#oc | stevie brewin

[kennyyomega]

hey tumblr want to read a bunch of words about my ocs? my daughter stevie does terrible things for a beautiful man and learns about empathy along the way

[badluckcllub]

verse | desolation sound + prologue  ch | stevie brewin summary | where it all began for them.  u can also ugh find this on my ao3 lmao///

August The Twin Moons Motel

Stevie was barely conscious, but she could feel that she was hurting. It felt like she had been hit by a runaway eighteen wheeler, a heavy, dull ache in her body, a sharp ache throbbing against her temples. All of her joints felt stiff like they would break if she moved too quickly from her position. On the ground? She tried to gently feel around surroundings and came back with nothing but dirt, rocks, and twigs. That didn’t make any sense. 

She groggily began to come back to consciousness, and it took her a good five minutes after that before she felt she could even try to get to her feet.

Once she managed it, she looked down at herself and it revealed that she was covered in dirt and dust from head-to-toe, but she was otherwise unscathed. Not a scratch, scrape or bruise anywhere to be seen, and that might normally be good news, but it didn’t explain why her insides felt like someone had reached inside and scrambled them up. 

What the fuck happened to her? 

She took a breath and tried to rewind her memory, but her mind was drawing a blank, probably too hampered by the vicious headache to give her an explanation. Instead, she leaned against a nearby tree and took stock of her surroundings. Time to put your detective hat on, Brewin, she thought.

Alright. Waking up in a ditch in a grove of trees explained why she was covered in dirt, but nothing else about her thinly forested surroundings provided any clues until it dawned on her that the sun was rising. She stopped and stared at the horizon through the trees, her expression pinched together in confusion. That wasn’t right, but why? Why wasn’t it right that the sun was rising? Stevie clenched her eyes shut, trying to will the memories back in place this time, unblur them from the thick fog that made them hard to see.

Still nothing. 

She groaned, then turned around, spotting a building in the near distance. Getting anywhere but where she was felt like the smart idea, and she stiffly began to move through the sparse aspen trees.

As she drew closer to the building, she realized it was the motel and that was when her memory began to slowly clear up.

She had been at work doing the night shift she did every damn night. It was Thursday, or… Was it Thursday? She glanced towards the horizon, the sky fading into soft blues and oranges as the sun continued to rise. Okay, no, nevermind, it had to be Friday morning. So, that would make the sketchy couple she checked out shortly after her shift started the last thing she remembered doing. After that? There had nothing. Was she robbed? Drugged? 

Was it aliens? 

The thought that it could have been made her a little giddy. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a story to tell? Despite how much pain she was in, a grin managed to tug at the corners of her lips – but it quickly faded when she stepped onto the motel property. It felt like she had to push through a tangibly thick fog, and her ears popped with enough force to make her head spin. What the fuck was that?

She had to double over a bit, one hand coming to wrap around her torso as she fought against the bile rising in her throat. Okay, if aliens did turn out to be behind this than she’d need to have a talk with them about not taking it so far next time, thanks. Stevie hesitantly glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing there. Just the forest and behind that where nothing grew, the endless desert. 

She shook her head to clear it and reprioritized herself. She hoped to God that Nick hadn’t shown up yet to find her gone from the office. It’s not like this place ever got much business, but God forbid an employee step outside for some fresh air. The old bastard was insufferable to work for. 

She muttered a quiet prayer to whoever out there felt like listening and limped around the corner of the building. Nick’s car was parked in the lot. Shit. Why did he have to always come in so early? She knew she missed a lot of time, but she knew with how little the sun had risen it couldn’t even be six. She tried to wipe the grime off her face, and then pushed open the door to the office, steeling herself for a verbal lashing. The bell hanging above the door rang. 

“Hey, Nick. I–”

Her words fell away into a choking gasp.

As she expected, Nick was there, and he was staring at her, but not her standing by the door. He was staring at her that was sitting, slumped over the front desk, blood pooling underneath her cheek, her eyes staring vacantly at nothing. It was her, but it wasn’t. It was her, but she was dead. 

But if she was dead there than how was she here? Still breathing, still thinking. Still alive. The unreality of the scene made her knees feel weak, and the bile she felt rising outside returned. 

Her mind reeled as it desperately tried to grasp onto something that could make sense of the scene, but her thoughts were running into each other and nothing made sense. It had to be a joke or… Or a dream! Maybe it was all a horrible dream. Maybe she fell asleep at work and she’d wake up behind the desk totally alive at any second and laugh it off. 

Then Nick screamed. 

It was a terrible and confused scream, and any hope that she’d wake up fell away into the abyss of silence that followed. For a moment, everything around her came screaming to a halt. Oh, okay, she thought to herself. It’s not a dream. Oh. 

Then, like someone cranked up the radio for a really good song, the strangeness of what was in front of her hit her in a second, harder wave. 

Her ears filled with a buzzing panic, her heart – hers – slammed against her chest so hard she thought it would burst. Her hands trembled. Her boss was trying to say something to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the static. Maybe he wanted to know why she wasn’t in the office when he got here. She took a step inside and tried to find a decent sounding excuse that she hadn’t already used. Maybe she should take up smoking for the breaks. The room began to darken. Her boss backed away from her.

Then she realized he was also backing away from it. 

Her dead body. 

She blinked and snapped back into herself. 

She had come to a stop right in front of her corpse, near enough to smell the congealing blood and see the ashen pallor of her copy’s skin. Stevie swallowed and tried to look away. Whatever it was she was trying to say didn’t matter anymore. Not when she was more up close and personal with her corpse than she ever thought she would be. 

The room continued to dim. Her knees began to buckle. Her mind continued to reel. 

And then she was out, crumpled on the floor like she had been in the ditch outside, still breathing and still alive. Just unconscious. 

The other her remained dead and still and silent.

[kennyyomega]

i was tagged by @lucy-stillman to do this piccrew and ALSO made my bg3 girlies.

on the left is durge!stevie, love my life, ruiner of worlds <3 she's canon tav to me. on the right is my new durge, finley with her raven and she's going to right all her wrongs. i would kill for both of them

and i'm tagging whoever is reading this post. you are obligated to do this now. thanks.

[kennyyomega]

everybody look at durge stevie, gortashs wife

[kennyyomega]

stevie should have a weird little fucked up toni storm mariah may relationship with someone lmao

[kennyyomega]

for starters please look at my daughter's pinterest board

i need to start making actual posts about my ocs so you can guys can ask me questions about them

[kennyyomega]

ch | stevie brewin & GUESS WHO lmao it’s sam sorry 

This is your least favourite part. It’s gross, it’s messy, it smells, and it’s just so goddamn tedious.

You wipe your forehead, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and kick at the mess on the floor of the motel room.  

“Stop. Letting. This. Happen.” Each word is punctuated by a heavy kick and a thud. Your shoulders slump forward in eventual defeat, a long, weary sigh escaping your lips. You swear you can already feel how your muscles are going to ache in the morning, but nobody else is going to clean this mess up for you. Buck up, kiddo. It’s you against… Well, you’re not sure who you’re against yet.

