#stick him in the doorway to block the others he doesnt mind.

[mute-call]

for any nightguards out there. please consider animatronic pg just chillin w you in your office while everyone else comes to murder you <3

[shadedrose01]

Date Night Differences

Ship: Parkner (Harley Keener/Peter Parker)

Summary: Harley and Peter go on a mission for their date night.

Tags: Febufluff, Date Night, Harley Keener as Iron Lad, BAMF Harley Keener, BAMF Peter Parker, Hydra (Marvel), hydra base, a tiny bit of violence, Peter Parker having Deadpool energy, Established Relationship, Dorks in Love, Exasperated Harley Keener, Fluff, Cute Ending, Bisexual Peter Parker, Gay Harley Keener, And a smidge of angst? But not really? Idk, Harley has an AI named ABBIE, and theres one Into The Spiderverse reference too

Day three of Febufluff: "Date Night"!

--

"We really need to rethink our choices." Harley groans as a fist collides with his metal helmet, his head swiveling to the side with the force of the blow. He glares back at the agent that hit him, who is now cradling his probably broken hand, and punches him back, the agents body flying across the room.

"What, you don't like this?" Peter voice chimes back through the coms, slight staticky and obviously out of breath as he fights, probably kicking ass wherever the hell he was.

"Scouting a HYDRA base for date night?" Harley hears a beep, sees two red dots coming up from behind him on his radar, and deploys his mini missiles, shooting out of his back and watching as the dots suddenly disappear. "No, not really, Pete. Why couldn't Tony or literally anyone else come do this for us? We could be having dinner right now, or watching a movie." He whines into the now empty space, sounding like a child as he strolls through the dark halls of the base, using infrared light to watch for any body heat signatures around him and keeping an eye on his radar to see if anyone else is coming his way.

"You know why, Harls." Peter teases, before grunting, a crash coming through right afterwards that makes Harley's heart spike.

"You good, Pete??"

There's a pause, and then a "Yup! All good!" that relaxes Harley instantly, puffing out a long breathe of air.

"Good. And yeah, I know why, but still! Stupid old people and their stupid retirement." He grumbles, turning the corner and freezing, seeing a room full of body signatures further down the hall to his right. The main room, Harley assumes, leaning against the wall and crouching down, trying to make himself less noticable just in case any stranglers come around. "Where are you, anyways?"

"I'm right here!" Peter suddenly appears in front of him, jumping down from the ceiling and giving Harley a massive heart attack, his body jerking back and tensing up instinctively before relaxing again.

"Gah, Peter! You cant just do that!" He breathes, putting a hand over his chest plate beside the arc reactor, above where his heart is.

Peter's mask twitches, his eyes moving in a motion that Harley can tell is him rolling his eyes, and Harley glares back at him even though Peter can't see it. "I'm surprised you didn't see me, with all of your fancy smancy tech."

Now its Harley that's rolling his eyes. "I told ABBIE to only warn me when threats are approaching. You aren't percieved as a threat."

Peter gasps dramatically. "Awh, babe! That's so sweet!"

Harley attempts to sigh in annoyance, but it ends up as a breathy laugh. "Let's just get this over with. What are we looking for again?"

"The codes for some super weapon that could kill us all or something. You know, the usual." Peter shrugs, winking, and this time Harley does sigh, causing Peter's shoulders to shake with silent laughter. "They should be on a computer in the final bosses room."

Harley ignores the video game analogy, exasperated out of his mind, and nods towards the room with all the heat signatures in it, the bodies barely moving. "In there. There's about 6 people, and they're just standing around, waiting. I think they know we're here."

"Then let's not keep the party waiting!" Peter jumps back up on to the ceiling, stealthily crawling his way towards the door and Harley follows, creeping over himself, on the floor instead. He presses his back against the wall and takes a deep breath. "You ready?"

"Ai ai, captain!" Is the response he gets, and Harley breathes out one last, airy chuckle before aiming his repulsor at the door and shooting it open, going in guns ablazing.

The agents start to shoot at him, but the Iron Lad armour absorbs all of the hits, the bullets ricocheting off of him and hitting different parts of the room. He starts firing repulsor blasts at the three people in his range, knocking them unconscious easily, looking for the other three. He doesn't  have to look far to see two bodies on the floor, and one attached to the wall, all unmoving and covered in webs, with a certain spider stood in the middle of the carnage, looking pleased with himself. "Well dress me up and call me the Staples button, because that was easy."

He even does a not so terrible impression of the voice. This is the person Harley loves. This is the person he chooses to be around. Why does he do this to himself?

(He wouldn't have it any other way.)

He doesn't dignify that with a response, though he silently agrees, and makes his way over to the large row of computers sat on top of a wooden rickety table against the wall, the space cluttered, gray and dark, like the stereotypical enemy computers that you'd see in the movies. How cliché. He searches around, and quickly finds a USB port. Now, he just- "Hey, you still got the USB stick, or whatever the hell you call it?" He turns towards Peter, who tilts his head like a confused puppy.

"The goober?"

"Yeah, that." Peter pats himself down, before putting his hand into an invisible pocket on his thigh that Harley has never seen before, and pulling the small device out with a small "ta-da!"

