these violent delights have violent ends

Fallon froze as the doctor commanded her to stop and her body went rigid at her touch. As Gus broke eye contact to toss back her shot, Fallon found it in herself to finally move. She silently cursed herself for her lack of composure. She tried to swallow away the dryness that had collected in the back of her throat and glanced around the bar for some sort of distraction. She grabbed a lime and knife, desperate to keep her hands and her mind occupied in hopes to quell the heat that continued to rise within her. 

Fallon snorted as she sliced through the skin of the lime, lifting her gaze to her boss once again before shrugging. “Yeah, Mack is…” she shook her head and lifted her eyebrows, remembering all of the questionable things that mad had put her through during her residency at The Ice House. “He’s something else.” She scooped her slices of lime and placed them in their designated plastic container.

She reached for another lime. Her heart fluttered at the words. A promise? An offer? A flutter of hope stirred within her. The thought of her and Gus living some lavish life somewhere far away from this shit hole town consumed her. Distracted by this quiet reverie, Fallon didn’t realize the knife had slipped against the lime and landed directly on the pad of her thumb. Is sliced through the flesh with ease. “Shit…” Fallon grabbed her drying rag and wrapped it around her thumb. She eyed Mack, and then Gus. The fear of disappointing them both almost made tears swell in her eyes. Almost.  

“Listen, you should probably go.” She shook her head feeling the heat of her wound begin to throb. She was angry. She was angry at herself for allowing herself to believe Gus, even for a moment. For getting distracted. For allowing her emotions to get the better of her. Empty promises was all she was ever offered and here she was again; bleeding and fighting back tears. 

It seemed Gus had pushed too far. Because that’s how the world worked, wasn’t it? You push and you push, and eventually, something’s got to give. A sharp tut left her lips as Fallon wrapped her bleeding hand in a cloth that certainly hadn’t been sanitized properly, and just as she vowed that she was going to retract, here she was, diving back in.

“I’m doing myself a favor,” she sighed, reaching forward and taking Fallon’s hand again, this time without any implication, just with pure, clinical attention. “You wrap that hand of yours with a dirty rag, and you’ll be back in my office within the week with an infection so bad you’ll wish I could amputate it. And while the thought of you showing up all doe eyed at my place of business is admittedly... tempting, I don’t feel like doing the fucking paperwork.”

Gus grabbed a clean napkin from a nearby stack, covering the wound and pressing down hard. Possibly harder than she needed to, but she watched Fallon, eyes flickering all over the other’s face, trying to decipher what was behind those large, sad eyes. Would Gus like what she found? She didn’t particularly care, so long as Fallon would never stop looking at her like that. Gus wanted to wallow in the depths of her gaze, wanted to drown in it, wanted to drown the two of them together. What was the point of love if it didn’t kill you?

Eyes still fixed on Fallon, she lifted the bartender’s hand up to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to the side of the injury, fluttering her lashes, and giving a coy little smile. “Before I go, let me kiss it better, baby,” she purred.

gus had already torn into a bag of sour patch kids as she wandered through the store. did she have any intention of paying for them? sure, if someone asked. if they didn’t... she’d always enjoyed the gentle rush of kleptomania.

licking sourness off her fingers, she appraised the eggs – what she’d really come here to purchase, given that her mother forgot to buy them every time, without fail, that she went shopping. her posture was lazy, laid back, lacking the tension of everyone around her. titters of the poor pastor, where are we supposed to go now for service, who do you think did it were barely a blip on gus’ radar. no. it was the eggs she’d come here for, not meaningless fodder for small town drama.

and carton in hand, she headed towards the check out, only to get side tracked when she saw–

“oi,” she snapped, approaching ashley with a bone to pick, eyes slanting with scrutiny. “do i need to treat you for chronic dumb assery as well as your stupid hand? because that shit is incurable and highly contagious, and i’m sorry, but your prognosis is bleak.”

gus grabbed at his wrist, jaw set in a hard, annoyed line. “i told you to make a follow up appointment in two weeks. three weeks ago. you have six stitches in your hand. do you enjoy excruciating pain or are you just incapable of comprehending the passage of linear time?”

