NEO

As soon as Neo enters the mess hall and meets his gaze, Jaewon finds he can only look him over once or twice, unwilling to allow his attention to linger too extensively along the planes of the merc’s shoulders, the cutting edge slant of his hair or his knuckles, the swaths of burgundy lined against every stroke and shadow of his legs. Neo is one of those people who accentuate everything they adorn themselves in, like Kamora or Harper, inhabiting their skin and fashion the way stars and nebulae inhabit galaxies; lighting them up from the inside, completing the very definition of presence. And Jaewon has found, just like a star itself in the cosmos, Neo can be damaging to one’s eyes and equilibrium if watched too long.

“We’re already in orbit around Valluria.” He pushes away from the doorframe, crossing over to his merc with his cortex comm outstretched for the other to take, providing him as much information as the captain himself has. Many times before, he’s rejected requests from members of his crew to get their hands on his cortex comm, sneering at their attempts to take it from him, citing mishandling of careful objects and their general inability to keep anything clean, but it’s just the two of them here, and despite everything Neo has done to persuade him otherwise, Jaewon trusts him– at least in this. “The Brine are a bunch of scavenger lowlifes with large egos and larger pockets. The man they’re hunting is named Jones Jaqua.” He hesitates to call him an old friend, since ‘friend’ is a nonsensical, careless word, but they do have a history together. “He worked for Vera when she ran the ship.”

He steps away from the other, ignoring the blackhole heat of Neo’s event horizon circumference, hoping the merc will read enough details to confirm what he’s telling him. “Last I heard, Jones was in a bad way for money, so I take it he asked for too much from too many dark shadows and got himself in debt with the wrong people.” He steps around the island counter in the kitchenette, the small sink to his left, and lowers his weight down onto his elbows, wrists crossed, eyebrow raised. There is a stirring inside him, a desperation for deserts that clashes with his general dislike of everything Valluria is; hateful and vengeful. “Solara has been under lock-down quarantine for the past three weeks, no ships in or out of the system, but it’s lifting today, which is why I’m guessing that award money is so high. If I had to bet, I don’t think Jones is getting on a boat to fly out of there, unless he’s stupid, but I think I know where he’ll be.”

He inhales deeply and resigns himself to the admission he’s about to sacrifice. “There’s a branding club called Blackpool Lane, a known carnal trading marketplace.” They call areas like that Hallowed Grounds, for the way human senses are bought and sold, tastes and touches and sights deemed sacred and divine, purged of morals and Kalidasa’s furious judgment, free of the constant terrorism and instability of the surface cities. He has no idea if those places are still open and operational, but given that it’ll be their first day unbolted from the universe at large, it’s worth a shot. “You don’t actually have to participate, we won’t go that far, but if I go in there, I have to pretend to be selling something.” A corner of his lips tilt upward, warm golden eyes flashing with a sudden spike of hunger towards the other. There’s enough food in this kitchen, but nothing in the cabinets themselves could satisfy. “And you’re the prettiest mercenary I’ve got.”

As Neo listens his eyes find themselves narrowed in thought. It seemed like a mission made for the captain specifically, the sharp knowledge he has on the bounty, the way his pupils’ practically dilate like a cat when it’s preparing to pounce for the kill as he speaks. Or maybe it’s caused by something else. Neo’s taken slightly off guard, his eyes careful not to portray his surprise when Jaewon calls him pretty. It’s a choice of words that tie in to the specific situation; people like pretty, but it’s still such a strange word to hear from the captains lips, especially about him. He takes a moment to consider, or at least pretend to consider, the circumstances. It would be an easy mission for him, exist and then, if needed, shoot to protect.

He also found a bit of humor in Jaewon’s reassurance, ‘We don’t need to go that far,’ knowing full well it’s the sort of thing Neo would likely participate in recreationally as a proud and self-defined hedonist. Still, he replayed the information in his head, developing his own plan that aligned well with Jaewon’s, puzzle pieces fitting slowly into place as he ponders. 

“Trying to get rid of me, are we?” It’s a joke but his tone is flat, iris’ molten, heat building itself in his chest, still riding the high of Jaewon’s praise, a strange and bizarre feeling he could certainly do without. He thinks for a moment more, looking down at himself. When he looks back up there’s a tension there, airtight and warm all over, black eyes meeting gold and he feels it burn a hole through his ribcage. “Give me five minutes.” Then he’s gone from the mess hall and stalking towards his quarters, throwing the door open with unnecessary force. His eyes take in the small space and for a moment he finds himself thinking how hilarious the whole situation was, the way that he had found himself strapped to this rapidly aging ship, the way he bent and shifted to Jaewon’s every desire and command. A version of him that lived in the past would look upon his mirror self with chagrin and horror, disgusted with the pawn he’s become, but the version of him that existed in the moment couldn’t give less of a fuck, and would bend over backwards if it meant the success of Jaewon’s mission.

‘Savage and Starved’

@neosy

The Brine Garrison is a well-known gang in the southern reaches of Solara, one of the major shipping port districts in Valluria, an organization answerable only to itself and its own low moral thresholds, largely invisible and uncapturable by the leading insubstantial governmental forces, such as they are on Valluria. The planet itself is a lawless domain, the iron rule of strength and greed predominately festering at its core, immutable, unchangeable, unyielding since terraformation hundreds of years past, and even the so-called “conquering” by the Alliance half a decade ago, is really only a shift in titlework– not even the Alliance battlecruisers bother to settle here, their warships merely hovering in the atmosphere at best, maybe only sometimes, if there’s a very good reason.

Captain Yang Jaewon knows the Brine Garrison, has a particular scar across his left shoulder blade named for one of their axes, having endured several encounters with their representative clergymen on excursions to the planet, all of them ending badly. Each confrontation he’s had in the region has been more dangerous than the last, his reputation building with them just as theirs spreads through the district, both entities with teeth and claws and little patience to show. Solara is a massive expanse, its borders swallowing up three occupied deserts, a couple of cities, and two time zones, and yet, every time Jaewon has to bring Serenity near their territory, he finds they have chewed and torn off larger and larger slices of it for themselves.