It used to take you six hours to clean up, but now it only takes you four. The cleaning itself is fine; you’re used to this by now and it’s made easier with the new industrial washing machine you have out back. Your knees still hurt and your back still aches after meticulously getting into all the nooks and crannies, but you do this so regularly (down to the minute!) that it barely registers until the morning after.

Your least favourite part, though, is the last part. Before you’re even close to done your shoulders are screaming in agony, a splintering ache that mockingly inches its way up your neck.

You bend down, you push, you pull, you dump. Then you do it all in reverse. By the time you’re done you’re sweating in the midsummer night’s heat, chest heaving with exertion.

“For-- fuck’s sake.”

You take a step back and admire your handiwork. It’ll be a while before grass starts to grow over, but it’s not like it’s grown back in any of the other spots back here. There’s no need to hide what you’re doing out here every Thursday anyway. Everybody already knows. They understand.

Sort of.

Whatever. You push those thoughts from your mind and toss the shovel on top of the fresh dirt. All you want right now is a cold glass of water and a shower. You smell like dirt and copper, and despite your best efforts your hair is a mess of it, too.  (Nevermind your clothes, but that’s what the industrial washer is for, remember?)

A moon seems to blink down at you from the sky and in an act of defiance that would baffle naive onlookers you give it the finger and a foul expression. The night’s first breeze blows past with the sound of a mocking chuckle coming from somewhere in the distance. You shake your head and mutter, “If only I could fuckin’ sleep…” on your way back inside.

Your room here at the motel is just within reach when you hear the unfamiliar sound of a car door slamming shut. It makes you flinch and slowly turn. Nobody ever stops here. Nobody ever stays here. Not since the murder anyway.

Who the fuck could it be?

Your mind runs through a number of names and faces, but the person standing in the parking lot wearing sunglasses in the dead of night is entirely unfamiliar. 

Shaking a hand through your hair and wiping away the dirt from your hands and face off on your shirt, you call out, “H-Hi there. Hi. Can I help you?”

Sunglasses stares at you - or maybe past you; it’s difficult to tell with, you know, the glasses on - and the moment drags on and on and you’re already thinking of excuses about your appearance, but he eventually says, “Uh. Yeah. You work here? I need a room.”

You stare at him open-mouthed. A nervous skittering arcs up your spine and your eyes dance around your surroundings, waiting for the punchline to this joke.

You wait, he waits.

Then you say, a little shakily, “Sure. Yeah. Let me grab you a key.”

[kennyyomega]

oh my god i am rewriting steviecrane canon. instead of her being hung up on him after they break up before she starts to violently hate him, they just hate each other immediately and engage in a constant series of petty spats that everyone else in gotham is watching with increasing weariness 

[badluckcllub]

nobody cares but stevie and sam in a destiny au

stevie’s an angry hunter + nightstalker. she’ll fight anything and everyone. probably shouldnt really be a guardian honestly. she knows something abt sams disappearance

sam is a voidwalker warlock who disappeared for fucking ever and then just showed up one day weird and too voidwalker-y and he refuses to tell anyone where he was 

together they are Two Angry Slightly Unstable Guardians who almost refuse to work w anyone else other than each other 

[badluckcllub]

in my mcu/main og verse stevie runs an underground fighting ring and it’s how she meets bucky. they met for the first time like shortly after he gets his memories back (in 616 canon) and they are Buds. thanks for coming to my ted talk 

[badluckcllub]

all my characters only eat garbage foods thank you :) 

[badluckcllub]

stevie hopes it was aliens 

[badluckcllub]

verse | welcome to hope county ch | stevie brewin, sam wright, jacob seed summary | sometimes you try to kidnap two people and sometimes it just goes straight to shit. 

some new dawn era fc5 au goodness. ヽ༼ʘ̚ل͜ʘ̚༽ﾉ

It’s been a long fucking night. Maybe the longest night she’s had in six years and she’s had some long, long nights.

It was never supposed to go like this. She was supposed to get here, get Quinn and Evie, and get the fuck back to the camp. Instead, she’s handcuffed to an old radiator and she has a nasty splitting headache from where she was knocked out.

See, it all went to shit so fast.

It wasn’t hard for her to track down them down to Prosperity so much as it was tedious. Stevie had kept away from the main roads to keep a low profile, preferring to move through the forest, and it took almost two days for her to get from Eden’s Gate to the other end of the county. The next couple hours were spent watching the camp with the scope on her rifle at a distance. A part of her felt like this was wrong, but a larger part of her couldn’t, and still can’t, wrap her mind around the fact that Quinn and Jacob don’t want anything to do with John or Joseph anymore.

Joseph was right. He’d always been right. Turning away from Eden’s Gate now wasn’t going to do them any favours in this new world. They would spend the rest of their lives wandering aimlessly and without purpose.

But her opinions don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things anymore. She needed to stay focused on why she was there, so she waited and waited until the sun went down to make her move. Slipping into the camp unseen, she slung her rifle over her shoulder, but kept her pistol’s holster unclipped for easy access. She had passed the guards fine, but it’s hard to know if anybody else is awake and wandering the camp.

On light feet, she slipped inside the door of the last building she saw Quinn and Evie enter, holding her breath while she stopped in the entryway to listen for any sounds. It’s dead silent. Stevie exhales and slips a hand into the satchel hanging from her hips. Her fingers brush over a Bliss-filled syringe that was given to her by Joseph before she left. He didn’t need to tell her what it was for. It was as close to a sedative as they were going to get out here.

She quietly made her away across the room, passing the couch and flicking a longing glance at the crackling fireplace. Prosperity looks far more comfortable than Eden’s Gate is, and she’d do anything to get a couple hours sleep on something so comfortable, but this wasn’t her life anymore. With her jaw clenched, she made her way upstairs slow enough to keep the floorboards from creaking. It would make sense to have some bedrooms upstairs, and if she had to guess she’d say that with all the people living here Quinn and Evie probably shared a room. It’d narrow her focus and hopefully mean that she’d get out of there in less time.

Three doors lined the dark hallway, no sound and no shadows. She gently pressed her ear up to the first door and listened. There wasn’t a sound, so she slowly turned the knob and peeked inside.

Empty.

She closed it, took a breath and moved onto the next room.

This time she thought she heard the sound of someone shifting in a bed, and waited a minute before slipping inside with her heart hammering against her chest. The room was dark, but the moon provided enough light to let her see vague shapes – a desk, a dresser, an unmade bed. Someone standing at the end of the bed.

Oh. Oh no. 

She didn’t have enough time to see the shovel crack against the side of her head before crumpling to the ground like a ragdoll.   

Which brings her back to her current predicament: handcuffed, alone, pissed off, and, well… a little bit scared.

John is going to be furious with her for fucking this up when he finds out about it, and Joseph, well… It’s not his kid, but he trusted her to get it done. Nausea kicks up a wave in her stomach at the thought of disappointing Joseph. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She’d rather take John screaming at her for hours than disappointing the most important person in her life. There has to be some way of salvaging this. She tugs at the cuffs, but the metal is strong and only cuts into her wrist.

But she can shoot it off the radiator.

She reaches for her silenced pistol eagerly with her free hand, but comes up with nothing. It’s gone. Shit. Whoever knocked her out must have patted her down which means… Double-Shit. Stevie reaches into the satchel and to no surprise the syringe is gone, too. She groans, her head smacking against the wall behind her. It’s not like she can’t fight her way out of here if she has to, but she also can’t do shit if she can’t go anywhere.