The fire was all anyone could talk about. Out of respect for the church burning to the ground the managers of the Ice House managers made the decision to cancel any dances.The stages sat dark and the few patrons that found their way in sad like solemn stone statues. It was a funny disposition seeing those sad souls sulking beneath the upbeat, pulsing music that filtered through the overhead speakers. Fallon was behind the bar, one hand wrapped around a wet glass, the other clutching a drying rag. She daydreamed as she squeaked the glass dry. Her lips moved mindlessly as she counted an estimate of how much money she was going to lose out on tonight. Another thing taken from her by that fucking church. 

The door opened, snapping Fallon from her bitter reverie. She glanced up, placing the glass behind the bar with its compatriots. Her breath hitched in her throat when she saw Dr. Carson walk through the doors. She felt a strange heat rising in the skin on her chest and neck as Gus made her way to the bar. When Gus spoke, Fallon’s eyes locked in on her examining every detail of her face; a starving puppy looking at a morsel of meat. 

Lost. She was absolutely lost for words. An awkward pause hung between them after Gus spoke. After what seemed like hours Fallon spat the words out. “Drink?” Her voice cracked against her own discomposure. It was all she could manage to say. She blinked, trying to escape the doctor’s trance. “I uh…” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t drink on the job.” She eyed her boss. Mr. Mack sat, arms crossed, on a bar stool near the entrance. Cigarette stained beard rocking as he chewed on his Big Red gum. He was surveying his domain. He put up with Fallon but he wasn’t a fan of hers by far. 

She felt the pit of desperation open up inside of her. “But here,” she said, hoping to patch together any disappointment she may have caused. “This one is on me.” She reached around and pulled a bottle of tequila from the top shelf behind her and skillfully tipped it into a shot glass. Fourteen dollars. She made the mental note to add that to the money she had lost tonight. She placed the shot on the bar top. An unworthy offering to a goddess she worshiped alone in bed on particularly lonely nights. “There you are.” 

gus watched fallon with interest, relishing the way the younger girl squirmed under her thumb. she wasn’t totally oblivious to the effect she had on people, but often times, it was the people who could barely hide it that interested her most. how easily they unraveled, how quickly they became something she could mold and carve into, like wet hands gripping clay.

“stop,” she commanded, reaching out to lace her fingers around fallon’s wrist as she placed the shot in front of gus. “you don’t owe me anything. or anyone else here, for that matter.” she let her hand linger, holding fallon’s eyes with a shimmering sort of intensity as she used her free hand to throw back the golden liquid. tequila wasn’t normally her drink of choice, but she’d take whatever fallon offered up to her, and this nectar was smoother than she anticipated, sliding down her throat with ease.

reflexively, she wondered, licking the liquor off her lips, what fallon would taste like.

“one day,” she said, finally releasing fallon’s hand and slouching back in the bar stool, “you can buy me a drink. when you’re not at work with mr. stick in the mud over there acting as though it’s not obvious he’s going to go home later and masturbate to the very thought of what we might do when he’s not here.”

she wasn’t very subtle, was she? but wasn’t that how she always got whatever she wanted? always.

“regardless. you should let me whisk you away from all of this,” she said, throwing a twenty down on the table to pay for her drink – she always tipped fallon well – and offering the other girl a smile. “prince charming’s got nothing on me.”

a long blink is spared in response to the woman. she certainly knew the local doctor was cynical and perhaps a touch blunt, but should check-ups ever bother penni, she never said anything. even now, when her eyes are pried from the smoke and the firetrucks wailing loudly, she has no reason to utter anything inflammatory. rather, her mouth parts and she stares down at the uniform – the badge displayed on her breast. 

“i’m sorry?” she sputters instead as though she is too dizzy to notice that the badge is real and not one she glittered and bedazzled as a fifth grader. “yeah, i’m –” it takes just a moment of a deep, burning breath and a straightening of her back to pigeonhole herself in the place gus provides with the assumption that someone might have meant to burn down the church, though her voice sounds no less lost than it did before, “did you – have you seen anything, doc?”

innocence was something gus had never contended well with. or fragility. and here was penni, inhabiting both at once. something in her wanted to shake the young girl. or slap her. gus couldn’t tell what she wanted more.

but instead, she settled on a play at thoughtfulness, cinching her brow as she pretended to remember.