Which is why, for all their hunger and hazard, when he sees their name slide across his cortex comm pad with a sizable reward and a recognizable name attached, he groans but also awakens. If there’s anything more savage and starved than a Vallurian cesspit crime syndicate, bent on felony domination, it’s Yang Jaewon with a handgun and at least a half-legitimate reason to pry credits from cold, dead hands. Nevermind the fact that he knows the name of their target, a man he once sailed with under Vera’s reign.

He unspools himself from his chair at the end of the table in the mess hall, bringing his boots down from the tabletop, and strides over to the comm link for the bridge, pressing the bright green button. “Kinam. I’m about to send you over some coordinates, we have a job I’m going to look into.” Since they’re hovering in orbit, it shouldn’t take too long to get there. He gives the codes and then shuts off the comm just as one of his mercenaries stalks through.

He leans against door jam for an added moment, considering if it would be worth it to take someone in-planet with him for intel. It’s not exactly in the mercenary job description but Jaewon doesn’t like his mercs getting fat and lazy. “You bored yet?” he asks Neo, his gold eyes only slivers of light as he side-eyes the other. “We’re looking to touch down in Solara in a few. You’re coming with me.”

He’s leaned back in a chair, feet restless and neck craned as the cosmos flicker by outside. Sometimes he simply exists in a room, a rarity on normal endless nights but this one in particular drew him to common areas. He paced the hallways, the lights solid but forever flickering in his eyes, he passed familiar faces but didn’t speak to any of them. He considered visiting Kamora, but he wasn’t feeling particularly delicate, not more gentleman than beast so instead he sought out none other than Jaewon Yang. 

It seemed no matter what Neo did he was caught forever in his orbit, a moon slowly finding his way around the other man, circling him, watching him. He remembered a conversation with a stranger in a bar on a border planet, caught between teeth and glasses of whiskey, it was a momentary affair and the man had looked at him and asked him why he didn’t leave; surely it had been long enough, he had faded the memories of his old crew, had been away long enough he could disappear into the background. Neo had felt the force of a freight train behind whitened knuckles, fingernails dug into palm. He couldn’t say out loud that his captain had become his reason for continuing to stay afloat because he couldn’t even fathom it himself. He caught the stranger by the throat and reeled him in, a threat and a seduction in an oh-so-Neo way. He was never satiated, not by anyone, or more fittingly, not by anyone else, and oh, what he wouldn’t do to be content, just once.

It took only a moment to find the man of steel-toed boots and gold iris’ stomping his way around the mess hall, all dark and shadowed, an apparition more than man with the exception of the way he walks, the way he demands attention in his posture. Really, where could Neo go without him? A true partner in crime, victim to the interstellar war as much as anyone else. So falls a conglomerate, a teetering dais fit for a king, and down he comes to find the captain in the pits of hell, a crew of oddballs and strangers and somehow every mission is a success. Jaewon fucking Yang. 

pot calling the kettle cannabis

@neosy

true to the most basic building blocks of ares tenebren’s style and genetic makeup, he’s already decided what sort of night everyone should have before they even leave for their destination, he’s already cooked everything he needs to cook, already picked up everything he needs to pick up, already scheduled everything he needs to schedule. it’s not that he thinks this little outing of theirs won’t be any fun– they’re going out to a beach house for fuck’s sake, of course it’ll be fun– but he just so happens to know ways in which the night can be even more fun. no harm in trying to start off the long weekend with a banger.

the house itself is beautiful, the sights out the huge windows are spectacular, the beach coast that seems mostly privatized to the property itself is amazing, and they themselves, scrambling to get into their swimwear, laying out on the sand for hours, diving beneath the waves– everything is magnificent. except jaewon of course, who’s having a terrible time here so close to the water, even when he’s shut up tightly in the house in his assigned bedroom, refusing to even acknowledge the ocean, but that’s okay, because ares at least is enjoying his absence. he’d dragged jaewon along despite the blonde hating everything about this trip, because whether or not jaewon wants to admit it, they’ve formed a little group between the lot of them, a bond, a batch, a messy, sexy, hungry circle of people, and jaewon can’t get out of it now. ares won’t let him, and neither will neo, now that they’re doing whatever on-again-off-again-constant-sexual-tension thing they’re doing.

a few hours later sees them all, including the grumpy blond one, passing around tall alcoholic bottles, achara making a few mixed drinks, lianna insisting that she try every single one, ares and neo guzzling straight from the heaviest pitchers like gods. jaewon and gael are the only two sitting down, relaxing while the rest of them fuss over the drinks. “i’ve got a plan for tonight,” ares finally admits to the whole open living room/kitchen area with a gleam and a grin towards gael, who’s looking more and more delicious as the twilight plays across his face. “it’s a kicker.”

“oh no, what are you doing now?” jaewon sips at a perfectly boring beer.

ares goes for the bag he’d set on the kitchen counter earlier, before the beach. “it’s brilliant.”

“all your plans are terrible.”

which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s said in the wrong tone of voice; all ares’ plans are terrible because he’s terrible, and being terrible is the only way to truly live life. “no exemptions, especially you.” he pulls out the brownies, the jar of peanut butter, the chocolate bars, three whole bags of cannabis, and three glass pipes, bringing them all around the island counter towards the couches and chairs in the living room and arranging them aesthetically across the coffee table. “pick your poison.”

lianna squeals, lifting up a pipe. “awwww, this one has a little turtle on it! this one’s mine.” she sits down on the floor beside the table and breaks into one of the bags.

ares catches jaewon rolling his eyes. “of-fucking-course you’d bring this.”

ares settles himself sideways across gael’s lap on the couch, reaching for a brownie to feed to him. “yeah, because i’m the fun dad.” he looks at gael’s lips and grins, thinking about biting them. “or daddy, as some people call me.”

behind him, he hears achara pretend to gag, accompanied by lianna’s rosy-eyed giggling. he doesn’t care.

