chair and the shuffling of loose fitting shoes against the floor. The garage door lifted up with a shrill shrug, rising far enough up and just above your head. You came face to face with the stranger on the other side. He had to be in his early twenties, young but not small. He was rather tall, actually, nearing six feet in height. He was lean, boney more like it, like a lanky twig as his thin arms clung to the chain hoists by the wall on the other side. He wore a blue jumpsuit, void of marking or insignia but with a few pockets on the chest. His blue eyes stared at you in confusion from behind a messy chin-length dirty blonde hair and thick lensed square framed glasses.

“Who the hell are you?” He murmured as he clung to the chains, holding the door open.

“The person who’s here to collect the kickup.” You fibbed. It was the first thing you could think of besides the truth, he would have just shut the door if you told him you were an investigator.

“To who?”

“To Silco.” You warned him, keeping a blank and empty expression on your face but furrowed brows to show you weren’t the type for patience. You didn’t even know if the chopshop doled out protection money to the barrons, but it was the best lie you could come up with and you were prepared to roll with whatever answer he gave.

“Silco’s dead, buddy.” A twist overcame his face. You had to talk faster.

“His death…” You paused, staring into the space in front of you. “Was highly overexaggerated. He wants his money, and you’re all late on it.”

“I mean-” The man paused, mulling it over. He might actually believe you, there was a nervous twitch in his eye as he thought. “Look, Daz isn’t here, can you come back later for it?”

“Later?” You scoffed. “No, you’re going to give me the money right fucking now. Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know, man!” He almost squealed, gritting his teeth like a Capuchin monkey. You were starting to get to him, the benefits of your witt for bullshitting. “Fine. Just come in, I can’t keep this open all day.”

You stepped under the garage door, bending your head down as you passed under. The man slowly released his grip on the chain, letting the door rattle as it sank back down to the ground. The inside of the workshop was somewhere between a total mess and a scene like a tornado had just passed through. Dim blue safelights were strung up around the top corners of the square workshop in linked patterns, providing a low but visible light to the room. You paced about a bit, looking at the state of the shop. A disassembled engine lay scattered by the left wall, its pieces sitting across the floor. Scraped together gang insignia crafter out of sheet metal and junk scrap hung from the barren walls, like art pieces in a gallery. Below one of the larger ones, a huge object sat covered in a heavy tarp. In the center of the room was a tall square wood table, on it a multitude of things. A dusty motherboard laying next to a few hand tools, a stack of wide papers with sketches of blueprints. A steam gauge lay across the front of the table, half taken apart. A spool of metal chicken wire sat next to some cut up pieces of copper piping. The back door to the shop had a foggy window, looking out into a dark hallway that could have led anywhere. Across from the door, tucked into the corner of the room, a large console computing machine buzzed away with blinking lights and unflipped switches. Metal tool cabinets lined the right side of the wall next to a few thinner worktables.

“Why is it so dark in here?” You asked as you looked about.

“Gotta keep it dark, man. Too much light is bad for your eyes down here, you know that.” The man ambled from the chains and leaned against one of the worktables near the cabinets. “So…” He trailed nervously. “How much is it this time?”

“How much?” You hummed as you looked about. “Because of recent events, we’re going to go easy on all of you for the time being. Four hundred, I’d say.”

“Four hundred?” The man spluttered. “You call that easy?”

You turned back to the man, flaring your eyes in a menacing manner. “Do I need to remind you who exactly you’re paying for protection from?” You approached him with a heavy step, getting in his boney face.

“No!” He put his hands up. “No, man. Here.” He reached into the inside of his jumpsuit and brought out a wad of bills. He counted out four hundred, then passed it to you.

You took the money and slipped it under your jacket's lapel with the rest, not bothering to count it either. “Give me a cigarette.” You commanded him.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“Either I smoke a cigarette, or I smoke you.” You warned him. “Give. Me. A cig.”

The man sighed, then reached back into his jumpsuit and took out a packet of cigarettes. The box was red and white, labeled with the brand Wickrams. You found your mark. He took out one of the cigarettes, then passed it to you.

“Where’s Aquil?” You hummed, putting the cigarette in your mouth. The man paused, a pale flushing over his face as you motioned for him to give you a lighter.