Not long after the doorknob turns. Stevie shoots her back straight, heart caught in her throat. She thinks: Quinn? Jacob? ….Joseph?

It’s none of them.

A tall, exhausted-looking man pushes the door open. His black hair, styled in an undercut, falls in messy waves to frame part of his face, dark circles painting a contrast to a familiar pair of blue eyes. He looks older and more worn out than the last time she saw him. Six years ago.

“...Sam?” She’s so caught off-guard by his appearance that her fear and anger momentarily fall away. “I… I didn’t know you were here.”

He shuts the door behind him, then folds his arms across his chest. The only way she can describe how he looks is sad. “Surprise. How’s your head?”

Stevie frowns, eyebrows knitting together. She glances at her cuffed wrist, the metal jangling against the radiator as she shifts, then back at him. It was him who knocked her out? Her temple throbs, and she has flashes of a time where he wielded that stupid spray-painted shovel every chance he could.  

“Yeah. Sorry,” he continues, answering her silent question and looking entirely unapologetic. “This place is a Peggie-free zone, so….”

All the thoughts racing around her mind come screeching to a halt. She is a lot of things, but she is not a Peggie, damnit. Her loyalty is to Joseph and Joseph alone, not the cult. How can Sam not see that? He should know her better than that. Even now. “But I’m not—”

“Stevie. Knock it off. Everybody knows you’re constantly dogging around Joseph’s heels these days.” He crouches down in front of her, lips pressed tightly together and a pained expression on his face. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Her eyes narrow. Maybe Sam would be ‘dogging around’ Joseph’s heels too if he let himself realize that he was right this whole time. “Nothing happened,” she snaps. Nothing except for the fact that she allowed herself to accept the truth, but she knows just how stubborn Sam can be. Having that argument would only be a waste of time. “You can’t expect everyone to be the same after six years in a bunker, can you?”

His brows disappear into his hairline and the silence that he lets hang in the room is crushing. Stevie nearly cracks underneath the weight of it. “I’m sure as shit not the same, yeah, but something different went on with you.”

“You don’t know anything.” She pulls at the cuffs as if she’s going to snap them off and grab at him. To her satisfaction, Sam does flinch and draw away from the short snap of her hand before a scowl fixes itself on his face.

“I’m not a fucking idiot, but you are. Do you know what they’re going to do to you if they find out you’re here?”

She thought about that a lot on the trek here. She knows very well that nobody will ever truly understand what she went through, but no matter how much she preaches about it, and she has, they won’t listen. Her legacy to these people is nothing more than the deputy who let Hope County, and by extension the whole fucking country, go to Hell. They’ll never understand, and that thought has been eating away at her for a good six years.

But dwelling on the past isn’t going to do her any favours in the here and now. There might still be a chance to turn this around in her favour.

“I’ll leave,” she says, biting back the eagerness in her voice. She slumps her shoulders forward with a defeated shake of her head as she glances up at him like it’s difficult to make eye contact.

(And it is difficult, but she has a part to play. The real grief can wait until she’s alone.)

“Just let me go and I won’t even look back. Nobody has to know I was here.” Come on, Sam. Buy the lie. 

He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe, but why the hell you even here? You at least owe me an explanation.”

“—Joseph wants to know what’s going on here.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either. She has to stop herself from overly complicating the story with unnecessary details. Keep it simple and maybe he won’t ask too many questions. “That’s it. Intel.”

“For what?”

“He’s not planning anything if that’s what you mean. He wants to know like you guys here probably want to know what he’s doing.” Though she often finds herself wishing it was. Life after the Collapse isn’t as glorious as she was made out to believe it would be, but she just needs to come around to it. Joseph told her so. “That’s it. I swear.” 

Sam grimaces, then scrubs at his face in frustration. “You know, like, I want to trust you, but you’re fucking the cult leader.”  

Heat quickly spreads across her cheeks because, well... unfortunately he’s not wrong. It takes every ounce of her being to ignore that comment and act like he’d said nothing at all. “Sam, please,” she begs. “If you do me one last favour just let me go. I’ll – We’ll leave you alone. Think about how much of a shitshow this will be if anybody found out.”

He stares her down hard enough to make it seem like he can see right through everything she’s saying. “Fine,” he says after a pause long enough to make Stevie wonder if he’s not going to let her go. A small key emerges from his pocket and he unlocks the cuffs. “Get the fuck out of here. Don’t let anybody see you around here again. And tell Joseph to keep his shit away from us. Far away.”

Stevie nods as the cuffs clatter to the ground, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep her pride from showing. Fooled him. “Yeah. Sure.”

Then she lunges forward and slams her shoulder into his hip. Sam bows forward as she shoves him back, and the loss of balance knocks him right off his feet and flat onto his back with a hard thud. If someone hadn’t heard them before than they’re about to. She’s officially running out of time.

“You crazy bitch—”

Stevie straddles his hips, one hand bunched up in the collar of his shirt, the other closed into a tight fist. Underneath her, Sam looks dazed as hell and it gets worse when she slams her fist down onto his face. Something cracks and blood begins to pour out of his nose in a steady stream.

Sam yells and grabs at a fistful of her hair, yanking it back. Hard. Her neck cranes to the side at a painful angle and she loses her positioning when he uses the momentum to throw her off of him. Stevie lets herself go with a frustrated grunt, rolling onto her back, then scrambles to her feet before slipping a hand into her pocket. She reaches around for the Bliss-filled syringe, but quickly remembers that she no longer has it. Shit.

Sam’s frustrated laugh is a little nasally as he pulls the missing syringe out of his pocket, blood pouring out of his nose. “Looking for this? I’m no officer of the law, but I’m not that dumb. I cleaned out your pockets after knocking you out.”

The syringe disappears back into his pocket with a smug grin on his face. It doesn’t last long, though, because Stevie snarls, “Give me that!” and Sam begins to scramble backwards.

She’s about to lunge at him again, but the door behind her is thrown open with a forceful shove. It slams against the wall with a loud crash, and before she has a chance to attack, someone grabs her forearm with a tight grip . A stern and uncomfortably familiar voice commands, “Stop it. The both of you.”

She stops.

She doesn’t want to, but she stops.

The room falls into a thick silence. Sam stares past her with wide eyes as she’s shoved further into the room by the person restraining her. She already knows who it is; his voice isn’t one so easily forgotten especially when it’s been so artfully imprinted into her mind, and his presence is so imposing that it feels tangible. Stevie sucks in a breath when she senses him leaning down to her ear. “Don’t try anythin’,” he whispers.

Then she’s twisted around and comes face-to-face with Jacob Seed.

“Joseph’s not very happy with you,” she says. It’s so, so stupid, but the words are out of her mouth before she has a chance to stop herself. She briefly considers the idea that he might kill her for it. Jacob’s expression, however, remains unreadable, but that’s somehow more frightening than if he had lashed out at her for the smart-ass comment. Too late to take it back now.

“Quiet.”

She stops. Again.

She grits her teeth and strains against herself, but no matter how much she tries to will her body into moving there’s no response. She simply can’t.