"Thanks, babe." He tries to push the stick into the slot, but it doesnt work, so he flips it over and tries again. When that doesnt work, he groans, flips it back over again, and when it finally slots into place, Harley watching as the code floods onto the screen, overriding the passcodes and finding the information they did to complete their mission.

The progression bar is about halfway to completion when Peter speaks up again. "Uh, babe?" and the change in his voice, from upbeat to quiet, nervous, has Harley alert immediately.

"Yeah?"

"Something's wrong." As soon as the words are out of his mouth, his display lights up red, images of a crumbling building and the words 'unstable structure' screaming in his face.

"The building is collapsing, Boss!" ABBIE exclaims to him, the AI's usually calm, youthful robotic voice filled with a fear Harley didn't know it could have. "You will need to escape immediately to avoid significant injury."

"Shit!" Harley glances at the progression bar, seeing that it's almost complete, almost done, just a little longer-

"Harls, what's happening?" Peter breaks into his thoughts as the room starts to shake, dust starting to fall from the ceiling, an ominous rumble starting in the background. Harley reaches out and grabs onto him, pressing the boy close to his body as the progress bar hits 100%, the rumble turning into a loud roar. "Harls?!?"

He yanks the stick out of its slot, and yells out a quick "hold on!" Before he shoots off towards the exit, flying through doorway after doorway as the rooms start to groan around him, large blocks of ceiling falling in front of his own eyes. He doesnt focus on it, can't focus on it, he has to get them to safety, has to get Peter out safely, he has to-

Harley breaks through the entrance of the base, shooting up into the sky just as the entire building crumbles to the ground, a cloud of dust flooding the air around it. Harley flies a little ways away, the USB, goober, whatever, still in hand, clutching onto Peter with the other.

He finds a hill further up the plain where the base was built, and lands slowly, gently, carefully helping Peter to his feet as soon as he does. He retracts his helmet, Peter taking off his mask, and a gloved hand grabs onto Peter's cheek, staring into his slightly shaken eyes and scanning his face and body for any injuries. "You okay? You aren't hurt, are you?"

"N-no, no, I'm okay. Are you okay?"

Harley lets out a sigh of relief. "Yeah, I'm okay, baby. I'm the one with the metal suit."

"Hey, I have a metal suit too!" Peter pouts, and Harley instantly knows he's alright. Really, truly alright, not just lying to make Harley feel better (which he has done one too many times in the past). "...Not on me, but still!"

Harley can't help the laugh that escapes him, hearty, full of warmth. "I know, sweetheart, I know."

He sees a big, goofy smile grow onto Peter's face, and Harley cant help but to pull him into a hug, pressing his face into Peter's hair as Peter nuzzles into his chest with a soft, content sigh. Looking over Peter's shoulder, Harley can faintly see the pinks, reds, yellows and oranges of the setting sun through the trees, the ball of fire slowly sinking into the horizon, and he cant help but to grin. With a successful mission on their hands, and Peter in his arms, Harley cant help but to grin, feeling satisfied.

Maybe this wasn't so bad of a date night after all.

[kristie-rp]

Promise

Triggers: Suicide mention, drug mention, overdose mention, prostitution, gun mention, kidnapping

“I’ll take care of you,” she had promised. She can’t regret the oath, but she does regret what it drove her to, the desperate need to prove she could keep the promise.

Kara gets into prostitution because her little brother is eleven when the last of their parents vanish. She is seventeen, and she knows enough to be aware that the big motivator in Blacklight is money, and when her dad ran out, this is what happens: there’s no point trying to force a payment from a man with his head barely above water. She knows without a body being found that he is dead. Kara has her savings, her college fund, and that’s it. It’s not enough for two kids to live off, and her part-time job at a clothing store isn’t going to keep them afloat, and no one she wants her brother anywhere near is going to hire an eleven year old.

So – so she starts to prostitute herself, an amateur working cheap by Blacklight standards. She learns how much to charge without drawing complaints, she learns how to balance senior year and ‘work’, and she learns that many clients will pay more for the thrill of her being so much younger than the average whore. Enable a fetish and the cash goes up, enough to pay for school, for food, for a roof. At eighteen she gets sole custody of Lionel, legally, without complaint. She fucks the judge to get it through quick, once they get caught by the system.

She spends too long in the bathroom, driving the water bill up and up and scrubbing her skin raw in an attempt to get clean. Lionel is twelve, and she’s learned enough now to know how to draw lines, how to enforce them without losing clients. He knows what she does, he knows how much she hates it, but she doesn’t bring her work home and he can’t complain, however much he might want to.

Eighteen is when the pimp for her district finds out about her working solo, cutting into his profits. Eighteen is when  Craig gets his hands on her, and really, he’s not so bad, except taking off some of her profits. She explains to him her situation, barely thinking it’ll work but convinced it’s worth a try – and he listens. He gives her specific times to work, promises he’ll take only ten percent, a fixed rate. It’s – it’s not good, but it’s not bad, she’s got repeat clients who are sleazier than Craig.

And then Faust finds out about her.