neo doesn’t waste a fucking minute, all the alcohol already consumed slowly working it’s way through his system when he reaches for some of the paraphernalia on the table, fingers finding one of the two remaining pipes as he starts packing the bowl, barely listening to the other’s conversation as he lights up. it isn’t until he’s breathing out his first hit of smoke that he responds, watching as gael flushes red, the male whacking ares’ shoulder weakly but ultimately melting into his touch as he lounges across his lap, neo says “it’s funny that he calls you daddy when you’re basically his overgrown child. doesn’t he feed you and wipe your ass?”

he doesn’t wait for a response before taking another hit and walking over to where jaewon is sitting to hold it out to him with an expression that says, ‘he’s right, though, you aren’t getting out of this,’ before looking back at the others’ in the room. achara, red cup in hand, finds her way to lianna, close enough to hook her chin over the other girl’s shoulder and watch her as she packs her own bowl and gael takes a bite out of the brownie in ares’ hand after what looks to be only slight hesitation. what a fucking night this is going to be.

achara snorts a laugh, head turning in his direction as she says, “hey, don’t say that, i’m sure ares is plenty daddy. he probably has like six illegitimate children out there.”

neo only shrugs in agreement.

he was one for night swimming, would personally love nothing more than to get crossed and wade into the ocean in the middle of the night but he was lucky if he’d get to see the body of water at all. jaewon was a pussy about swimming, an absolute fucking baby, and wouldn’t so much as step on the sand. of course, there was an upside to it, being that he and jaewon had spent the whole day in the house by themselves and there was nothing to really complain about there. he looks at the blonde man again briefly, trying to pretend he doesn't feel a little thrill in his chest at the sight of him. god, he was fucked.

across the room gael’s fingers card themselves into ares’ hair, scratching at his scalp and playing with soft locks, leaning over to whisper something surely horrible in his ear while achara takes a dangerously large bite out of a brownie. neo walks over to make himself another drink, raising a cup and shaking it to see if anyone else wants one, a small hand raise from achara and no response from gael who’s too busy smiling down at ares to realize anyone else is even in the room. 

to think he agreed to go on vacation with these people. his ‘friends.’ what a fucking nightmare.

@syxjaewon

gael just sort of wants to get the fuck out of there. it’s not that he doesn’t like jaewon, he does, or, well for a second he did... he’s sure they could be great friends aside from the whole ‘we fucked on the first date’ thing which wasn’t entirely out of character for gael a couple years ago but is definitely somewhat foreign now. he forgot why he stopped doing it, a great way to relieve stress and have a good time and all that, completely glossing over the potential downfalls and the past horrible experiences, because well, what could really go wrong between two consenting adults? 

until now. now he remembers. 

the date was great, the sex itself was great, but something weird happened. it was almost like the guy nut out all his charisma. maybe he sobered up, maybe he just has some weird post-coital tendencies, gael’s met plenty of people like that before, but it was... awkward. very awkward. painfully awkward. so awkward that as soon as the high wore off he more or less threw his jeans on and gave some half-baked reason why he was leaving which was very fucking difficult considering he lives right next door. the classic ‘i have work tomorrow’ couldn’t really cut it in this situation. 

yeah, so he was just trying to get home, in his mind the walk of shame at least short enough to be mostly painless with the exception of achara who’s definitely gunna make him recall the entire event in excruciating detail so she can laugh in his fucking face like best friends tend to do. he really should’ve known this was a bad idea, the mere thought of running into jaewon in the halls after this giving him the uncontrollable urge to run into traffic. ‘just get home’ is all he thinks as he exits the bedroom and prepares to book it back to his apartment, sweater only half on in his haste, pulling it over his head as he walks down the hallway towards the front door.

but god is not that merciful, two steps into the living room and his shirt falling into place on his body he comes to a full stop, eyes widening a bit and the feeling of awkwardness not easing as his gaze falls on jaewon’s roommate lounging on the couch, looking all hot and inconvenient, and gael’s suddenly struck by how fast this night went bad. ‘this might as well happen,’ he figures, forcing something of a smile, trying to pretend he didn’t just sleep with this man’s roommate who he’s known for all of maybe three hours.

“oh! wow, uh, hey, you’re uh.... here.” it takes every will in his body not to ask how long he’s been there, something self conscious and very uncomfortable scratching in the back of his brain, hands fidgeting, rubbing at the legs of his jeans. he tries not to think about how he looks, knows that his clothes are disheveled, knows his hairs been tampered with, skin probably still flushed, voice a little raspier than usual. he had more or less completely forgotten about ares even existing in his rush to escape, didn’t even consider him being here. 

oh man, he hasn’t felt this slutty since sophomore year of college. it feels different being twenty-five. feels worse. he decides he’s not fond of it.

of blind dates & drink tumblers

jaewon swallows another mouthful of his drink, nearly ready to order more, realizing rather quickly as gael continues speaking that he’s very far out of his depth– gael has much more experience in this arena than jaewon does, which isn’t exactly a comfortable feeling. he hadn’t been expecting to be the leader in conversation, of course, holding no such major delusions about himself or his non-talkative personality, which isn’t the same as being quiet, but it might as well be under these circumstances, but he can’t help the creeping certainty that anything he wants from this exchange is going to either need to happen quickly or not at all; gael is going to grow extremely tired of him in a matter of hours, best case scenario.

but the blonde tries his best anyway, keeping his facial structure ranging from amused to nearly-panicked-but-maybe-just-shy, glancing away down towards the table at gael’s compliment, as though finding out that his eyes are one of his best features means he must immediately shade them from the world. “well, they’re not contacts in case you’re wondering, but i do sometimes wonder if they’re some genetic anomaly. i don’t get called ‘eye guy’ though, which, now that i think about it, is disappointing.” he’s sure if ares took enough time out of his day to notice anything specifically physical about jaewon, besides affective things like how jaewon is too tall for his own good or how tense he always is (blaming it obviously on his infrequency of getting laid), he would probably call jaewon ‘eye guy’ but he wouldn’t mean it as anything good.