She didn’t plan for this. You idiot. It was six long years ago that he got inside her head, but Stevie figured whatever he had done had worn off with time and distance. He had no hold over her after the bombs went off for obvious reasons, and things tend to get rusty with disuse, so why should this be any different? She’d clearly underestimated just how fucking good Jacob was at what he did. Her heart slams against her chest, fingers flexing nervously at her side. All the brothers frighten her to an extent, but there’s something about Jacob that makes sirens go off in her head.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

She begins to answer, but Sam cuts her off with a scoff and says, “Intel, apparently,” with a heavy roll of his eyes.  

Jacob shoots Sam a dark look, jabbing a finger at Stevie then at him. Both of them freeze in place, breath caught in their chest. “I was talking to her, not you.”

She’s not surprised when Sam, chastised, backs off and throws his hands up weakly in defeat, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Sam has always been stupidly defiant, but it’s impossible to not be put in your place by Jacob Seed. Despite the situation, it makes her feel a little bit better about herself.

Jacob turns his attention back to her, sharp glint in his eyes, and asks again, “What are you doing here?”

Cowed, she bows her head, eyes fixated on a crack in the floorboards between them. She rattles off the truth like she’s been dying to tell somebody. “John wants Quinn and Evie back,” she blurts out. “I’m here for them. John wants her and his kid back.” Her jaw clenches, teeth grinding together as if that’d be enough to keep Jacob from getting her to talk.

Sam makes a choking sound and says, “You fucking lied to me.”

She spares him a sideways glance, careful not to draw all her attention away from Jacob. His gaze doesn’t leave her once. “You hit me in the head with a fucking shovel.” Even if he hadn’t knocked her out she would have kept the truth to herself. This was exactly the kind of situation she was trying to avoid, and foolishly she thought she was going to get away with it.

“You would’ve done the same damn thing,” Sam says, arms haughtily folded across his chest before pointedly turning his attention away from Stevie. Wow. What is he, twelve? “What are you going to do with her?”

Jacob’s steely eyes focus on Stevie with an expression so invasive that she struggles to maintain eye contact with him for very long. “I don’t know yet.” Stevie’s weight shifts to her other foot, and Jacob’s fingers dig deeper into her flesh to keep her in place. His eyes flash like something just occurred to him. Her stomach twists nervously. “Don’t get any smart ideas.” Slowly and carefully, he begins to release his grip on her and takes a single step back. 

It’s a test.  

Her eyes narrow, darkening, but even as she tries to fight she knows it’s useless. And he knows it, too. The small uptick of his lips gives it away, the barest of smiles that’s more like the look of a predator satisfied with pinning down its prey.

Her lip peels back in a vain sneer of defiance. It won’t do much in the way of actually overcoming the conditioning, but it’s something and doing something is better than making this easy for him. Hell, he betrayed his brothers, turned away from them like he never had any faith in their plan to begin with. It infuriates her. How could he be so stupid? So willfully blind to what’s right in front of him?

“Joseph’s going to kill you,” she says slowly. “He’s going to kill you for what you did.”

Jacob leans down to her height, eye-to-eye. If her fight-or-flight instincts weren’t currently being smothered she would be scrambling to get the hell out of here. She hides it well, but she feels small in his presence, always has. Most people might not be able to notice, but she knows he can. She can’t help but wonder just how much of her he can really see.

“He can try,” he says, his low voice a rumble in her ear that makes her skin prickle. Yeah, he can, she thinks, and he will. It won’t be tomorrow, might not even be next month, but he will. Of that much she’s certain. (And she has to be. Because if she can’t believe in him than who can she believe in?)

Jacob slowly straightens up, keeping his gaze unwaveringly fixed on her as he does. She bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to distract herself from the tension. It doesn’t work. “Put the cuffs back on her and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere,” he says to Sam who looks startled with the demand. He rises to his feet, already shaking his head.

“You want her to say here with me?” He jabs his finger at her, but otherwise she may as well not be here with the way they’re talking. “Alone? She’s fucking crazy.” Stevie’s eyes grow wide, a flash of hurt that’s there and gone again. It’s not like she’s all that surprised, but being on the brunt end of his callous remarks instead of on the other side is going to take some getting used to.

Jacob swivels his hardened gaze towards Sam with a snap. His lip twitches just barely and it’s difficult to tell if it’s a disdain or amusement. Maybe both. “You seemed to do well enough with the shovel.”

Even she’ll admit that there really isn’t any arguing with that. That shovel was swung at her head very confidently, the way her head is throbbing can attest to that. Sam works his jaw and she can tell that he so badly wants to mouth off, but with a string of swears under his breath he does as he’s told. He doesn’t look at her once.

“So, like, what now? Raise the alarm?” Sam asks.

“No. I’m going to talk to Quinn alone first. Don’t let her get out of those cuffs. I’m not askin’.” Then, Jacob focuses his attention on Stevie in a way that makes her feel far too exposed. “And you, Deputy? Don’t. Go. Anywhere.” He leaves, shutting the door solidly behind him.

The room falls into silence, taking most of the heavy tension with it. She feels a little bit better with Jacob gone despite the fact that she’s trapped here until she can figure out someway to get past his conditioning. She groans, letting her head hit the wall at her back. Just how the fuck is she going to do that? And how the fuck is she going to explain this to Joseph and John?

Seeming to echo how she’s feeling, Sam cuts through the silence to say, “Man, you’re fucked.”

She wishes she had it in her to argue.

[badluckcllub]

verse | desolation sound ch | stevie brewin + sam wright summary | stevie dies and sam has to help bury her. 

He’s been in Desolation Sound for nearly two weeks and he’s still struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s trapped in this fucking town. Everyone else seems to deal with it just fine for the most part, but he can’t walk to the convenience store unless he’s high as a fucking kite on the off-chance he sees something too fucked up for his sober mind to deal with.

It makes it easier to deal with all the staring, too. People fucking love to openly gawk at him and no amount of mouthing off on his part deters them. It’s like telling a brick wall to fuck off sometimes. Stevie told him to get over it, that the novelty of the newcomer will wear off in, oh… a year, maybe.

Like that’s supposed to make him feel any fucking better. He just wants to get out of this place, and, goddamnit, he’s been trying. Every damn day he gets in his car and drives to the city limit while Stevie watches him from that cheap pool chair she’s parked outside the motel’s office, and every damn day she watches him pull back into the parking lot with I told you so scrawled all over her face. It’s a straight shot out of the town from the motel, but somewhere along the way the road loops back to where he first drove in from. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. He might be a near high school dropout, but he damn well knows that geography doesn’t work like that.

Sometimes he’ll try to pry more answers out of Stevie, but she shrugs them all off. He can’t tell if she’s keeping things from him on purpose or if she’s just resigned herself to the absurdity of her life, so he just hides away in the room she’s given him to avoid whatever is actually going on out there.

The room itself is cheap, old, and outdated. The TV still has rabbit ears, the phone is a chunky thing with big buttons, and don’t even get him started on the carpeting. Every time he steps in the room he feels like he’s travelled back to the late 1970s.

The cracks in the textured paint on the ceiling create intricate patterns that spread out from a single point just above his bed, and he follows them with his eyes as he mulls his predicament again. At least Stevie pities him enough to let him stay here for free, but, fucking hell, he just wants to leave. He left Tuscon for the freedom of the open road, but instead wound up stuck in a town he can’t even find on a map.