“So you’re the infamous Caramel,” are his first words to her.

She’s standing as still as she knows how, wearing something revealing beneath a heavy, cheap coat. She’s going for allure, even though she’s just a little too far from curvy for the effect to work as she intends; this is her ‘uniform’, what she wears when she’s out during the hours Craig assigns.

“I’m whoever you need me to be, baby,” she says. Her voice is a rasp, quiet, but not subdued. There is a confidence in her tone that many whores have lost by the end of their first year – but she cannot afford to become less of a person, not with Lionel at home depending on her, not with so many people willing to take advantage of her.

Faust circles like a vulture, and she knows she is being judged. She keeps her eyes partially shut, as though heavily lidded, and watches him with pursed lips painted  in a discounted dark pink. He’s not actually that old at this point, though definitely older than her – she guesses him to be around thirty, much younger than her year-dead father. He’s not bad looking, either. It won’t be a struggle to act like she likes it when he inevitably goes down on her, even if what follows is her usual routine of scathing hot water and too-long in the shower, worrying a brother who is getting more and more withdrawn in turn.

“I’ll pay you triple,” he says at last, “to stay overnight. I get twenty-five percent of your cut from clients who aren’t me.”

Kara raises a brow at him. “Craig might have something to say about that.” She doesn’t say that this is a rip off, that she’s not going to jump ship from her fantastic deal just because he offers better pay to start

Faust’s smile is soft, but there’s something in his eyes that stands out to her – something dangerous. Something that tells her this man is not a nice man, as if she hadn’t guessed from an awareness of who he is. “Craig can’t say much once he’s dead.”

Her blood runs cold, but she steps closer to him. He doesn’t back down; she runs a hand up his chest and grips the gaudy tie he is wearing, something only a Blacklight local would like. She doesn’t smile, but she peers at him from beneath the fake eyelashes she is wearing only for this meeting. The effect is that she is playing coy, with any luck. “Whatever you say, boss,” she breathes, and drags him down to kiss her.

She can never pick out individual moments of her time with Faust, not in hindsight. It’s either a self-defence mechanism or a consequence of everything blurring together.

After that first meeting with her, he puts a pimp, loyal to him and more obedient than Craig proved to be, in charge of the whores. The new pimp is an asshole in every way except physically; he does not do anything that might bruise. But the verbal and psychological, the demeaning, the ripping off all of them – Kara is the only one whose cut never changes, because she is not afraid to talk money with Faust, and she talked him into writing up a contract that means he takes a profit from her, not the new pimp, and only a set amount. It’s not good, and for the first time she wonders if maybe things with Craig were better than she thought – and those drained her of everything she had.

If she believed in gods, this would be about where she’d start praying.

She comes home the day of her brothers fourteenth birthday with a little cake and a spring in her step, for once. Faust has promised her the weekend off, written it into another contract in what she knows is both a power play and a source of amusement for him; his little whore with her obsession with promises being kept. She doesn’t care that he mocks her for this, because promises are the only thing she can keep.

“Hey, Li? You home?”

The front door is locked, but not deadlocked; she knows he is. He’s good at keeping safe, good at following rules a lot of people in Blacklight take for granted or ignore. Kara smiles to herself: it’s a Friday, and she doesn’t have to do any work until Monday, and this is going to be a weekend just for her and Lionel. She’s got some money stowed away, enough that they can rent a car – dads being long since gone – and get out of Blacklight, just for the weekend. Never has she been happier her brother is a summer born child; they can go somewhere with a pool, or somewhere on the sea. They haven’t seen it since the summer before their dad was killed, and it’s finally time – in her opinion – to move on.

The house is quiet, though. She figures Lionel has earphones in, because the budget ones that came with his phone are the best sound system they have. He saved for ages to get that thing, scrounging together the change from Kara sending him grocery shopping and the neighbours paying him to pay the lawn until he could afford a Nokia and a memory card, the better to store music on. He loves his music, and his dream is to go to a concert; there aren’t any on this year that he’s interested in, or she would be taking him to it. “Boys and their toys,” she murmurs to herself, fond. She’s been busy, forced to work more lately by Faust and the twenty-five percent, and she’s been looking forward to this for ages, both for the company of Lionel, and for herself. Too much Blacklight breaks people, after all.

She sticks some candles in the little cake, lights them and heads into the further reaches of the apartment. It’s a shoebox, but she can make rent more often than not, and they each have their own rooms, for better or worse. She starts humming the timeless classic in her usual almost-croak, long since over how a husky voice does not lend itself well to singing. Still, she sings anyway, a loud “Happy birthday to you,” that cuts off as she drops the cake in the doorway.

Lionel is collapsed on the floor, and she only prevents a fire because her bare foot stamps out the candles before the ancient carpet can catch fire. Her panic blocks out the stab of pain, and she dives to her knees beside her little brother, feeling for a pulse before grasping for his phone, dropped on a stack of pamphlets, dialling emergency services because it’s that or nothing, and she can’t handle doing nothing.