“I’m Aquil.” He stated steadily, and reached back into his jumpsuit for a third and final time. As he did, you noticed the state of his wrist. Or the lack therefore of. It was a bit crooked, and darker in tone, but it didn’t look broken from the way he was passing you things. He passed you a thin flip lighter and you took a moment to light your cigarette, then you pocketed it.

“That’s a lie.” You chuckled snarkily. “I was told Aquil had a bum hand. Yours looks fine.”

“It got better.” Aquil stated with a low, uneasy hum, trying to break eyesight with you. He had an unsteady shake in his legs, a jitter on his fingers. Either he really believed you were one of Silco’s lackies. Or he knew you were there for him.

“Better?” You gave him a deep, sick smile. Like you were a kid playing with a bug and you were about to pull off all his limbs one by one. “Because of that shimmer you stole last night?”

“I-” He paused, looking around. His hand gripped the lip of the worktable with an incredible tenseness. His reddened eyes snapped to you, then the door, then back to you. Then, he took off. He was going straight for the door, and you didn’t waste time reaching forward and ripping him back by the scruff of his jumpsuit. You pulled him back and threw him to the sleek concrete floor in one motion. He fell before the table at the center of the room, ventilating with a wild tempo.

“What did you do with the rest? Or did you take all of it? You fuckin’ junkie.” You towered above Aquil as he scrambled on the floor. He sat up and reached his good hand up to the loose pieces of pipe next to the blueprints. You grabbed his hand at the wrist and twisted it, flipping him over and onto his stomach as you pressed it into his back. “Do you want two bummed wrists?” You threatened him.

“Come on, man!” Aquil screamed in pain breathily. “I knew you were an enforcer, I knew it!” He wriggled under your grip in a vain attempt to escape.

“Puh-lease.” You scoffed. “Enforcers don’t knock first, dumbass.” You reached up to the table before you, taking the spool of wire and unraveling some. You pinned both his hands behind his back, then twisted the stiff wire around them. It wasn’t great, but it would work for the time being, he seemed all too weak to actually do anything you couldn’t see coming. You sat him up, leaning him against the leg of the table as you pressed your boot into the flesh of his right thigh.

“You already took my money, what else do you want, man? That’s enough to cover it twice!” Aquil begged with labored breath, his glasses slowly slinking down his face before falling against the concrete with a tap. How the hell was this kid part of a gang, you asked yourself? He looked like he could barely run for more than a minute, half starved and frail.

“I want to know why.” You barked. “I get it. Easy mark, right?” You pressed your foot harder against Aquil’s leg, causing him to scream out in pain again. He really was as frail as he looked, you were expecting a way harder time with this.

“I didn’t even do it, man! I was just there, they made me tell them where to get some easy chems that weren’t being tracked. I was coerced, you have to believe me.”

“Coerced people don’t have the liberty to smoke in the middle of a crime.” You took your cigarette from your mouth and gave it a flick, watching the ash drift to the floor. “You were an accomplice. And that means there were others. Who.”

“I don’t know their names, they work for somebody else. I don’t know who that is either, please.”

“Okay.” You relent. Ruffing a dumb kid up was one thing, he deserved it for the stunt he pulled. But you weren’t about to torture the poor sod. You had limits, and they were about to be reached. “Better question is why.”

“The blueprints.” Aquil panted out, squeezing his eyes shut from the pain of your foot on his leg. “On the table, up there.” He scooted up further against the leg of the table, scooting it across the floor by an inch.

You took one of the pages from the pile, opening it up and bringing before the blue wall lights behind you. The designs were sketchy, and the handwriting was absolutely atrocious, but the intent was clear. It was a drawing of some kind of tank, wide and bulky. Kind of like a moonshine still. The plans detailed what was needed and how to assemble it, though you couldn’t read the bad handwriting as to what the pieces were. You went to put back the page, but noticed a strange object had been hiding behind the stack, one that you didn’t see when walking into the room. It was a vial, cylindrical in form and ended with two twist locks. The liquid in it was fizzy and yellow-ish green, glowing dimly in the low light. You picked it up, inspecting it carefully. You had no clue what it was, but you knew it was a chem of sorts. Was this what the machine was for? A refiner, maybe. To create something new.

“What’s this, then?” You showed Aquil the vial, then pocketed it. You had to hang onto your only piece of evidence.