Go fucking figure, right?

A loud cracking sound reverberates through the thin wall separating his room from Stevie’s. Sam bolts upright in bed, the way his heart is hammering against his ribcage is enough to rouse him from a drowsy half-sleep. The clock radio on the end table reads two forty-six in the morning, and hushed conversations coming from the lowered television fills the air; these sounds are joined by another: a faint gurgling on the other side of the wall.

He slowly pushes himself out of bed and presses his ear against the paper-thin wall. The gurgling becomes clearer, but just barely; if he focuses, he can hear the faint sounds of someone shuffling around the room, and a heavy thud as something hits the floor followed by wet groaning. He peels away from the wall, staring at it as if he’s capable of seeing right through the cheap wood and plaster.

“Stevie?”

There’s no response, so Sam raises his voice and knocks against the wall. “Hey, Stevie. Are you, uh… are you good over there?”

All sound from the other side ceases except for the faint gurgling which picks up into another wet groan. Sam’s stomach twists at the agony he can hear in it. He’s heard the sound in movies, sure, so has everyone, but hearing it in real life is something else.

Something fucked up is going on over there.

Sam swallows nervously before stepping outside to knock on her door. There’s nothing unusual outside; his car is still the only one in the parking lot and the office has been locked for the night, leaving only the vacancy sign to flicker sporadically in the night. It all seems fine until he turns his attention to Stevie’s room.

The door is open just a crack, and that sends a million alarm bells going off in his head. Stevie’s the only person aside from him that ever seems to be here, but she still keeps her door locked up tight and reminds him to do the same nearly every night. Strange for a town this small where residents typically trust each other not to just waltz into each other’s homes.

An almost imperceptible shadow shifts on the floor of her room and he calls out, “Stevie?”

There’s no answer and all movement ceases. The gurgling seems to have stopped, too.  

Terrified of what he’s going to find on the other side of the door, he pushes it open tentatively and steps inside. He’s greeted by the sight of Stevie splayed out on the floor, limbs loose and askew, her jaw slack, laying in a large pool of her own blood. Her head is turned so that her eyes are looking right at him, but they’re void of anything resembling life. There are bits and pieces of her scalp, chunks of hair still attached to bone torn right off from getting shot in the head, and a bloody, gelatinous, gray, wet-looking something scattered across the hardwood floor in globs.

He was staring at her corpse.

Bile shoots up in his throat, and it takes everything he can muster to keep from throwing up all over himself.

The other figure in the room only registers with him once he starts trying to stumble away from the macabre sight – a hooded figure, tall and imposing, their gloved hand bloody and curled around a gun. The handle of a knife is sticking out of Stevie’s chest and the figure reaches down to roughly yank it out with a wet sucking sound. Stevie’s body lifts off the floor from the force before dropping back down with another heavy thud.  

“It had to happen,” they say.

Sam’s body twists away to run, but the figure moves at an impossible speed to cut him off before he’s even fully turned around.

“It must always happen” they say to his stupefied face.  

They crack the butt of the gun against his temple and Sam goes crumpling to the ground like a ragdoll before he has a chance to react. Blood seeps out from a small gash on his temple, spreading out across the concrete like an unholy halo framing his head.

Minutes pass, blood pools; a half an hour passes, blood grows sticky, forty minutes, forty-five.

No cars drive past the scene, nobody walks by the motel. It’s Sam and a corpse until those forty-five minutes pass and a single, solitary figure stumbles out from the back of the motel.

They use the wall as a support as if they’re still learning how to walk. Strands of limp blonde hair mask their features, a grimace of both pain and disgust etched on their face. They brush the hair away from their eyes as they stagger over to Sam’s unconscious figure.

“Aw, fuck me, Sam.”

They crouch down and smack his cheek until his eyes begin to groggily flutter awake. He groans, a hand coming up to press at his temple. “What the fu– HOLY SHIT.” A near-scream rips out of his throat as his vision clears and he registers who slapped him awake. A rush of pain floods his head as he bolts upright too fast for someone with a probable concussion.

Stevie says, “I don’t look that bad, do I?” She drags her fingers through her limp waves, nose scrunching up a bit. “Like, I know it’s bad, but fuck, dude.”

“But… But I just saw– You. Your body. You’re … dead.” Sam’s eyes are like saucers as he looks her up and down for any sign of blood. She looks worn-out and  scuffed up, but there’s no gaping hole in her head or chest, no blood pooling around her or brain matter leaking out of her skull. “You were dead. You are dead. I saw––”

Stevie slaps her hand across his mouth to shut him up. “Yeah. You did. Fuck. I was kind of hoping to leave you out of this.” Getting to her feet, she holds out a hand to help Sam to his, but he simply stares at her with blank incomprehension. “Come on, bud. I’m not a zombie so I’m not gonna bite. I’ll explain while we clean up.”

“––Clean…?” He hauls himself to shaking feet with her help. Her hand is clammy and cold, and dirt coats the undersides of her fingernails.

“Uh, yeah. You think I’m just going to let all that blood and shit soak into the floor? Hell no. I’ve had to have it replaced too many times over the years to do it again.” She waltzes over to her room like nothing about this is strange, and he mindlessly trails behind her, far too confused to do much else than be strung along. She shoves open the door and immediately groans. “Oh, this is a messy one. Fantastic.”

Stevie goes to crouch over the corpse of herself and all Sam can do is stand in the doorway with his jaw slack and his head spinning. “You – That’s you.” He points at the corpse like she hasn’t already seen it, then looks at her desperately pleading for a rational explanation.

Instead, all she says is, “Sure fucking is.” She presses down on the bloody gray matter and it squishes and spreads. “Gross,” she says, shaking it off her hand and getting to her feet. “We clean, I’ll explain. Come on.” She opens the closet and pulls out a myriad of heavy-duty, industrial cleaning supplies before tossing him a surgical mask. “Here. For the bleach. We’re going to need a lot of it.”

“I really hate how blasé you are about this,” he says stiffly.

“Well, when this happens more times than you care to keep track of anymore it stops bothering you. Can you scoop up the brain bits? I’ll start with the blood.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“If you do make sure it’s not on the floor. It’s messy enough as it is.”

Lucky for the both of them, he makes it to the washroom in time to throw up his guts in the toilet. “What the fuck?” he croaks, then louder: “What the fuck?!” He sits back and stares blankly at the tiled floor. He has to be dreaming. None of this is real. He’s asleep, he’s in bed, he’s high and hallucinating. All that would make a whole lot more sense than any of this actually being rooted in reality.

But then Stevie calls out, “Are you gonna give me a hand?” and he’s reminded that no, this is happening and it’s happening to him. He unsteadily walks out of the washroom with a hand towel to scoop up the brain matter and throw it out.

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”He tosses the matter into a garbage bag and tries to fight the nausea still swirling in his stomach.

“Yeah, so … Where do I start? Uh, well, I get murdered every month. The last Thursday of every month if you wanna get specific.”

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it was definitely not that. “Sorry, what?”