The paramedics ask her more questions than she can answer. Oh, she can answer the standard lot – medical insurance, none; patients name, Lionel Darcy St Claire; patients age, fourteen; patients date of birth, today; emergency contact, Kara St Claire – but when they ask her if he’s been showing symptoms of anything, she cannot answer. “I work a lot,” she explains, but it feels feeble to her ears, and she feels judged for this more than anything else.

Their weekend away turns into a weekend in the hospital, and the money she has saved to make the weekend worth more than most is set aside for hospital bills. Kara spends Friday night sitting vigil at his bedside, Saturday with her head in her hands and shoulders hunched, and Sunday is when someone finally decides to tell her what’s going on. There’s an excess of something in his system – something that usually results from an overdose of opioids , of painkillers.

“There weren’t any pills anywhere near him,” she says, something nagging at the back of her mind.

The doctor gives a tight smile, sympathy heavy in his eyes. “It can take a week or longer for the overdose to show any observable effects to others, especially if he’s trying to hide them,” he informs her. “This isn’t your fault,” he says, “but his liver is shutting down. Chances are that there’s nothing you could’ve done – we’ve had a lot of suicides lately. It’s unlikely that he will last out the week.”

It’s not reassuring, not at all. She gives the doctor a look that says as much, then closes her eyes. She wants to cry, but she hasn’t done that, not in years, teardrops burning away from the inside out under scalding hot water. She hears the doctor leave, but she stays there, still, with her brother and the beeping of the machines that are, apparently, doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.

She falls asleep in the armchair beside the bed, curled in on herself as though having any more warmth will make this all go away. When her phone winks onto standby after she has fallen asleep, it closes on a Google search result, the top few links showing they’ve been clicked.

is cremation cheaper than burial blacklight usa

Lionel, it turns out, has been having a much harder time than she has been aware. She reaches out to the boy she remembers as his best friend, and it is only herself, him, his sister, and two former classmates who liked having Lionel paired with them for group work come to the pathetic service she holds. She doesn’t believe in god or gods, never has, and while Lionel liked the idea of the comfort divine answers might bring, he didn’t believe either. So she can’t bring herself to hire some religious man to preach something she doesn’t believe, even if it might make the sting any less painful.

She leads the lot of them to the roof of the shoebox apartment she doesn’t need any longer but can’t bring herself to leave, high above the second-storey place she manages to afford. It’s a hideous rooftop, but the building itself is nine storeys, and the view isn’t awful. There’s a barbecue and some cushions discarded up here, an esky that’s more often empty than not, and on afternoons when Kara didn’t have to work and he found himself in the mood, they would sit up here and talk about nothing and everything.

It’s the place most attached to him that brings the least amount of pain, now.

“Don’t you want to say something? In his memory, or something?” the friend asks, when they’re standing there with the urn that holds all that remains of her brothers body. His name is Alex; he’s the most harmless person Kara knows, now. Certainly the most naive and the most delusional. His parents are moving the family to New Brightside, on the other side of Port Lyndon to Blacklight, before the end of the year, chasing job opportunities they’re lucky to have been offered. Kara cannot resent them for their escape, because she hates this city, this city that breaks the people who least deserve it; but she can add them leaving to the list of reasons she has started to write up about

Everything Kara wants to say has been said already, to a brother trapped in a medically induced coma until his liver finally gave out, because Blacklight is no different to America and doesn’t allow euthanasia.

“I remember,” she says quietly, “the summer before mom died. Li – Lionel was four. He was turning four, four years old, can you imagine? And he was – he was so damn happy. I was ten, I thought I was so damn cool, and I really, really wasn’t.

“We went to the coast for a long weekend, I think Independence Day fell on a Monday that year. And there were these teenagers there, probably – probably as old as you guys are now. Thirteen, fourteen, not old at all. I thought they were the most amazing people I’d ever met, and I was such a jackass to Li on the first day, wanting to impress them. Then, on that night, we had this little family campfire, just the four of us, and dad gave me this lecture about not being mean to my brother, about how it was my responsibility to look after him. About how I’d regret not being nice, sooner or later.

“And Lionel, he just – he got up and he sat next to me and he interrupted dad, this four year old, and he says, dead serious, ‘Kara just wanted new friends’. He didn’t hold a grudge at all, it hadn’t even upset him that I was such a – a selfish person. And I know, I know kids don’t understand that at all, they’d never see it as selfish, but usually, you know, the fact that they’re four gets to them first, and they’re all ‘my way is the only way’. But Lionel,” and she laughs faintly, bitterly, fondly; “Lionel just – skipped that stage. And it didn’t change. It never started.

“Blacklight needs more people like that,” she finished, swallowing, choking on the emotion welling up in her throat.

The service ends with everyone sad, the only dry eye Kara’s, and only because she forces it. She’s still clutching the urn, though she plans on emptying it. It’s useless to her, just another thing to decorate the apartment, but it feels more important than that. After all, it’s her little brother in her arms. So she shuts down the thoughts that have been driving her crazy, the ones insisting a pot of ash shouldn’t mean anything, that an unmarked grave would be worth more to her.

But it’s Lionel. He’s all she’s had for three years now, he’s the reason she’s a lower class citizen, and she promised she’d take care of him. She swore.