“well, that’s my other dream, see, being a superhero. you’d be surprised how good i’d look in spandex.” maybe he should slow down on the drinking, actually, this is spinning too far out of his control, too quickly. gael is attractive and grinning and leaning in close enough for jaewon to begin losing his mind, his atmosphere tight and undetermined, but observant, unyielding in his collection of every detail about gael that he can absorb, watching the way the light plays across his skin and hair, the moisture of his drink on his lips, the curves and cuts of his body underneath that shirt. he listens to him explain about college, understanding it in relation to dating and how impossible the two ideals are at coexisting and for a moment, he worries that’s killed the budding connection between them, but gael speaks as though he isn’t at all perturbed by the prospect, so jaewon doesn’t contradict or confirm it.

“ahh, yeah, you’re roommate,” he nods, a hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck, remembering the light-haired woman gael lives with only in bits and pieces, hearing her voice shout down the hall about something, catching her eye randomly at intervals. “you know, it’s funny, i was actually surprised that you contacted me about going out on this date, to be honest. for the longest time, i thought you two were together. it was actually my roommate, ares, who guessed that you weren’t, something about his gay-dar going off or something when he’d met her.” jaewon shrugs, the image of ares alighting inside his brain, the other male bursting through the front door of their apartment, his eyes bright and full of mischief, entirely too happy about the prospect of finding reasons to frustrate their neighbors for absolutely no reason. somehow, with ares, he’s always got to either sleep with someone or annoy them endlessly.

perhaps that’s why ares and jaewon don’t get along.

he tries not to shudder at the vague insinuation that he should sleep with ares to shut him up, reconciling himself to the irritation forever, before turning back to his companion for the evening, leaning in towards him a bit, suggestively. “i’m glad you did reach out though, even though i’m sure you’re very busy with all your toasters and robots.”

“they do call them the windows to the soul, maybe yours is just golden.” it’s a cheesy line, but he says it with such kind sincerity that he knows he could pull it off, a wide, warm smile, a look that says he knows it was mushy but that he doesn’t regret it. his head is turned slightly, a sip at his drink, a hand finding its way through his dark hair, fingers carding it back away from his face.

“saving new york city one painful flight of stairs at a time.” gael laughs, the tone light but his voice deep, flashing dimples and narrowed eyes in a way he knows is pretty but isn’t vain enough to ever say out loud. “spandex, huh? i believe it, you’ll have to wear some for me sometime.” that was direct, very direct, but now that’s he’s getting flirtatious banter in return he’s comfortable enough to do it, sensing jaewon settling onto his stool, his tongue and muscles loosening, comfort setting in. gael’s gauging him, the atmosphere bleeding into them both, the alcohol making the world warm. he’s trying to figure out if this is something he wants to pursue further, at this point definitely thinks he’s at least be capable of doing another date, of talking more, of learning more about the other male, but in the moment something’s electric, somethings drawing him closer, a mix of liquor and raw physical attraction. it’s hard to pick apart a personality when he’s too busy trying not to make it obvious that he’s undressing him with his eyes.

“oh, yeah, no. we’re best friends, but both very, very gay. i think that’s what makes it work, my parents were definitely confused when i told them i was moving in with a woman.” he laughs again, airy and short, “ares might’ve cheated on that one, though. he shares a wall with achara, she claims to hear an awful lot from him so i’m sure it’s a two way street.” his smile is devilish, assuming, a shrug on his shoulders and a sip from his drink. he knew few things about ares, but what he did know was that one, he was bisexual, and two, he apparently had a lot of sex with a lot of different partners. there were many days spent sat at the dining room table with achara as she complained about the noise, many times when he could hear her banging on the wall to get him to be quieter. their apartments seemingly both had an interesting dynamic, a mix of personalities that likely shouldn’t work but do. “she does like to act like my girlfriend sometimes though; she loves picking out my clothes and going through my stuff. she also keeps asking if she can dye my hair to match hers. i wasn’t sure about blonde but seeing how good it looks on you i might have to consider it.”

break me apart in all the ways that matter

she doesn’t like him, she decides in an instant, doesn’t like the way he sits down across from her as though he’s earned that seat, as though he claims it with every inch of his legs, as though he’s fought hard to come to this table, as though she hadn’t invited him but he’d burned his way through enemy territory to reach her here. he sits and she doesn’t like the way he looks at neo, doesn’t like the way he seems to be made of granite, watching neo’s face securely as the the other scans over him, a definite power play immediately at work between the two of them, as though neo’s singular sentence sets their atmosphere ablaze in a heartbeat.

she doesn’t like the heated silence that forms like a ball of nerves inside her chest and won’t release until this stranger’s oddly bright eyes shift back to her and she has to yank her voice out from whatever dark hole it’d crawled into. “he’s here because… well i wasn’t just going to meet you alone, was i? that would have been stupid.” she means it almost like a joke, except none of them laugh, too much tension in the air, too much awkwardness, too much uncertainty. was this a mistake? is she wasting her time here? she already can guess how little interested in this neo is, despite his loving support, and her parents, bitter and unhappy about her newly-made strides towards finding her birth mother, even though she’s comforted them time and time again that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be their daughter any longer. of course she does. but this is important too.

“you invited me here,” he reminds her, like this is all a trap she might have set up for him instead of the other way around. and she has to grant him that, she is the one who reached out, she is the one who set up the date and the place, she is the one with all the cards.

“right. yes,” she nods slowly, her shoulders hunching up, pure anxiety bubbling up inside her. “because of my mother.” in the corner of her eye, she can see him tightening up, a muscle in his neck straining, his gaze hardening. “vera blackhound?”

“mhm.”

“i found out two years ago that i was adopted and the papers had her name attached to them, along with my parents– my… my stepparents.” god, that’s weird to say, after so long believing them to be her real mom and dad. “i’ve been looking for her ever since.”

“mhm.”