“Don’t touch that man, it’s dangerous.” Aquil pleaded, still struggling beneath your boot.

“Why? Is this why you took the shimmer? Your little gang trying to cut into the chem market?” You took the cigarette out of your mouth and stamped it out on the ground.

“Not us man, I swear!” Aquil sucked his teeth as you lifted your boot off his leg, probably expecting a kick to the mouth that never came. “It’s for some kind of project. I wasn’t told about it, just how to build a part of it.” He stammered out.

“Why?” You asked firmly.

“I don’t know! Just someone working for one of the barrons, I think! Two guys came to me with the plans. One of them came with me to take the shimmer, he’s the one who broke in, not me! I’m telling you!”

“Is that what’s under the tarp, then?” You nodded to the covered object. “Are you bringing this… Refiner to them?”

“Yeah, but it’s just a piece of the whole operation. I can’t say for certain, but I think they’re having other shops make the rest. The way the prints are, it looks like it connects to something way bigger.”

“Where are you taking it?”

“Some old factory in the sump, it used to make lightbulbs or something. I don’t know, man!” Aquil pleaded again. Your showmanship earlier had really rattled the kid, and you were starting to feel bad now. But you couldn’t let up, not yet. You needed to see where all of this was going. “The meeting is tonight, I gotta be there at midnight.”

“I know the place.” You fibbed. “You wanna know what you’re going to do now, Aquil?” You squatted before him.

“What?” He meeped out.

You grabbed his face, squeezing his cheeks together until his lips came to a pucker. His frayed blue eyes looked at you beyond the muscle bulging up in his cheeks as you squeezed his face. “You’re going to continue doing what you were told to. And if you ever get the idea to tell anybody that I was here, or I know what’s going on. Or you get the dumb idea not to show up at the right time, or not show up at all? I’ll know. And I’ll be back.”

“Okay..” Aquil managed to say with a muffle, nodding his head slowly against the firmness of your hand.

“Atta boy.” You let his face go, giving him a congratulatory pat on his shoulder. “I’m going to leave you like this, you can get out on your own.” You walked back to the garage door. You considered taking one of the pages of prints, but you needed him to finish whatever he was working on. You needed to see where this was going. But more importantly, you needed to report back. You were starting to figure that this thing was far bigger than your employer's intention, but even if she didn’t want you following the trail, you’d still go on your own terms.

“What? No, man! Untie me!” Aquil called out to you as you began to tug the chains of the garage. The metal door lifted and raised up with a bit of force, returning the outside light back to the garage.

“Nah.” You laughed, then stepped out and let the chains go. The garage door fell to the ground with a heavy crash, shaking from the force. You rubbed your eyes with a heavy press against the back of your hands, adjusting to the shift in light as you returned to the land of the living. Well, near living. The underground was like a zombie, never decaying but not exactly breathing. You looked back up the street and saw Lyric standing on the corner, looking back and forth as a few people walked past him. You stuck your two index fingers in your mouth and gave a sharp whistle. You waved to Lyric as he spun about, and he took off down the road after you.

“Did you get him?” Lyric asked with a shortness in his breath, coming to a sliding stop before you. A redness flushed his face from the run, but the bright spark in his eyes never faded no matter what he did. To Lyric, your work was all about catching the bad guy and putting things right. Like the plot to a comic book or a radio opera. But the truth of it was that a lot of the time, it was a story about desperate people trying to get by and just wronging others in the way without malice. If this mystery was just about some junkie stealing shimmer to help his arm, it would have ended there. The money Aquil made was sufficing enough to pay back for the damage. But it wasn’t that, there was far more to this that not even the perpetrator of the crime knew. And you had a bad habit for jumping headfirst down rabbit holes that you didn’t belong crawling down.

“Yeah, kid. I got him.” You gave him an uneasy laugh. “These shops are so shoddy that I wonder how much they really pay in rent, it’s a mess in there.” Shit. The rent. You had forgotten all about it after being sucked into this mystery. Your landlord had given you a week, but you knew far too well it was more like a few days. “Come here, kid.” You asked Lyric, and he stepped forward close to you. “You know Mrs. Lowski, my landlord? She lives by the harbor, the house by that playground you like going to.”