I’ve never broken a promise before, she thinks, and then flinches from the thought, closes her eyes to it, refuses to acknowledge it again.

She’s got work, anyway. This – this debate can wait.

Kara is three months from her twenty-first birthday when she finds out she’s pregnant.

It isn’t much of a discovery, really. It’s actually impressive it hasn’t happened sooner – she’s heard horror stories of clients and pimps sabotaging others’ birth control, which is why she takes her prescribed pills meticulously, always made sure she has a supply even when money gets tight. That’s something that doesn’t happen much, not anymore, she’s even got savings.

And, apparently, a child on the way.

Maybe I should consider those god things again, she thinks as she wraps and dumps the test. It’d certainly explain the number of things that are fucking with me.

Still – still. She’s been alone for long enough that a bastard child sounds like a good idea, or at least one she doesn’t want to dismiss out of hand. She puts a lot of thought into the technicalities, makes lists and checks them twice.

In reality, her mind is made up the second that little plus sign shows up – the planning comes with the knowledge that a whore isn’t going to make the kind of mother she wants to be.

“You have a daughter,” is what the midwife says, smiling warmly at Kara. Kara is exhausted, feels sweat soaked and disgusting, and there are textbooks at home she is supposed to be revising, unable to take time off even for this – she’s taken advantage of the break from whoring (“Can’t very well have you giving birth in the middle of a good fuck,” he had insisted, which was crass but meant she got time off from wor) to pick up the business course she found in the pamphlets in her brothers’ room, all those years ago. “Would you like to hold her?”

“Please,” Kara says immediately, tired and almost pleading, reaching for the infant. The midwife laughs, more open and affectionate than anyone Kara has spent time with in a long time, and gently arranges the baby in her arms.

“Have you decided on a name for her, yet?”

Kara hums. She’s staring at her new child, at her family, wonder in her wide green eyes. The baby has blonde hair on her head, like Kara’s, and her eyes, for the moment, are shut as she doses. She’s a beautiful little girl, bundled into the blanket and onesie the maternity ward provides. Kara is absolutely certain she’s never going to make anything this perfect again, and immediately feels immensely guilty that she’s stuck picking up on the whoring again just as soon as Faust tires of her sabbatical. All the more reason to finish this business course, to pick up on dreams she had back in high school, that, apparently, Lionel remembered in the week before he succumbed to his suicide attempt.

(She still doesn’t know what caused it, or what she missed, if she could have stopped it. She constantly faces what-ifs and dreams and nightmares of possibilities, subconscious images so realistic she wakes up waiting to tell Lionel about it – and then the memories hit and she curls back up, chokes back the emotion, refuses the tears she still hasn’t shed. But what-ifs are useless and the past cannot be changed: Blacklight breaks people. She has known this all her life.)

“Darcy Artemis St Claire,” she answers the midwife at last, leaning down to kiss her little girls forehead. Darcy feels right, which she didn’t expect, but it just – it suits the person in her arms, belongs to her in a way Kara has heard some mothers’ say is possible, but didn’t believe. The midwife says something about paperwork and vanishes to find it, pulling the crib over so Kara can put her baby to bed, if she chooses.

When she’s alone with Darcy, Kara presses her lips to the top of her babies’ head yet again. “You’re going to be brilliant,” she murmurs, almost silent. “You’re not going to have a life like mine. I’ll never let you feel alone, I promise. You’re never going to have to swear yourself to – to someone like Faust or Craig or anyone else. I swear, Darcy. We don’t know each other well yet, but we will, and it is going to be fantastic. I promise you.”

She should learn to keep her mouth shut.

Darcy opens her eyes more and more, and there’s something familiar in them. It’s only once Kara is forced to go back to work, cajoling the elderly neighbour into caring for Darcy for the few hours she has to be gone, that she figures it out.

She’s lying in bed with Faust, waiting for him to tell her she can get out, go home, collect her pay direct to a bank account she always transfers the money straight out of, when it comes to her. Darcy doesn’t have her eyes, but they’ve always been familiar. Kara has a lot of regulars, people she’s seen since coming back to work.

“She’s got your eyes,” she blurts without thinking, and immediately starts cursing herself out internally, more than she usually does. She promised Darcy she’d never owe herself to someone like Faust, and here she is, piquing his curiosity.

“I’m not giving you alimony. Keep your bastard child away from me,” he instructs.

She immediately wants to leap to her daughters defence, but she stops herself. She doesn’t want him in Darcy’s life, after all – she promised Darcy, and she’s never going to know that this one time, Kara didn’t defend her. “I don’t want your hush money,” she snaps, getting out from the bed he fucked her in.

She feels dirty, but that’s normal, after any time spent with Faust at all – any time spent working at all. She’s almost finished her course, though, and then she can work on starting a store, the way she wanted to as a teen.  She’s almost out. Finally.

Kara isn’t exactly counting down the days, but she is closer to relieved than she’s felt for a long time.

“What’s this I hear,” Faust says, speaking very slowly, “about you studying?”