“so, uh…” with each word she feels herself diminishing, as if she’s throwing herself against his steadfast, unbreakable composure, breaking herself to pieces, crumbling more and more the longer she speaks, a tide rolling in, the longer he refuses to engage fully, chunks of herself flaking off every time the waves smash her back against him. “when i found you in connection with her name online, that’s– that’s when i, um, when i contacted you… so…” come on, jaewon yang, give up something here; she stares at him with wide, pleading eyes, hoping he’ll just fill in the blanks from there on, hoping his immaculately stiff and unyielding features will give, will soften, will shift.

instead he just asks rigidly, “okay?”

she knots her fingers together on her lap and glances down at them, forcing her lungs to inhale, forcing her shoulders to unwind, settle back down. she doesn’t like him, she doesn’t like him, she doesn’t like him. “can you tell me anything about her?”

he pauses for a long moment and she wonders if he’d even heard her, if she should repeat herself, if it’s so fucking difficult for him to sympathize with a girl who is just trying to find out what happened to the woman who gave her up to the world, who let her go. what is he waiting for– is he calculating something? is he slow? more than ten seconds go by without him saying a single goddamn word, but when he does speak, it’s not anything she expects to hear, his tone careful but still adamantine. “i can tell you she died. about a year ago.”

all the sound around the cafeteria fades out of lianna’s ears, the people, the crowds, the lights, the distractions, the world at large melting into a greyscale, a monotone, her eyes on jaewon, jaewon’s on hers, neo’s warmth beside her, everything draining out of her atmosphere like spilled paint. she wonders for a moment, if he’s just shitting on her, if this is a joke, if he’s lying, because how could that be true, how could that be real, how could she have been alive a year ago and dead now, how could lianna have missed her window of opportunity? something inside her chest breaks, cracks open like porcelain glass.

she looks over at neo, shellshocked, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to handle this. she was hoping to just get information about vera before taking the bigger step, she was hoping to reach out to jaewon first and get an understanding of the woman who raised him, before… before… “this was a mistake,” she tells her cousin, her tone shaky. she wants to leave.

he’s being defensive, maybe even nervous, the staccato and shortness of his responses, the narrow of pretty brown eyes, the rigidity of his posture. he’s on edge, poised for this to be over, acting like he hadn’t agreed to be here in the first place. maybe he’s self conscious, maybe he’s just an asshole, either way neo’s patience is growing thin, his flexibility on this situation bending and snapping with lianna’s growing tension, her anxiety wafting off of her in clouds, darkening the room, shrouding the sights around them. if he had a shorter temper the world would be red, he’d lash out, knuckles catching flesh, but he doesn’t. instead he watches, at first with a tongue caught between teeth, observing, looking less at his baby cousin and more at the strange man provoking her. 

he talks like everything’s a challenge, like she’s trying to fight with him, like she’s stepping on hallowed ground when she struggles to even find her words, stumbling over questions, not even sure where to begin. it’s starting to seem like he’s gatekeeping his dead family member, protective over the corpse, over the memory of lianna’s birth mother. maybe in some regard he and neo are on the same page -- jaewon thinks lianna doesn’t belong in the yang family. neo thinks that same thing. they both know she already has one, both know this new family has no claim on her, know she belongs where she already is. the difference is neo is at least pretending for her sake, at least accompanying her on this weird mission of self-discovery. the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, neo’s more her family than this man will ever be, but he’s at least playing nice. lianna’s right, this was a mistake, but now they’re there, staring down this new man made of steel pipes and molten lead, talking down to his cousin like a disobedient child.

so neo does what he’s always done, what he’ll always do for her -- he defends her, he protects her. this older man with his jaw set, his tone sharp, looking down at such a young girl and lashing her with short responses, no tact, no sympathy of her case. she lost someone she never met, surely a less painful loss than the man had experienced, but still he had no right to weaponize one sort of suffering against another, no sense of belonging as he stands intimidating over a young girl in heart sunglasses, tall in all black like a reaper, like a stealer of dreams -- as if he’s the one sent to reveal her fate, to take her soul, break her apart. there’s something unsettling about him, something almost supernatural. he was a vampire, a bloodsucker, all flat and careful, intense and misplaced. under different circumstances neo might see something in him, but here and now all he sees is an enemy, a demon. 

butterflies.

jaemin looked like a deer in headlights when wonho turned to meet his gaze. it took a few seconds for him to just blink, let alone attempt to think about anything other than kissing the male in front of him. even then, that was really all he could think about — it was like a mantra, his mind simply telling him the same thing over and over. was that what someone would consider a sign? or was it even that complicated? probably not, but nothing about the way jaemin and wonho’s unsuspecting relationship had formed was ever really simple… whatever that relationship had developed into. he wasn’t quite sure, and that was what currently had jaemin stumped.

he could feel himself staring at wonho’s lips as he spoke, and at his eyes, then back at his lips again. he can’t even begin to think about how obvious he probably looked, but with the silence that jaemin had allowed to drag on, at the very least he knew wonho would be able to tell that he was nervous. about what? he was still figuring out what his answer would be if he ended up being asked. surprisingly, jaemin had been able to decide how to respond to the elder quite quickly, but now he couldn’t say anything. it was as if he was paralyzed. “hyung, i..” he said softly, though that was all he managed. there was a lump in his throat and he couldn’t keep going. he was being dramatic, he knew, but that was just who jaemin was. he was dramatic.

rather than giving himself any more time to talk himself out it, the younger suddenly leaned forward. he paused in front of wonho not even for a second before he pressed their lips together with the limited space that was already between them, and relief practically melted off of jaemin. the way he tilted his head to the side and exhaled through his nose; simply breathing in as he kissed the other felt like something brand new, and he would’ve done anything to keep going, to recreate what they had done on new year’s, but jaemin’s sober consciousness wouldn’t allow it. not yet.