“there was a girl... she appeared out of nowhere... she smiled at me. and then she dropped a match and vanished, as if she’d never been there in the first place.” gus worked herself up into a fit, lip trembling, eyes wide. “i... think it was cassie.”

oh how sweet lies sounded leaving her lips.

Godless, the sky sat black and flames starved the air of oxygen. It sits thick in his throat, the blackened ash that turns to tar when it mixes with his saliva. It drowns him, aching with the dirt beneath his feet and glass shattered. He thinks he can feel that too, sharp knives digging into his skin where the warmth of the sun should be. Heat penetrating, searing his blood and igniting the embers caught in his throat.

His hands tremble, the desire to grip. To claw at his own throat until he can breathe again. Until the sweat is gone from his forehead and his dry mouth was quenched. Fear would set him alight like this. The fear that this was punishment for his unclean hands. It all was- the blood on the wall a year ago, the decapitated animals, Cassie. How fitting, a year later to this day when the posters are water-logged and faded and the town talks of anything else. The lord punishes them.

“Did you come here seeking help, Gus?” Eyes dart anywhere but to the woman before him, choosing rather to count his breaths as he focuses on the glass fragments at his feet. Trembling hands hidden in pockets, he knows she’s not here for saving. Augustine would only ever destroy. But Charles was determined to do good. To be good. Even with stress underlying his tone. “I know there’s fear in the town for the time, you may relay if you need such words. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

one of her most vivid memories as a child was the day mr. lacey died. it was all over the papers, the center of town gossip, and she had been old enough that she understood the implication of the whispers among the adults around her, young enough that it had been formative. old enough that her fixation on charles lacey had been cemented into part of her psyche, leaving her with an inescapable need to know this man, to know the truth of what he’d done.

back then, she found herself fascinated with the concept of violence. now that she was a master of the art, she found herself obsessed with the thought that he could be like her.

however, here he was, disappointing her at every turn.

“if i needed help, i certainly wouldn’t be turning to you, father.” gus spat the title he didn’t have with a surprising amount of venom. she’d never tried to hide her contempt for religion, but now, it was at an all time high. and perhaps she should have had more sympathy with the church literally on fire in the background, but she had never been good at being thoughtful, had she?

“and if other people need help, they’re definitely not going to be turning to me. have they started teaching evolution in high school yet? or are we all still pretending that some all seeing, all knowing deity created the world as we know it in seven days?” she paused, taking a quick account of his disheveled state, more so than what she’d come to expect. “even god took a day of rest. maybe you should too. you look like, pardon my french, steam-rolled shit.”

then, stepping closer, barely keeping the hushed excitement out of her voice as she asked: “what’s eating at you, charles?” in her professional opinion, this was an acute case of guilt.

it was easy to forget that her father had died one year ago today. cassie fucking klein had stolen that spotlight, and gus couldn’t help but feel bitter and resentful at the thought. and it seemed she was still hoarding that very attention from six feet under, with the blazing church the only thing on people’s minds.

the ice house wasn’t a place her father frequented. he had been a good, kind man with a good, kind heart, and she wasn’t here to mourn him or pay tribute. she was here because to stave off the boredom of wheeler that would drive her to her wits end if she let it. and a shock of blonde hair and those wide, sad eyes of a fallen angel behind the bar just might be enough to hold her attention.

“everyone’s out there, dealing with the fire,” gus said coyly, leaning against the edge of the bar, speaking loud enough that fallon could hear her over the music, quiet enough that it felt intimate, just for the two of them. “what’s stopping you from pouring yourself a drink and joining me on the other side of the counter?”

“i’m mourning,” she said dramatically, even though her voice was devoid of sadness and her lips were curled into a small smirk. when had she ever been sincere in her whole life? “i need a little comfort.” there was a hunger in her eyes, a ravenous, churning pit in their irises. she wanted to eat the world raw.

hi everyone!! my name is tara (she/her; PST) and i’m excited to write with all of you!! under the cut is a snapshot of who gus is and what she’s about as well as some fun random headcanons. content warnings for parental neglect, abortion, emotional abuse, infidelity, sexual assault, & murder

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