He says it like it’s a dirty word, but it’s Kara who is alarmed. She’s got a contract with him that doesn’t say it, but everyone knows that once Faust has you, you don’t get out. The contract doesn’t say it, but everyone knows the rules: no studying, no betterment of yourself, no terminating your employment. Whores get out only once they’re too old to be appealing, businesspeople get out when they can payout more than Faust thinks they are worth, mercs don’t get out.

The exception is when they get dead.

Who told you, is the first question on her tongue, but she doesn’t ask. Even if he answers, it won’t do her any good. “It doesn’t say anything in my contract about me not being allowed to pursue other uses of my time, as long as it doesn’t impact my earnings. It hasn’t, therefore, you have no reason to be like this.” She folds her arms over her chest, the better to hide her fisted hands.

He laughs, long and loud and cruel. “Your contract means nothing. I maintain the terms because it amuses me, but if you are betraying me, Caramel, then you need to be punished. You’re nothing more than a particularly pretty slut, spreading your legs for whatever cash you can get your hands on.”

Kara hates that name, but she freezes, and cannot move. He raises a hand and two men come in, along with a woman she’s barely aware of, some other whore, one of the older ones – one of the broken ones.

“Do it,” he instructs.

The men get between the two women, but it’s the woman who catches Kara’s attention. She’s tiny and hunched and doesn’t have an ounce of confidence in her movements – and she’s walking right for the room where Darcy is sleeping.

“What are you doing?” Kara exclaims, lunging forward. One of the men grab her wrist, the better to prevent her from moving.

“You want to take one of my toys away?” Faust sneers. Kara has never wanted to attack him as much as she does now. “I will take yours. After all, she’s half mine, isn’t she? What was it you said – she has my eyes.”

In the other room, the woman must have picked up Darcy; the baby starts to cry. There are quiet shushing sounds, but they don’t work – Kara and the neighbour are the only people who can get her to be quiet, once she starts crying. Kara doesn’t know if it’s a temperament thing or what, but she doesn’t mind, not as long as she can get there to stop it. “No,” she gasps, then repeats it louder, wrenching out of the grip of the lackey, “No! Don’t you dare, don’t even think about it, I’ll – I’ll go to the police, or I’ll hire someone to get you, Faust, just watch me – get off me – don’t touch her!”

The last shout comes from the older whore showing the wailing infant to Faust. And – yes, okay, he’s the source of the sperm that made Darcy possible, but he’s not her father, and he looks at the baby as though she is some new plaything. Figures, Kara will think later, but for now, she is too panicked, too defensive, too amped up to do anything. “Stop that,” he tells Darcy, but if anything it only makes her cry louder. He rolls his eyes and dismisses both the whore and the baby with a wave of his hand, and Kara is reminded again of how offended she was, when she realised who made her daughter possible. “You, too. Stop it,” he orders, not even looking at the crying child. “The police won’t act against me, and no one you could find would dare go against me. I own this city, I own you, and now, I own your daughter.”

“Fuck you, Faust,” she spits, tugging ineffectually against the grip of the merc. One of them shifts behind her, not that she can see it, and lifts something. Faust nods in front of her, and she opens her mouth to keep protesting, to keep yelling, to talk sense into the man who is kidnapping a baby he wanted nothing to do with less than a year ago.

Only something soft goes over her mouth and nose, muffling her shouts, and when she inhales the air is sickly sweet. Her eyes go wider, and she’s at once disgusted and horrified and incensed, but it doesn’t mean anything. After all – she isn’t immune to chloroform.

His words are a premonition:

The police do nothing. He has half a claim on a child, and if she can’t keep it safe from one little home invader, clearly she isn’t fit for custody, and less than a tenth of the police force in Blacklight aren’t in Faust’s pocket –

She can’t hire anyone to help. She doesn’t have the money, and she doesn’t trust the sort of people she could hire, and one in maybe every two hundred residents of Blacklight would maybe consider doing something that will piss off Faust –

There’s no one who will volunteer to help. She knows people who might not like Faust’s methods, but they are quiet and constrained and won’t act against him, and she couldn’t ask them to anyway, not without becoming as bad as him (which, honestly, wouldn’t be that bad, if she got her baby back) –

His words are a challenge:

He says he owns her, but she refuses to be owned by someone who no longer has anything over her. He took her daughter, and she’s not powerful enough to right the wrong, not yet –

But he can’t do anything worse to her now, so why should she listen to a word he says?

“Y’know,” X says. He’s a hulking figure, leaning against the glass cabinet she’s  fixing the display of, completely at home in the meticulously kept almost-open store. “when we met, I didn’t think you’d end up at this point.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, common whore – no offence – to the owner of a gun store? It’s almost a 180.”

Kara snorts, because that’s the best she can offer while she’s got her hands on an engraved Colt. She rests it gently on the cushion and slides the drawer shut, locking it tight before she looks up at him. “Says the guy who gave me the idea in the first place.”

“You were at a gun show, of course that’s why I thought you were there. It’s that or you’re a gun bunny.”

“That’s not a thing,” she says drily, because he’s been trying to make it a thing at least as long as she’s known him. He hasn’t succeeded, not yet. She’s not going to let him – at least, not around her. Not on her corner of this cesspool.

“It’s totally a thing.”