“Yeah.” Lyric hummed in thought. “The lady with the missing teeth!”

“That’s rude, Lyric. Don’t say that in front of her.” You sighed. You reached under the lapel of your jacket and took out the envelope of money Lest had paid you. You took the envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of Lyric’s faded jeans, then patted it. “Take this to her, tell her that it’s for the next two month’s rent and that I’m sorry for being late.”

“Got it, boss!” Lyric almost jumped in excitement. His first real job that wasn’t running mail. If you were him, you’d probably be psyched too. “Then what?”

“Then meet me at the Grande Trevale back here on the Promenade level. You know, the big hotel that kind of looks like a crooked finger?”

“Yeah, I know! Old lady’s house, then the hotel. I’ll be back!” Lyric took off without warning, skipping down the street.

“Don’t call her that, Lyric!” You called out to him. “And bring my change back, I’ll know if you took any!” You added, but you weren’t sure if he even heard at the rate he bounded down the road.

The Grande Trevale was a monolith of a hotel that once reached high into the sky, a height that almost matched the peaks of Piltover. It was once a bustling and busy hotel for passerby’s travelling to the other side of the river, back in an age where people even dared to cross it. But in recent decades, it had gone into disrepair. Eventually, a wealthy chem barron by the name of Chross had a large quantity of mining charges rigged to the cavern ceiling below where the hotel stood. In one very complex and very loud string of plans and actions, the entirety of the abandoned hotel had been lowered, slowly but surely, down into the Promenade level of the underground. Once abandoned, the hotel was returned to its luxury by the chem barron and became a staple as one of the more lavish places in Zaun. It stood as tall as it ever had despite the drop, its top floor suites reaching so high that they stayed sticking out from the wide open sinkhole that had been created, and watched ever on over the slums of the uptop like a pretentious guard tower. Because of the rift in the earth, the hotel and its surrounding district had fresh access to the sunlight and rain, making it a prime spot for other money laundering operations for the chem barrons. Despite all this, it still retained an air of safety, collecting in the few that could afford the steep price of living in the district.

Your headache had finally subsided after you walked into the grandiose lobby of the Grande Trevale. You weren’t sure if it was the fresher air or your body was finally accepting that you hadn’t drank any water since yesterday. It had been five hours since you left to begin your investigation, and the midday sun had finally begun to set from over its peak above the rift in the earth and cast a blanket of calming bright rays to illuminate the district. Your boots trudged against the sleek criss cross tiles of the lobby, your head hanging low below the tall heights of the ceiling which hung crystal chandeliers down from thin chains. The lobby was a mix of bright whites and deep blacks, checkerboarded like a game of chess. You ambled past a wide and deep conversation pit sticking out front the side of the grand hall’s pathway, filled with an array of expensive leather sofas and antique low tables before a bougie fireplace that looked like it had never been lit once in the hotel’s history. The place was completely empty save for the few employees you saw wandering about. It was odd, like everyone just decided to stay home today. Your eyes glanced at the lobby desk to your right, a handful of its employees huddled around it as they listened to the intense accounting of a sports match that was being read off by the announcer. You shrugged as you continued walking through the hall, if they weren’t going to stop you and ask you what you were doing, you weren’t about to approach them either. The end of the tall lobby split off into a t-junction. One slender hall to your left leading to what looked like the inside of a lavishly decorated dining room, the right leading to a restaurant bar and another lounge room. You took the right, scraping the bottom of your dirty boots on the floor when the slick tile turned to carpet. You didn’t do well with rich people, or rich places. They usually demeaned you, so you made sure to demean them right back.

The bar lounge was narrow, pressed into the building as it looked out onto a large courtyard behind broad clear windows, freshly cleaned you reckoned by the lack of smudges. You spy a tender stocking up bottles of expensive liquor on shelves on the wall. He wore a black vest over a white buttoned shirt as he worked behind a curved wood bar pressed close to the wall. You approached the bar, pulling back a swivel stool tucked under its lip as you leaned in on the smooth varnish.

“Hey.” You called to the man, who was working in a hurry like he was going to be shot if he hadn’t put up all the bottles in under ten minutes. Knowing the owners of the hotel, he might just be. “Over here.” You called out again when he didn’t turn. He paused, then sighed, and put the bottles back into the crates he was pulling them out of at his feet on the green carpet.