“Murdered. I get murdered, in a variety of different ways, once a month, and then I come back. Don’t ask me why and don’t ask me how because I still haven’t figured it out.” She scrubs hard at the floor with a ragged washcloth soaked in bleach. “Come on. Get out, you stupid bloodstain.”

Sam bites the inside of his cheek as he scoops up more brain matter and scalp. If he tries to act like this is completely normal maybe he won’t feel like he’s losing his mind anymore. “Like … how long has this been happening?”

Stevie hums in thought. “Since 1987, so thirty-two years.”

He almost drops the cloth, whipping around to stare at her incredulously. So much for trying to act like everything is normal. “Thirty-two years? Thirty-two fucking years? This is a joke, right? This has to be a joke. You’re lying. This is a prank. This is–”

“Hey, hey, hey. Whoa.” Stevie peels off the bloody latex gloves and drops them onto the floor. “Deep breaths, Sam. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Relax.”

He wants to scream at her, but all he can do is grip her arms tightly, his eyes saucer-wide. “I – I just – This shouldn’t….”

“Okay, okay. Sam, let’s rip this off like a bandaid, yeah? I was born here in 1961. In 1987, while working here, I was murdered. It was in the paper, so you can look it up if you don’t believe me. The kicker is though the next night I was back. I woke up next to the fucking dumpster behind the motel. Nobody knows how, nobody knows why, and nobody knows who decided to slit my throat that night, and it keeps happening. And”–she glances back at her corpse with a grimace–“I’m always left to clean up the aftermath. The bodies don’t go away when I come back.”

Sam’s chest heaves like he just finished running a marathon. Not being able to leave Desolation Sound is one thing, but tacking whatever this is on top of that is too much for his mind to handle. Stevie says something else and begins to guide him outside to sit where he takes a deep breath of the fresh air.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbles under his breath.

“I know, and I really wish you didn’t have to get involved in this, but you’re here now.” She brushes some hair out of his eyes. “I’m sorry.” Stevie crouches down to his level. “Listen, I’ll take care of the clean up in there, but I could use a hand burying the body out back. Do you think you can do that later?”

After a long pause, Sam nods mutely, then mechanically pulls out a cigarette.

Stevie smiles brightly, back to acting like nothing is amiss. “Sweet. I’ll give you a shout when I need a hand. Deep breaths, okay?”

He sits out there for two hours, smoking and staring up at the sky while he listens to the music drifting out of Stevie’s room. He doesn’t think much of anything. He doesn’t want to.

Eventually, Stevie pokes her head outside the door. “Hey. I think things are mostly clean in here. Let’s go bury this thing.” The way she says ‘this thing’ makes his skin crawl, but he stubs out his cigarette and goes back inside to help her with the body.

The sight of her and her corpse make his head spin again, and he has to look at everything but it.

“Pick it up by the wrists,” Stevie says, grabbing herself by the ankles.

Sam swallows, then pulls the corpse up by the wrists. It’s heavier and colder than he thought it was going to be and he nearly drops it in disgust when more brain matter slips out. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.” Even Stevie grimaces.

“Eugh. I should’ve done something about that. I’ve never been shot in the head before.”

They haul the body outside and begin to round their way to the back. “So, like … you don’t always die the same way?”

“No. I mean, sometimes I do. There’s only so many ways to kill someone and there’s bound to be repeats in thirty-two years.”

“And you don’t know who does it?”

“Not a clue. It could be different people for all I know, but whoever it is or they are are dedicated as hell.”

“Can’t you, like, I don’t know, stop them? Kill them before they kill you?”

Stevie snorts sarcastically, but her face betrays how much she hates what she’s resigned herself to. “Trust me. I’ve tried. I always end up eating shit. I don’t think I can stop them. I think… I think this is just the way things are now. Drop it here.”

Thrilled to not have to touch the corpse anymore, he all but dumps it onto the grass. Stevie hands him a shovel and the two get to digging. By the time they get to six feet, his back and shoulders are screaming at him to stop and they protest more when he does it all in reverse after dumping Stevie’s corpse in there. When they’re good and done, the sun is beginning to rise over the horizon, the sky coloured in shades of orange and yellow.

“So,” Stevie says, digging her shovel into the dirt and leaning against it, grinning. “How do you feel after burying your first body?”

Sam stares at her with dead eyes. “Fucking horrible.”

There’s a long pause where the two of them just stare at each other. It’s broken by loud and uncontrollable laughter; first from Stevie and then from Sam until there are tears running down their faces.

[badluckcllub]

verse | far cry 5 ch | stevie brewin, joseph seed ft. everyone’s (my) fav asshole sam wright lmaoo summary | it only took me about 800 years to write this and it’s nothing but self-indulgent bullshit. 

stevie meets joseph, it’s kinda weird, sam’s an asshole. end scene. xoxo. cc: @egosumdivina for reasons

i. THE FIRST MEETING

The first time she sees Joseph after the helicopter crash she’s coming down from Bliss, sitting against a tree, the assault rifle resting on her lap and only loosely in her grip. Eyes closed, she’s breathing steadily, trying to ride out the high until she’s feeling clear-headed enough to get to the outpost down the road. This isn’t the first time she’s been exposed to the drug, and Stevie has a nagging feeling that it won’t be her last. Faith and her Angels seem to have a fondness and talent for drugging her, but at least she has a talent for managing to stumble away still in one piece.

(The Angels are never quite as lucky.)

It certainly doesn’t help that this whole region is covered in patches of Bliss. It feels impossible to go ten feet without stepping into one of the green clouds and spending the next ten minutes staggering around in search of a place to lay low and ride out the high. Things would probably be a whole lot easier if everyone hadn’t wound up kidnapped by a bunch of religious lunatics – or, in Quinn’s case, gone straight up missing – and she wasn’t alone out here.

A clusterfuck doesn’t even begin to describe what’s going on.

Hope County is a war zone and an isolated one at that. All the surrounding roads out have either been caved in by the mountains or are being guarded with heavy machinery. Trying to leave has become as much of a death trap as staying, and without a way to reach anybody on the outside she’s stuck with the impossible task of trying to clean up this mess herself.

God, she hopes Quinn is out there somewhere and alive. The guilt of letting her come out here when she damn well knows she should have said no would eat her alive if something happened.

Fuck. She can’t keep wasting time like this. High or not, the outpost down the way isn’t going to take itself and the sun is beginning to set. The night provides enough cover for herself and the Peggies, and that slight advantage in their favour is not something she’s willing to hand over. If she can clear it and get the Resistance in there before night falls she’ll be able to sleep soundly tonight.

The dimming sunlight shining through the treetops sparkles in a way that threatens to undo any grip she has on coming down from the Bliss, and getting to her feet proves to be a little more difficult than she anticipated. Despite knowing better, Stevie flips the safety off on the assault rifle and begins to take small, steady steps through the brush, focusing on the rise and fall of her chest instead of the way the world threatens to tilt and spin in her vision.

She shakes her head to clear the fuzz from her mind and raises the rifle a little higher in front of her. She doesn’t get very far before the distinct crack of a foot snapping a branch sounds off like a crack of thunder in the silence. Stevie spins around, beginning to aim the barrel in the direction of the sound, but the world keeps spinning even when she stops.

She stumbles, trips, begins to fall and –

She never hits the ground.