She scoffs hard enough that her throat feels raw, and almost chokes on nothing. He pushes the bottle of water on the counter towards her, raises a brow at her. “Thanks,” she says, once she’s got it down without coughing anything up.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. Then it’s his turn to laugh, and roll his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re thanking me for.”

There are a lot of things. She met X at a dark point in her life, and while things haven’t gotten any lighter, she still constantly feels as though she owes him. “Closing your shop to come help me open, obviously,” she says, but it’s only one of a much longer list.

He knows. The smile he gives her is soft, and he leans across the counter to tap her nose. “You’re going to figure it all out,” he says, “I know it.”

She manages a smile back at him. It’s hard to believe – but it means the world that he does already. Apparently, it’s just what friends do – and she’s been missing out.

[feelingsdusk]

Hell no

Happy birthday, @ayamabuki!!! Sorry I’m late! I got blocked with my original idea (Naruto) and had to even change fandoms in the end. Hope you like this!

—

When Tseng suddenly finds himself back in the tiny room he used to rent just before he applied to the Turks with a baby face, hair more than a few inches shorter and clad in a t-shirt and shorts, his first thought is what the-.

When he opens the door to find one tiny person that went by the name of Aerith Gainsborough clad in a little pink sundress with matching Mary Janes and her hair in very high pigtails, his second thought is hell no.

Then she smiles.

(Tseng slams the door shut.)

—

“You’re being too dramatic,” Aerith pipes combing her fingers through her black haired wig. “It’s just a dress, even Cloud didn’t mind. And he went the whole nine yards and put on the proper underwear.”

Tseng is really confused. He doesn’t know how it happened exactly, but one moment he was barricaded in his tiny room and the next he was clad in a black travel dress and kidnapping Aerith out of Midgar. He even has a wig and make up on, for Gaia’s sake, and he can’t remember when exactly he put those on. Was it when they were dodging the Turks at the Slums or when they hid at the park of Sector 4 afterwards? He did have it on when that SOLDIER stopped him to flirt at Belhelmel Square, so it must have been at one of those points!

But somehow, with the help of everything he learned in all of his fruitful career as a Turk, they have managed to leave Midgar behind. Why he didn’t simply let himself be caught, Tseng will never know.

“I knew I had made the right choice,” Aerith grins. “Everything is going perfectly. Now we only have to make it to Junon.”

Tseng archs an eyebrow, looks at her and then at himself. This is the furthest from perfect than he could imagine, the only thing worse would be if they were in a holding cell right now. Putting aside the fact that he’s wearing a dress, they have nothing else but the clothes on their backs. No spare clothes, no weapons, no money, no means of transportation. This is a disaster.

(And Tseng still doesn’t know why is he going along this. What does he care about apocalypses and mighty battles between enhanced warriors? Everything went well last time, so why change anything?)

But no, Aerith just grins again and forward she goes into the wilderness. Never mind the Custom Sweepers and Prowlers that plague the way until Kalm. And did Tseng already mention that they don’t have any kind of weapons?

“Look at it this way,” she says cheerfully. “It’s not like we have anything that the Prowlers can steal-”

“Other than our lives.”

“-and the Custom Sweepers are really slow, so we can outrun them.”

Which in reality means that Tseng can outrun them while she whoops delighted over his shoulder and his skirt tangles between his legs and makes the whole situation even worse. By the time they reach Kalm, he’s had to outrun four Custom Sweepers and evade seven encounters with the Prowlers, so he’s completely exausted and he wants nothing more than a bed.

But of course, if there’s no money there’s no bed, no weapons, no trousers. But everything is going perfectly.

“Ok,” Aerith says. “Now we just have to make it to the Chocobo Ranch. I’m sure that we can convince them to give us some work to earn enough to get some greens to capture a Chocobo to evade the Zolom.”

Tseng blinks as a memory of the dragons that live among the other nasty creatures in the Mythril Cave assaults him and hell no. He’s not going to try to outrun dragons in an enclosed space whose setup he doesn’t even remember well. Hell, he’s not outrunning anything else, period.

It’s disgusting and demeaning, but looting it is.

“Oh, Tseng,” Aerith chirps delighted. “So naughty!”

He loots all the houses and then, with a sigh, he gives priority to getting a weapon. He sells everything he finds except for a couple of potions and then goes to the Weapon Shop. He doesn’t like any of the choices he has (no gun in sight) but he ends up going for the Full Metal Staff. Then, weapon in hand, he goes outside to kill monsters until he has saved enough to buy clothes, equipment and still has some left for emergencies. It takes him nearly all day and Aerith pouts something fierce, but Tseng doesn’t let her puppy eyes move him.

Only after Tseng has a change of clothes do they leave. He’s not stupid, though, so he doesn’t change until they have reached the Chocobo Ranch. And no, it’s not because he has taken a liking to wearing a dress, no matter what Aerith says.

They enter the Ranch to buy some greens and find out that they need a Chocobo Lure materia that is obscenely expensive. Tseng sighs because oh, how the mighty have fallen, and goes back outside to kill more monsters while Aerith cheers him from a few feet away. When they finally have the materia, he sets to the task of capturing a chocobo while she coos at the beast and repeats the weird dance the birds have.