“Do you need something?” He asked in an unamused tone. It was obvious he could tell you didn’t belong here, you didn’t exactly look like the type who could afford to rent a room in a nice place like this.

“Yeah, actually. I’m looking for someone.” You started off. “Have you seen a woman, about yay high with ears about yay higher.” You put up your hand flat and raised it far over your head to mimic the pure size of your employer's feline ears. “White like a blotchy dove, wears clothes that look like they’re from the turn of the century. Has a kind of ‘you’re an idiot’ look on her face?”

“Listen, buddy.” The bartender groaned. “There has only been one person to check in this entire week. So yeah, she’s out in the courtyard.” He turned about to go back to his work.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I want something to drink?”

“Can you afford it?” He snickered under his breath.

“Why yes, I can.” You boasted.

“Fine.” He huffed as he was already bending down to reach for the bottles. He straightened back up, then reluctantly came back to the bar. “What can I get you?” He asked sarcastically.

“Whatever’s cheapest.” You shrugged, smirking.

“Of course.” The tender rolled his eyes, then reached under the bar sill and pulled out a tall wide topped glass. He filled it from one of the shining metal beer taps, then placed it before you as he put a coaster under it. “Try not to spill it on yourself.” He gave you a fake smile. “And that’ll be-”

“Put it on her tab.” You chuckled, then took the glass of beer and walked off towards a set of tall open double doors that lead out to the sunny courtyard.

The courtyard itself was gorgeous. Floored with a scene of crossing orange and red brick patterns, walled with the same tannish hue of the rest of the hotel. At the base of the surrounding wall, running around the entire perimeter, are beds of flowers and other fauna. White dogwood flowers, pinkish purple carpe myrtles, raspberry bushes and red barberis. At the center of the courtyard is a tall trickling fountain, a stack of man made rocks that would filter clear water down and trickle back into the wide pool filled with lilies and other water plants. To the right, beyond the fountain in the corner of the courtyard, a sun faded pergola made from twisted stiff wicker. It stood over a batch of metal chain linked porch tables with uncomfortable looking chairs, shaded from the harsh evening sun. You look up to the sky above you, feeling its warmth. You almost forgot that you were still underground, the way the rays fell down through the rift in the sky and to the courtyard and lit it up in broad daylight. You take a deep breath in, closing your eyes and holding it. You exhale slowly, then look back to the chairs beneath the pergola. You saw her sitting there, Lest. She hadn’t taken one of her big coats, the weather wasn’t right for it. Though she kept her headscarf on, which you found odd. A bit warm, but you couldn’t blame a woman for keeping a motif. You slowly walked up as she faced away from you, attentively keeping to a book held between her fingers in her right hand.

You raise your fingers to the back of her head, mimicking a gun. “Bang.” You mutter, letting your thumb fall. She did not turn from her book, still reading on in silence. “If I was a bad guy, you’d be dead.” You walked around the table and took a seat across from her, placing your drink down on the metal.

“Would I?” She hummed, her eyes reading back and forth down to the book in her lap. “You walk with such a heavy step, a deaf mouse could hear you enter a pantry.”

“Har.” You feign a laugh, looking at your drink, then at some things you just noticed were on the table as well. A small square polaroid camera fitted with a neck strap. Next to the camera was her box of tarot cards you had seen before on her coffee table, reflecting some of the sunlight with a sheen. A vanilla folder, the contents of which you wonder at. And finally a tall glass of some fizzy looking clear liquid which Lest would occasionally pick up and take a sip from before putting it back in its place. “Hello? Earth to you.” You looked at her as she read on, moving a bit in her peripheral to get her to notice. She sighed, then lowered the book and looked at you with an unamused stiffness in her expression.

“You’re drinking already?” She asked calmly, nodding to the beer you had just placed down. “It’s past noon.”

“Past noon’s the best time.” You gave her a fake smile. “Besides, it’s hot out down here without any wind. Just the sun on you, I can’t stand it.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re one to talk.” You looked at her own drink as she picked it up to take another sip.

“It’s tonic water.” She brought her attention back to her book in her hand, continuing reading pensively. “It’s good for you.”

“How?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “Malaria or something.”