Someone’s sturdy grip catches and rights her before she can ungracefully eat shit in the dirt. For a split second she thinks it’s a member of the Resistance, but it turns out to be quite the opposite.

“Careful, Deputy.”  

She’s only met him once before, but she’d recognize that drawl anywhere. Her heart lurches in her chest and she wrenches herself free more forcefully than necessary because he lets her go without a fight. Odd behaviour coming from someone who knows she wants them brought to justice, but Joseph Seed is pretty fucking weird in general. She can dwell on it later.

Her finger moves to the trigger as she raises the rifle to aim for his chest and she spits, “What are you doing here?” with a slight slur in her voice.

He smiles ever so slightly, knowledge glimmering in his eyes. “I simply want to talk. You can put the gun down.”

“Fuck you.”

The gun aimed at his chest doesn’t seem to phase him in the slightest. “Very well. Will you at least permit me to say what I wish to say?”

She has to admit that she’s curious. It’s a bold move to come out here by himself to talk, and he looks awfully confident that she’s alone and there’s no one lurking in the brush. Has he been watching her? How much does he know about the Resistance’s work? Her grip on the gun tightens, knuckles turning white with the effort. She should get the fuck out of here.

So why does she let him speak?

She remains silent, lips pressed in a thin line of anger just bubbling under the surface, and he takes that as permission to continue. “I wanted to welcome you. Formally.” He takes a step forward, and she can see the purpling of a bruise beginning to fade around his eye. She takes solace in the fact that the crash wasn’t very kind to him either. “I admit, I’ve been praying for someone such as yourself to come to Hope County.”

“Really?” she deadpans. “You want to be taken in? Gee, why didn’t you say so earlier? Could’ve saved me a lot of trouble.” She speaks slow enough to enunciate each word to mask the slight slur in her voice, but something tells her that he knows the Bliss is still running its way through her system, and that’s probably why he decided that now was a good time to have a conversation. Her heart leaps in her chest at the thought of how vulnerable she might actually be right now considering. He doesn’t look armed, but he’s dangerous as hell and she’s still struggling a little to keep her attention focused on reality. For all she knows he didn’t come alone and there could be a gun aimed at the back of her head.

“We both know that’s not what I meant. You see, sometimes one needs an obstacle to overcome before they are ready to fully believe. These people  –  they have no faith. They need to see the work of God for themselves before they realize the truth.

And you, Deputy, are Hope County’s obstacle. You will help these people see the light.”

Her skin runs cold. The conviction in his voice and the leftover Bliss swimming in her head almost makes it enough for her to believe his words. Stevie swallows hard, pressing the gun stock hard into her shoulder as a painful distraction.

“You really buy into your own hype, don’t you?”

Joseph smiles, faint and unnerving. “It is not mine, but God’s.”

She bristles and has to bite down on her tongue to stop herself from snapping at the obvious bait. Her jaw clenches and she exhales her frustration through her teeth. Enough with this religious bullshit. As far as she’s concerned none of this has anything to do with God and everything to do with humans being exceptionally shitty. “Are you done?”

He takes another step forward  – a single bold step, not once moving away from the barrel of the rifle. She could shoot him now and have him in cuffs before he could blink, but his family would certainly pull the trigger on whatever fucked up plan they have. It might be a better idea to get rid of them first. He’d be less dangerous without his cronies to come to his aid.

“God’s work is never done.”

Stevie rolls her eyes. “Sure, yeah. Whatever. Go preach at somebody who gives a shit. I have to – quote-unquote – take care of some of your people.”

“‘It is only by sacrifice and suffering, offered as penance, that you will be able, by the grace of God, to convert sinners’. Go. Show Hope County the truth.” He holds his hands behind his back and makes the slightest motion of his head.  

Stevie freezes, recognizing that he’s not signalling her, but someone else. Before she can react an Angel steps out from behind some brush and blows some a familiar powder into her face. She gasps, and in the surprise inhales the Bliss. It slams into her like a runaway freight train and her surroundings begin to double-up.

“Fuck – you,” she manages before collapsing. The last thing she sees is something like hope shining behind Joseph’s eyes.

“Hey. Hey! Wake the fuck up.”

Something cracks against her cheek. Once, twice, a bold third time. “Aren’t you supposed to, like, be the one getting us out of this fucking mess?” There’s a fourth crack and the stinging pain against her flesh jolts her out of unconsciousness. “Fucking finally.”

Crouched above her is a stranger and she blindly fumbles for her gun in case it’s a Peggie, but her fingers close around nothing but air. The rifle is resting in the grass out of her reach. The stranger notices and hands it over to her. “Don’t shoot me, alright? I get shot at enough out here and I’m fucking tired of it.”

He gets up and reaches out to help pull her to her feet. She’s unsteady and Joseph’s words are still echoing around her head. Groaning, she rubs at her forehead and says, “What happened?”

The stranger shrugs. “Does it look like I know? I just found you like this. You’re the Deputy, right?” She follows his gaze to the badge attached to her belt.

“Uh, yeah. Call me Stevie.” As her head clears, she looks him up and down and decides that he’s not much of a threat. He has a handgun holstered, but he’s scrawny and looks like she could snap him in two in a fight. “Who are you?”

“Sam. I’m not one of those religious freaks in case you’re wondering.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“Yeah, because I’m smart enough to keep to myself and not get involved in… Whatever the fuck this is,” he grumbles. “You alright?”

“Uh….” Stevie rakes her fingers through her hair, mussed up with leaves, grass, and dirt, and she still feels a little woozy from the Bliss. She picks out a leaf from her hair and lets it fall to the ground. “I’ve had better days. What time is it?” The sun is about to disappear underneath the horizon which means she was out cold for at least an hour.

“About seven-thirty.”

“Shit,” she hisses. This is about the time she should’ve been finishing up dealing with the outpost down the road, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow now. Besides, the world is still spinning a little.

Fuck the Bliss. Fuck Eden’s Gate, and fuck Joseph Seed. She can’t settle on a single reason why he would so boldly show up like that other than to fuck with her for his own amusement.

(But he seemed to so genuinely believe what he was saying. She doesn’t want to admit it out loud, let alone to herself, but it frightened her.)

“Look, no offence, but you look like shit. What happened to you out here?”

Stevie shoots him an icy look, but he seems completely unperturbed by it. “The Bliss,” she says, leaving out the bit about how Joseph Seed himself was involved. The people of Hope County don’t need to know that he caught her off-guard like that. Their belief in her ability to stop this mess is too strong to let seeds of doubt grow.

Sam barks out a laugh. “Yeah, that explains it. You kind of have that pale, sunken-eyed junkie look like the Angels.”

Her expression collapses. “You really don’t sugarcoat anything, do you?”

“I don’t see the point,” he says with a sardonic grin. He unholsters his handgun and nods further into the woods. “Since my getting out of this fucking place is entirely dependent on you being in one piece how about you lay down for a bit? I got a place just up that way. It’s a shitty cabin, but it’s something and it’s got a couch you can crash on. I know what it’s like to come down from a high.”

Stevie scrutinizes Sam a second time before wearily agreeing. She’s got nothing left. “Yeah. Fuck, I really need to lay down.” It feels like she’s been running on empty for days, going up and down Faith’s region to take it back from the Peggies. “Tell me you have liquor. I need a stiff drink.”