(Tseng is a Turk, he’s gone through a lot of unsavoury things, but this is a new low for him.)

—

The trip through the Mythril Cave is something that Tseng will forever bury deep, deep down in his mind but he makes a mental note to not let Aerith out of his sight when they reach the Nibel Area because Kalm Area dragons are kittens compared to those and hell no.

(Why is Tseng doing this again?)

They avoid Fort Condor altogether. At this point in time they’re starting their war against ShinRa to save the condors and he doesn’t want to touch that with a ten foot pole because by now they’re probably looking for Aerith everywhere.

They lure another Chocobo to cross the rivers that they have on their path towards Junon. When they’re nearly outside the city, they release the bird and continue walking until they reach what’s left of the original Junon Harbour.

Before entering the city, Aerith stops him and smiles.

Hell no.

Tseng spends the next whole week in a dress. He now has added two more to his collection: a dark blue one and a pearl grey one. The ship’s captain keeps trying to lose Aerith so that he can get “her” alone. If Tseng didn’t have even the foggiest idea of how to operate a cargo ship, no one would find the body.

“I thought guys had a code?” Aerith inquires as she pokes at the man Tseng has just reduced unconscious with a well placed kick.

Tseng doesnt dignify that with an answer. He just tidies his dress, grabs the brat like a sack of potatoes and leaves the ship with his head held high and his bag full of provisions that he’s been filching since day one. Aerith giggles all the way.

—

At this point, Tseng doesn’t bother ditching the dress, he just continues on because he’s going to have to put it on again the moment they reach another village and he doesn’t give two shits anymore. Besides, this area is heavily controlled by ShinRa patrols, so he can’t risk it anyway.

There was a Chocobo area pretty near Costa del Sol, so it doesn’t take them more than a day to cross Corel Area and make it to Nibelheim.

(That Chocobo Lure may very well be the best spent 2000 gil of his life.)

The moment they enter the village, they get greeted by the stares of the townspeople. If Tseng recalls well, these people are still real because Sephiroth hasn’t burned the town to the ground yet.

The brat makes a beeline towards one of the houses and knocks. A harried looking blonde woman opens the door and Aerith smiles sunnily. One tiny Cloud Strife appears on the doorway and Tseng blinks.

“You made me go through puberty again,” he says simply.

“I kidnapped him,” she answers brightly pointing at Tseng, “and made him wear a dress too if that makes you feel better.”

Cloud blinks at Tseng and then smirks. Tseng archs an eyebrow in response.

“At least it’s not purple,” he says to Aerith. “And I doubt that he’s wearing a matching lacy bra and panties.”

“First, you chose that dress-”

“I did?”

“-and second, no one forced you to wear the lingerie.”

“That’s not how I remember it happening.”

“And as for him, I tried to hide his underwear but he caught me red handed. He’s a lot less gullible than you are.”

“Thanks,” both Tseng and Cloud answer at the same time and Aerith grins.

“So how do we do this?” Cloud finally sighs.

“Did you find it?”

“Yeah, there’s one right at the top of the first mountain.”

“Perfect.”

Tseng eyes his Full Metal Staff and hell no, this isn’t perfect at all. He grabs her before she can sprint forward and secures her under his arm.

“Strife, Weapon Shop.” The blond blinks. “Don’t tell me, there’s none.” He grins. Tseng sighs inwardly. So Nibel dragons with a metal stick, wonderful. “Lead the way, then.”

“I know how to walk,” Aerith chirps.

“Sadly.”

(If she didn’t, worrying about her trying to sneak out to pet a baby dragon wouldn’t be a thing.)

“Ohhhh,” both brats sing admiringly.

(Seriously, why is he doing this???)

An hour of trecking, several close calls with dragons, Sonic Speeds and wolves, they finally reach the top of the first mountain. Tseng eyes his poor bent out of shape staff sadly. While he’s mourning the loss and thinking about how to make it back to town without it, Cloud suddenly jumps into a natural Mako pool.

Tseng blinks. Then he sighs and rubs his temples. When he opens his eyes back, the blond is still submerged inside litres and litres of liquid Mako and Tseng knows he was a Turk but what has be done to deserve this?

“Hmmm,” Aerith hums contemplatively. “I may have miscalculated one thing. How do we get him out of there?”

Tseng looks at the sunk form and then at his bent staff. Then he spends the next fifteen minutes manoeuvring him out of the pool. While Aerith begins her gospel, Tseng contemplates the possibility of slipping out and leaving these two behind. Then he thinks about what these two crazy brats could do alone and the image of Gaia exploding comes to mind, so he stays.

“Well,” she says after Cloud has stopped vomiting in a corner. “I think we need to do that a couple more times but we should bring a change of clothes next time.”

“Oh,” Tseng says because these two brats are going to drive him into an early grave and they have to make up for it somehow. “I have clothes, Strife.”

Aerith cackles.

“Let’s go wake up Vincent.”

“He may not want to this early.”

Tseng doesn’t care what the man wants, he’s not dealing with this shit alone anymore.

  Hell no.