once he pulled back, jaemin was rigid, face flushed and his entire frame nearly vibrating. with wide eyes, he swallowed thickly and began to sit up, stuttering while he tried to move the moment along despite his blaring adrenaline (and the hint of a smile on his face), “we can, um – we can watch something different if you want. if you don’t like it. or we— we, we don’t have to watching anything. yeah. we don’t have to. if you don’t want to,” he mumbled, half-shrugging as his eyes carefully darted back to wonho.

there was a lifetime between words. breath caught carefully, silence elongating in the shift of jaemin’s gaze moving from eyes to lips, everything slowing down and freezing, the clock stops ticking in its place. at first he doesn’t move, doesn’t say much of anything, jaemin’s words sounding slightly garbled under the cacophony of wonho’s overthinking, of his brain turning over loudly in his skull, the clicking sound of things attempting to fall into place. wonho was known for being at least nominally clueless when it came to things like this, or more fittingly, he ignored and denied any and all signs of romantic attraction until they went away, but he knew what the room felt like before a kiss. he knew the way space narrowed down, knew the nervous breathing and silent question of, ‘should i? can i?’ he knew what the signs all pointed to but wondered if jaemin would pull it through, if he meant it, if he wanted it enough.

wonho couldn’t make the first move, couldn’t close the space himself, not after new years.

he had tried to forget about the day entirely, tried to erase the memory and pretend that it hadn’t happened. not because he didn’t like it, he did very much (which is potentially part of the problem), but instead because, quite frankly, it had made him feel like a bit of a scumbag. sure, they’d both been drinking, were both at least semi-intoxicated in the excitement of the holiday and granted with the excuse to get sloppy, but wonho was the older one, he was supposed to be the mature one, the responsible one, and he felt as if he’d taken advantage of the situation. he felt bad for kissing jaemin under those conditions, felt weird that that’s how he channeled that crush, felt bad knowing that to at least some extent, jaemin had feelings for him. wonho felt wrong for it. he’d wanted to apologize, wanted clarity on the whole situation but felt that it might make it worse, and when they’d woken up the next day and jaemin didn’t address it either he’d figured it would be best to just move on from it, to ignore it.

but now jaemin was sitting next to him, shoulder to shoulder, faces turned towards each other, with his eyes locked to wonho’s lips, nervous and fidgety, and before another moment passes he leans forward and wonho goes still, wanting to react but not quite sure how. what was he doing? he’s done this before, he’s been here before, he knows how to kiss, even knows how to kiss jaemin if new years was anything to account for but still he was frozen for the short span of that first nervous press of lips and when jaemin pulls back he just stares at him for a long moment. 

star shopping

for the few rushed moments of gael tearing his own chest open and draining himself dry of the hurdles and emotions he’s been balling up and hiding away for so long, spilling knife after knife after knife into leon’s throat, ares simply stands there and lets it happen, his eyes resting coolly on gael’s features as they writhe, as the words twist his face into shapes he’s surely never held before– not that ares would know. ares wouldn’t know this side of gael, for all that he plays at being attentive to the human, he wouldn’t be familiar, wouldn’t be intimate with this angle because gael has never broken up with ares and for as much connection as ares feels to him, he has not been a constant figure in his life the entire few years they’ve known each other.

ares only knows the displays of gael that have been pieced out for him, he only knows the images of him that he puts out like decorations whenever ares rolls into town, slides into gael’s bed, a visitor to his life, a meandering thunderstorm that forms and dissipates within too short a timespan. ares understands this, doesn’t fault gael for it, wouldn’t dream of holding him with any sort of contempt for having a life outside of the war machine, before the war machine’s intrusion– he’d just have liked a heads up about it before something like this occurred, he’d just have liked some warning, or at least to not be so pushed aside and put on a pedestal like a trophy bitch for whenever gael’s past does comes around to bite.

but for all ares’s meddling, for all his savoring and chewing of the problem at hand only seconds before, as soon as gael goes off, as soon as he dips into his verbose stampede of wreckage and bridge-burning, ares’s mouth shuts up, he stands back, and it’s selfish, it’s horrible, it’s greedy, but he doesn’t want to interrupt his mechanic as he decimates a past relationship, he doesn’t want to save the embers of this connection. he didn’t bring this guy over, he didn’t make him insinuate shit about ares’s treatment of gael or gael’s interest in a proto, he didn’t make him bleed himself into the space between gael and ares like some sort of human wall; he shouldn’t, and doesn’t, feel responsible for the fallout of it.

he merely waits. because while he hasn’t been under this exact sort of scrutiny from gael before, he does recognize the torrent of sentences, the vomit of exhaustion and defeatism and internal strife, the way gael gets so fed up sometimes and just spreads his internal organs across his atmosphere like paint from a bucket. he’s tried and failed before to attempt to stem it, attempt to stop it, attempt to stick his fingers in all the cracks and leaking holes of gael’s barrage, but it never really works and gael never really wants him to.

there is one thing though, that ares does feel the need to counter on, but it’s not from gael, it’s leon, calling him ‘mean’ as though they’re children on a playground, as though he’s less surprised by the fact that he’s a boring lover as he is by gael being the one to say it, as though he can’t tell that gael is just spitting all this at him to get him to go away, to save his life from ares’s inevitable bullet, the one with the name ‘leon’ already scratched into it. he must not be paying a whole lot of attention to this exchange. gael isn’t his anymore to make sure he’s okay, that’s ares’s job now, and despite how badly he sometimes is at it, despite how little he pretends to care about it, he does take it seriously. “tell you what, leon, you handle your shit and we’ll handle ours.”

but then gael is saying they have to leave now and ares isn’t going to argue the point further, isn’t going to force gael to face this situation any longer, isn’t going to force himself to face it any longer; he gives gael what he’s been wanting since this interaction began. he gives him the peace of mind that, at least for today, ares won’t murder leon on the spot, stepping around the two of them without another word and slipping his hand in through gael’s metallic one, catching at him and pulling him along, his eyes dark and sharp, his mind replaying the footage of the incident over and over inside his head. he knows gael wants to talk about this, and he has plenty to retort to him with, but for right now, he turns his sound sensors off completely as he leads them through the crowds and towards the docks, avoiding the others’ eyes as he walks.