“Tonic water gives you malaria?!” You leaned in with a fake look of concern and all seriousness in your voice.

Her eyes flicked at you unamusedly from over the top of her book and she gave a sigh at your bad humor. You weren’t sure if she was pretending not to find it funny, or if she found your wit exhausting. In fact she was kind of acting like she didn’t want you there at all, though she was the one paying you for the job.

“I see you brought your cards.” You looked at the box of tarots, your hand reaching out to pull them closer as you thought about opening it. Better not, you weren’t really jazzed about being told off for it. “You wanna read my future, or something?”

“I don’t need to.” She licked her finger, then turned a page over at the corner. “I already know what the future has in store for you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“More of what you’re drinking. More snooping. And more sitting at home wondering where your life went wrong that you had to start doing this kind of work.”

“You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?” You scoff, scooting your chair in. “What’s your deal? Why are you talking to me like this?”

“Sorry.” Lest let up, peering at you from over the top of her book again. She did have a regretful look in her eye, a bit of a frown like she only just queued into the conversation fully. “I just had to send out a lot of letters to clients about rescheduling. A lot of them were not happy when they wrote back. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“It’s alright.” You murmured in thought. You took a deep gulp of your drink and placed it back down on the table, then looked at the book in her hand. “What are you reading?” You asked innocently. The cover was black without a picture. Just the words ‘Red China Pig.’ in a bright scarlet for the title. You remember it vaguely, it was a hit classic written a few years ago about a Zaunite who worked hard enough to accumulate some wealth and make it into Piltover instead of funneling their career straight into the arms of the chem barrons. You hadn’t read it fully, but it was an interesting read.

“Oh, just some drivel.” Lest hummed as she turned another page. “A book about some nobody who did nothing but look up with resentment their whole life. And when they got to the top, all they could do was look down in disgust.”

“What? Like there’s some kind of scaling in life?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well. Where do we rank?”

“Somewhere in the middle.” Lest shrugged, then dogeared the page and placed the book down on the table. Clearly you were getting somewhere with this kind of conversation.

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, we both make some kind of good money in the private sector. You run your business, I do what I do. It’s a living.”

“I thought my life went so wrong I had to start doing this?” You joke with a stupid smirk, recounting what she told you. There was a brief silence between the two of you, like both of you were too busy thinking to actually continue the conversation. Lest didn’t even go back to her book, the two of you just looked at each other for a while. Not like a game, but a mutual understanding. What either of you were understanding exactly, was beyond you.

“Hey, I’ve got to ask.” Lest finally spoke up, parting her lips with a slight rock in her flimsy chair.

“Shoot.”

“What’s the deal with the kid? The one that followed you. What’s his story?”

“Lyric?” You chuckled. “Ah, he’s harmless. He’s the same as most kids from the fissures. Junkie parents, no school, too much time.” Your smile faded as you thought about it. You did wish more for the kid, you really did. But you had to put one foot in front of you first before taking a step, and you couldn’t do much for him that he couldn’t already do for himself. You made sure he was as independent as he could be, and that he stayed away from home as much as he could.

“Here I thought you were the only child type.” Lest spoke up, catching the worry in your eye. You snap out of your thoughts, looking back at her sitting across from you.

“What?” You responded a bit breathily. “No, Lyric is not my brother. I’m an only child. I mean- As far as I know.” You had been told stories by your parents' old friends who stuck around in the city that your dad was a bit of a casanova back in his day, so you could have siblings somewhere out there. None of which you’d care to meet if they did exist. “What about you?”

“Five brothers, six sisters. Four of which I’ve never met, left home before I was even born. Big family, tiny house. It’s how it usually goes.” Lest recounted with a simper. “They all scattered a while ago, I never kept tabs on where they all ended up. Probably the same for me with them.”

“Damn.” You chuckled, leaning in against the table and folding your hand over the other in a closed fist. “Your parents took ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to heart, huh?”

“Like cells in mitosis.” Lest tittered back softly, then took a sip from her drink. She reached down into a patterned back at the foot of her chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, taking a short time in silence to take one out and light it with her iconic scratch lighter. “You want one?” She offered, breathing out the wisps of the first puff. You nodded and she tossed you the pack and lighter from across the table.

“You really like chain smoking, huh?” You commented as you lit yours and passed both back.