The grin on Sam’s face becomes a little more real and less plastered on. “You’re in luck. I do. It’s shitty and cheap, but it’s alcohol and it’ll probably help with that blistering headache I bet you got. Come on.”  

The relief Stevie feels is palpable and her muscles unwind from the tension she’s constantly wound up in. The outpost will still be there tomorrow and so will Joseph Seed, but she needs to rest if she wants a chance at doing any good.

Walking to Sam’s cabin drains her of the little reserve energy she still has and she all but collapses on the couch the minute she gets in. Sam, busy bitching about the Seed family and the cult, goes to pour the both of them a heavy-handed drink, but by the time he turns around Stevie is out like a light.

[badluckcllub]

verse | marvel & dc ch | stevie brewin, bucky barnes

will i ever go back to this au? idk! but this sure is the beginning of it. also, it’s an unfinished chapter so ignore the abrupt ending. lmao. 

“Enough! Outta the ring the both of you.” The referee’s voice rings out loudly across the cheering crowd surrounding the ring. The two fighters break apart reluctantly, still sneering at one another before stalking off and disappearing into the large group of people in the underground club.

Coloured lights pulse from above, putting on a miniature light-show that rivals ones put on by still-touring glam rock bands from the eighties. Music thumps against the walls, loud bass pulsing with the lights in a hypnotic rhythm that keeps those not interested in the fights dancing.

Stevie stands on a balcony above the makeshift ring, leaning forward against the railing as her eyes sweep across the crowd. A smile grin flits across her lips seen only in the moments when the lights flash upon her figure. When she first started this fighting ring she never thought it’d move from the courtyard behind her favourite dive bar, but she somehow managed to work her way up into monetizing the whole damn thing.

She’s so fucking lucky. Without it she wouldn’t be able to go through her doctoral program without winding up in a bone-crushing amount of debt. This entire operation is funding her schooling, and thank fuck for the accountants she has on hand that keep the IRS from looking too closely at her.

The reverie ends swiftly, however, when a tap on her shoulder interrupts the train of thought.

“‘Scuse me. Are you Stevie?”

Stevie turns, startled — awfully jumpy for someone who prides herself on her situational awareness. Talk about embarrassing.

The stranger isn’t much taller than her, but he gives off a presence imposing enough to negate his shorter-than-most stature. It’s enough to make her stand up a little straighter.

“Uh, yeah. That’s me.”

“Great. I want in on a fight.”

She blinks — once, twice, then forces herself to give this guy a proper look. He looks like he could give her best fighter a run for their money, and the haunted look in his eyes is enough to send a chill up her spine. She doesn’t need to ask to know that he’s been through some shit and needs an outlet. She’s seen people like him before, just … never to this extent.

“It’d be stupid of me to ask if you’ve ever fought before, huh?”

The guy gives her the ghost of a smirk. “Yeah. It would.”

She clears her throat, then sticks her hand out for a shake. “Figured.” His hand clasps tightly around hers, a no-fucking-nonsense shake. Fucking hell, this guy could probably pack a hell of a punch. The dollar signs are already greedily floating in her vision. “You got a name, dude?”

There’s a pause that lingers for a moment too long before he says, “—-Bucky.”

“Bucky. Cool name. Alright, Bucky. You want in tonight? I got a spot open that you could fill.”

He shrugs, eyes flitting down to raucous crowd surrounding the ring. “Yeah.”

“A man of few words, huh?” She grins a little, then hollers down to the referee, pointing out the newcomer in lieu of using words that wouldn’t really be heard over the music. “Head on down, dude. Let’s see what you got.”

He turns without much more than a nod, and something in Stevie’s gut tells her this guy is going to kill it down there.

And he does.

The guy — Bucky — steps into the ring, rolls up his sleeves, and just about crushes his opponent.

It doesn’t take more than a couple well placed hits, a couple to the ribs, one that Stevie just knows lands on the guy’s kidney, and a solid hook to his jaw that makes her cringe. She’s pretty sure that dude’s jaw is shattered.

The poor guy is left bleeding and bruised in the middle of the ring, carried off by a few pitying onlookers. It’s been a long time since a fight as left Stevie speechless, and she trades a shocked look with the referee. It takes her a good minute after the fight to get her feet fucking moving to talk to this Bucky guy.

“Hey. Hey! Bucky!” She chases after him through the crowd, grabbing his arm to catch his attention. He spares her a look over his shoulder, a little bit of blood smeared down his chin. The normally chatty owner of this establishment is still a little tongue-tied. “You, uh… You’re really, really fucking good.” Stevie clears her throat. “You lookin’ for a little cash, man? ‘Cause, uh, you’re gonna bring in good money if you can keep fightin’ like that.”

Bucky looks like he’s giving her the once over now, and her stomach flips nervously. Stevie isn’t normally so nervous or afraid that she’s going to be turned down, so she quickly adds, “Like real good money. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

Bucky gives her a gruff laugh, pushing the mess of tangled hair from his face. “Yeah. I guess I could use with a little cash.”

(It won’t be until much later on that she realizes just how much he needed the money.)

Her face lights up, an eager smile spreading across her lips, and she nods back to her office. “If y’got a minute you can sign the paperwork now.” When he gives her a quizzical look she continues, “I know this is some illegal shit, but I wanna run the business right, at least.”

That seems to ease him up a little, and with a gesture of a hand with bloodied knuckles he allows her to lead the way.

The office itself is minimalistic in design — stark white walls, succulents adorning the desk, a few prints framing the walls. The bookshelf is filled with full binders, stuffed to the brim with present contracts and contracts from years gone past. Stevie fishes out the most recent binder, relatively new and flips it open on her desk before dropping into her chair, sighing in relief as if she had been on her feet all day.

(Truth is, she was in a couple fights earlier that night herself. The fact that she’s a got enhanced strength definitely plays a part in why she’s so eerily good, but it’s a secret only known to a few people close to her. Sometimes she feigns at being weaker than her opponents just to keep the ruse going.)

“Alright, alright. Lemme see here.” She flips to the end of the binder, pulls out a contact with a few blanks for Bucky to fill in his name, the date, and his signature. She slides it across the desk with a pen and a wide smile on her lips. “Alright. Read over this, sign all the blanks, and we’ll be good to go. After that anytime you want to fight just call me up and I can find somethin’ for you. I do most of the scheduling around here.”

“How long have y’been doin’ this?” Bucky asks as he meticulously scans over the contract.

“Mmm. Four, five years now, I think. I mean, it hasn’t always been this fuckin’… grand. I started this entire thing in the back of an after-hours bar, then word got around and well….” Stevie trails off, gesturing vaguely with her hands and a proud glint in her eyes. “Speaking of—“ She leans forward, elbows resting on the scattered papers across her desk. “—how’d you find out about this place?”  

Bucky fills in the last of the blanks with a near indecipherable scrawl before handing the sheet back. “Same way I guess everyone else did.” He leans back in the chair, one ankle resting across his knee. “Word of mouth.”

He’s not all that talkative of a guy, but Stevie isn’t surprised or all that put off by it. Nobody here is really all that interested in telling their story, so she accepts it for what it is.