above them, the sky opens up and rain begins to patter against the cobblestones and the array of roofs and stand huts, but ares doesn’t stop or slow down until they’re far away from the marketplace, trailing down the sides of the docks where huge spaceships line the curve, bulky and imposing and just as clunkery as serenity. eventually he stops, slows as the rain trickles down, dampening his hair and the fur around his shoulders, and lets go of gael’s hand, finally turning and looking at him. his words are characteristically snarky but they come with zero mirth or amusement. “can’t wait for you to break up with me and berate me loudly in public for being too rough with you, it’s going to be very sexy.”

as they walk away gael can feel himself deflating, the adrenaline of such harsh words pumping and thinning out, leaving him tired. he didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want to deal with the consequences of saying what he said in front of ares, of having to confront a history he was so far done with. ares was as at fault as he was, he was the looming danger, the thing that made him end the conversation so abruptly, all red eyes at something as innocent as a hug, murderous at shared politeness; but ares wasn’t the one who tore the poor kid apart in the end. gael had to take responsibility for that, had to be the one to live with the heartless things he dumped on someone who was nothing but nice to him. it had been a significant relationship, the longest he’d ever had, words of moving in together and spending a life together and the things that couples were meant to talk about. he and ares never discussed those things, never would. it was a different sort of relationship, wasn’t one that ever held a promise of a tomorrow due to death or abandonment. this was love in the form of chaos, the form of desperation.

ares speaks and for a moment it flares hot, for a moment gael wants to get angry, wants to yell at him, wants to do exactly as he said and berate him as well, because who was he to judge him for that? who was ares to frown upon what gael had said when he was prepared to slaughter the man when he’d spared him by simply hurting his feelings instead? it was cruel to make him feel bad for it, to shame him for it, to insinuate that ares and leon were at all in the same situations, that gael was capable of cutting ares out of his life as simply as he had leon. they were different people, different situations, gael was different himself.

as quickly as the anger sparked he snuffed it out, shaking his head, fingers running through his hair with a shrug of his shoulders, for a moment at a loss for words, his mouth opening then closing again just as quickly. eventually he says,

“do you want to talk about it? is that what this is? what i said to him wasn’t about us. i didn’t want to do that, i don’t want to be a villain. i did what i felt like i had to do and...” he pauses for a second, a long exhale following. what a precarious situation this has become, what a domestic argument to have -- between renegade ships and kidnappings they find time to have tension about ex boyfriends and unfulfilling relationships. was is too much to ask for peace? just for a little while? was there something unachievable about wanting momentary bliss, happy moments for just the two of them? it seemed as much, between blood loss came disagreements, between disagreements came intimacy, more often than not tied with aggression, yes, with roughness, but he admittedly liked that. he preferred that, and ares always liked to talk about it as if he were the only one involved, as if gael couldn’t tell him to stop, couldn’t ask him to be gentle. as if he had and ares hadn’t listened. “i don’t know why you always say it like that... ‘too rough with me.’ as if this is a one sided relationship, as if i’m just tolerating that aspect of you. i like it, i like you. i love you.” 

gael knew that the fighting did something for him, the clashing of their personalities the part that made it work, that kept them both involved. it was frustrating in the moments where he wanted just to be held, just wanted to excitedly talk about new parts or projects, wanted things to be simple. they were never simple, would never be easy. that was their appeal, that was their dynamic, but still he found himself drained by it. he didn’t want to talk about his ex, not really, had already said everything he needed to say, was prepared to move on from it, had moved on from it years ago but now it was staring him down through ares’ gaze, dark and devoid of humor for once and it’s cold in gael’s core. “i didn’t think you’d want to hear about my past relationships, or really even my past at all. i don’t even know what we are.” he’s already frustrated, something fluttering in his chest like anxiety, a weight bearing down on him. he wasn’t going to cry, the feeling not quite sadness, not quite anger, but something more tense, more like stress. he doesn’t want to talk about this, but if ares does then he will, if it’ll bring clarity to them it’s worth it, if it’ll help them move forward then it’s for the best. 

gael’s open, he’s weary and present, his expression tired yet earnest. this is what normal people did. they talked. how long would the conversation last? well, with ares he couldn’t be sure.

interlinked

it’s usually easier than this, it’s usually cleaner than this, the back and forth ball game between the two of them deliberate and calculated, stretched between visits and testings and injections and blood runs, stretched between distance and form and the substance of their bodies divided by carefully controlled patterns of indoctrinated behavior, even as they sit in the same room together. the doctor comes in, they chat, ares flirts, watches the reaction, the doctor flows out again like something of a nervous bird, flickering out of the space around ares as though he routinely makes it intoxicating to breathe in here. and maybe he does, maybe that’s another one of ares’s powers, another one of ares’s upgrades– they’ve been giving him so many lately.

but this time doctor weon looks pale and worn and raw, looks stressed and pressed and nervous, seeping exhaustion and anguish like a cloud around his body, a scent ares picks up on like dinner, reminding him that he’s a monster meant to take advantage of situations like this. on the outside, at least. whenever he’s given enough permission to stray from the compound, whenever he’s given the gift of time and darkness and wilderness to roam free in, to inhale deeply in, which isn’t very often. perhaps that’s the catalyst for this exchange, perhaps he’s about to be shipped off to another mission and doc is merely worried about it, not that he has any cause to be, not that there’s any reason ares should fear anything in the world or of the world, knowing himself apex, knowing himself predator. there will always be monsters out there, but there’s only ever one thing like ares, the god of war.

at least, so far. he knows he’s a prototype for a larger scheme, but he also knows that hasn’t come to fruition yet.