“Not usually, but odd times call for odd habits.” Lest shrugged. Another stent of silence fell between you two. It was like a game of red light green light and neither of you knew who was calling the colors. Both of you just smoked your cigarettes, sitting across from each other as the company of your thoughts returned. “So?” Lest spoke up to break the ice again.

“So what?”

“So? What’d you find?”

“Oh.” You blinked. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to get any repeat business from that guy.”

“Goddamnit, detective.” Lest let out a strained sighed, leaning her forehead into the corner of her hand as she rested her elbow against the surface of the table.

“Look.” You took another deep gulp of your drink. “This is starting to get way bigger than either of us really thought. I went to the garage, and it turns out that Aquil guy was accompanied by two other guys when they broke into your house. They stole your shimmer for some kind of…” You paused, trying to articulate what you could remember. “I don’t know. It’s this weird refinery machine. I think it made this, do you know what it is?” You took the vial of the weird yellow liquid out of your coat pocket and handed it across the table.

Lest took it, pinching the ends between her finger and thumb as she brought it up closer to the light peaking through the wicker of the pergola. “It’s Jitter. I think.” She muttered, squinting at the bubbles fizzing up in the liquid.

“The hell is Jitter?”

“It’s a chem.”

“Duh. What does it do?”

“It’s extremely potent. Has some kind of odd regenerative effect that can alter wounds or injuries, something to that effect. The downside is that it also erodes your brain.”

“Of course it does.” You slump down to the back of your chair in defeat. If your hunch was correct, this could be the beginning of some kind of large production of this chem. Which would be bad for the streets, and even more enabling to the barrons. This was beyond the scope of your job description. You weren’t about to fight chem gangs, you had told her that clearly. But you also wanted to see this through, at her request or your own. “How does it affect the brain?” You dared to ask.

“It damages the cerebral cortex, the hippocampus, and the parietal lobe. Basically, it makes you confused, scared, and violent. Insane.” Lest passed the vial back over to you reluctantly. She was probably unsure of what you’d do with the liquid, but the plan at the top of your mind was to chuck it into the nearest incinerator. Not yet, though. You might need it as a form of proof. If you were to follow the case, then the ending of it would mean you’d need to be able to show the enforcers something that could convince them to take action. You didn’t like them at all, not one bit. But they were the only force that could take on such an intricate drug trafficking operation.

“How do you know all of this?” You prodded. “About the brain, not drugs.”

“Reading, I guess.” Lest shrugged, flicking her eyes to the closed book still on the table.

“Right.” And here the silence returned once more. It always comes back, it seemed. Like a wall kept cropping up between the two of you and one of you had to be the one to work to tear it down. “So do you want me to keep at it? I’ve got another lead, somewhere in the sump tonight.”

“I think so.” Lest thought it over. “Not for my sake, the shimmer really only put a dent in my work. But I know somebody who might be interested in anything you come up with. It’s entirely up to you.”

“I think I’ll see this through.” You quietly nod in thought. You had to, your curiosity was demanding you worm your dumb ass down that rabbit hole and by God you were going to. “Hey, I was wondering.” You glanced back at Lest across from the table, who was beginning to pick her book up and return to her marked page.

“Shoot.”

You paused, hesitating to ask the question, but finally seeing it through. “Do you want to get some dinner sometime?”

“What? Like a date?” She smiled as she peeled her eyes back away from the page. A smile, not in a nice way but one that almost demeaned you. You didn’t like it, you felt an embarrassment inside of you like you were an idiot to even bring it up. What a stupid question. Of course not.

“If you wanna call it that.” You shrugged, stiffening up in your back as you tried not to show the fact that you regretted asking at all.

“You’re not really my type, detective.” She glanced back to the words of her book, her eyes scanning the page.

“I wasn’t aware I had to be a type of anything.”

“We’re all types of something.”

“How do you figure?”

“Rich, poor. Bold, temperamental. Smart, dumb. Someone’s gotta be something.” She hummed without looking your way.

“What if I follow this lead?” You wanted to crush your own fingers with your glass of beer for even trying to bargain about it. But your smart mouth just kept talking, like it was a game. You were just embarrassing yourself, and you didn’t even know how to stop.

“Then you’d just be a fool, detective. My fool.”

“Is that a genuine offer?” You leaned in against the table.

Lest looked up from her book again, barely containing a roll of her amber eyes. “Just follow the lead. I’ll think about it.”

You leaned back, letting out a silent breath you didn’t even know you had been holding. What kind of game were you even playing? The hell came over you? You didn’t even think about saying those things, they just flew out of your smart mouth. You were lucky enough not to be laughed at. Yet she said she’d consider it. And you supposed that was enough to not make you daydream about drowning yourself for such a stupid stunt.

“Hey, you can’t be back here!” You heard the bartender call out through the open doors across the courtyard. You already knew who he was talking to, and the receiver was now bounding across the yard, taking a moment to hop up onto the ledge of the fountain and jump off. The both of you put out your cigarettes under the table in unison, like some kind of weird coordinated decision.

“Mission accomplished.” Lyric huffed out, coming to a stop before the table. He dug through his pants pocket and brought out the leftover of the cash that remained after paying your rent. “I didn’t take any, I swear.” He innocently announced.

You took the bills from his open hand, leaving one behind just for him. “Go get some lunch, kid.” You gave him a nod, expecting him to run off in an instant.

“Inna minute.” He muttered, disregarding you as his attention was all but ripped away. “What’s that?” He pointed to the camera sitting on the table before Lest. And out of all people, it was Lyric that she put away her book fully for. She placed it down in her bag, then sat up and took the camera off the table, giving him a warm inviting smile.

“It’s a camera, poppet. See?” She pressed a button on the side of the squarish frame, and the flash bulb shot out on the top. “Do you want to hold it?”

Lyric nodded and he was carefully passed the camera. He took a moment to look through the lens, moving it about in your face and then to Lest like an inverted telescope. “Can I take a picture with it?” He innocently asked.

“Just one.” Lest allowed him with a hush in her voice.

Lyric walked over to the edge of the fountain and spun around to face the both of you sitting at the table. He raised the camera to his eye and held it steady. There was a short pause, as he was trying to figure out how to take the picture.

“It’s the button-” You try to tell him.

“Let him do it on his own.” Lest whispered to you without turning away from the casual pose she was striking. There wasn’t a tenseness in her words, or any sense of telling you off. She wanted him to figure it out. The reward of catharsis was always the sweetest.

“Found it!” Lyric called back after a careful inspection of the device. He brought the camera back to his eye and held it steady. In an instant the flash went off and the little motor at the bottom began to hum and it spat out the photo. He took it from the bottom, walking back over to the table. “It’s all dark.” He frowned, looking at the featureless photograph.

“It takes time, you’ll see.” Lest hummed as Lyric passed her back the camera and let him hold onto the photo. You couldn’t actually remember ever seeing a photo of Lyric. Or yourself. Were there any photos of you? Was that the first one? Ever? Surely not, you doubted.

“Give me a sip.” Lyric turned to you, pointing at your beer expectantly.

“Sure.” You feigned, watching Lest give you the most judgemental side eye from your peripheral. You picked up the glass, brought it to your lips, and drank the entirety of its contents in one go. “Here.” You passed him the empty glass, the only thing left was a thin film of foam stuck to the glass. “Go crazy.”

“No fair.” Lyric huffed with disappointment.

“One day, kid.” You took his hat off, scuffling up his soft black hair between your fingers. You put his cap back and stood up from your seat, letting Lyric take it. “I’ll be back once I’ll have another lead tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. We’ll see.”

“Where are you going?” Lyric looked up to you, hoping to follow after you again.

“Just a lead, kid. Stay here and watch the boss, that’s your job.”

“Got it.” Lyric gave you another half-salute as you began to walk away from the table, without so much as saying goodbye to your benefactor.

“Does that make me the boss?” Lest called out to you with a confused look, watching you walk back towards the bar.

“We’re all a type of something in life.” You called back.

𝖭𝖾𝗑𝗍 𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗍𝖾𝗋

𝖯𝗋𝖾𝗏𝗂𝗈𝗎𝗌 𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗍𝖾𝗋

Taglist: @madschiavelique @6selkie @roku907

#reader x lest #lest x reader #arcane lest #lest arcane #arcane x reader #arcane fic #arcane #canon x reader #lest x you #lest fic

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