he grins though, even as weon looks unnerved, as the other scoots forward, leaning even closer towards the human, the top portion of his body hungry, eager, alighted, while the bottom half of him is still stuck to this chair, a more or less accurate depiction of the problem, even if it’s not as physical as all that. “that’s right, kitten, come here, you know you can tell me anything. want to sit on my lap?” weon’s features are thin and sharp, so unlike the version of him ares has come to know and even though he can’t stop his programming, can’t stop the prodding, annoying tickles and needles that tumble off his lips, he wonders if weon can see beyond that, he wonders if the doctor can see through it, wonders if weon can feel ares’s curiosity, his concern. he wonders if he himself can. “you haven’t been sleeping well, it’s all over your face.” 

but the scientist has something else on his mind, something else he wants to discuss, a volcano of thoughts and emotions boiling up inside his chest like lava, desperate to explode, and ares can almost see it through the cracks of his exterior, glowing, bubbling, boiling. most people might want to escape something like this, a natural disaster in the making, but ares absorbs it up, fascinated, his black hole gaze lapping it up like candy, watching the man he’s seen so many times, always so rational and collected, unravel at the seams, jittery and unsteady.

ares’s immediate answer to the question is instinctual and smooth, falling from his lips like honey wine and desire, perfectly spaced in tone as his breeding was meant to enforce; “all i want to do is please you.” which is a flirty way of saying “i will do your bidding, master,” and he knows it, long since familiar with the bitter aftertaste and saltine self-hatred the words imbue him with, understanding the undertones as though he could read the internal coding himself across a strand of his dna, and he wants to bite his own tongue off whenever he has to say it, whenever he is forced to admit such subservience. but he has no right to that, either.

the doctor looks at him though, heavy-eyed, mismatched colors, boring into the tightened pressure between them, willing ares to give a different answer this time, as if this time is different, as if this time is something new. but there’s nothing new about today, there’s nothing new about tomorrow, there’s nothing new because there is no today or tomorrow or days or years or centuries from now– not to ares the warmonger, not to ares the wolvern nightmare. he blinks, slow, careful, the trippy, dippy, amused look leaking from his expression, the seriousness entering his tone like a mistake, staring at gael weon for a long, empty moment. “time. i sometimes want to know time; its passage, its lulls, a minute to an hour, the difference between them. i don’t get that in here, i don’t have days in here. and even on missions, i don’t have time as much as i have limits, deadlines, cutoff points.”

he wonders if this is just another brain exercise but then gael weon continues to speak in hushed tones, continues to explain things to him in frazzled, determined sentences, which brings ares’s eyebrows low and dark over his face, frowning slowly as he pieces the information together as best he can. “they want me for another mission?” he asks but then, tilts his head differently, paying closer attention to dr. weon’s cadence, answering his own question. “they don’t want me for another mission.”

his gaze slides off the doctor in front of him, slipping over towards the far wall, the corner, the door behind him, the door that has always held him here like a threat, like a spear aimed directly at his heart, and he can remember being younger, smaller, throwing himself at it again and again, bracing against the pain over and over. he stares at it as the scientist keeps talking, hearing and replaying the words over and over inside his head even as they’re breeching into the enclosed atmosphere between them, striking like stones in his mind, hammering like blunt force objects against his temples.

“is this a trap?” his voice is halted, his teeth elongating inside his mouth, muscles in his body tensing, his eyes darkening from bright red to deep crimson, and he takes another moment to before snapping his gaze up to the doctor, lethal and dangerous and starving. “would you tell me if it was?”

he tries to remind himself that he’s losing his job either way. it’s possible they’d keep him on staff even with the mass disbelief and hatred pointed in their direction but he wouldn’t be doing the same things, wouldn’t be playing with genetics and helping to create life the way he is now, and if he was, he shudders to think of the things they may create. ‘this is a time of purging, a time of renewal among the company,’ those are the colorful words they had chosen when sitting gael down to tell him what they planned to do, planned to destroy, with ares’ name printed in bold on the top of the roster. 

of course he was first, considered the biggest danger to their image as if they weren’t the ones to create a creature embedded with as much wolf as man, as hungry as he was beautiful, as ravenous as he was charming -- he was a predator, they made him that way, and now they intended to destroy him for it. gael had scoured the list and came to the conclusion that they were indeed playing favorites, picking and choosing not for the good of the people but for the company’s face value. they didn’t plan to destroy the bosses favorite abomination, didn’t intend to rid the world of their secrets, but gael was more involved than they cared to remember, knew more than they would like him to; he knows all the names, all the things they keep underground. he had a hand in all of it, and if they were given the option to pick and choose the people they birthed from their labs as if they were puppies at the pound then he was going to give himself a say, wasn’t going to let everything he worked so hard for be ripped away. 

there’s an intensity in his gaze, a war waging in his being. this is dangerous, this is putting his own life on the line, making his own bed in the form of protecting synthetic blood, the enhanced parts of what was more or less a machine even despite his veins. he had thought long and hard about it before making even the slightest moves, hadn’t slept in days with the clock ticking like the detonator of a bomb, the days passing him counting down to a deadline. he knew how dangerous this was, how badly this could go, but his entire life had been formed around his job since he was brought into the company, years and years tanked into this work for it to be sent to the incinerator, burned as a martyr.

and there was ares, looking at him almost confused, words testing, careful. he doesn’t know whether to trust him or not, hasn’t ever seen him this way, never was supposed to. this is a struggle of it’s own, difficult in it’s own way. ares isn’t stupid, he isn’t blind, he picks up on body language and social cues and even though gael cares for him in his own regard, even though he’s always been kind, he’s still one the people keeping him in, holding him back and forcing him onto missions and sending him out to hunt. he’s still a part of this company, this conglomerate that genetically engineers murderers. he might be the closest thing ares has to a friend, but he’s still a captor as well, still a scientist. ares needs to trust him, but he can’t blame him if he doesn’t, isn’t sure how to convince him.

“they don’t have anymore missions for you, they don’t have anything for you.” gael’s voice is tight, is strung out, he’s built of carefully constructed parts, molded together by the very things that make him human, things beyond blood and veins and the shape of his skull. his empathy is what eats him, his ambition is what swallows him whole.

“i am, i am telling you, i’m telling you right now.” he’s tense, made of too many parts, can’t sort through them all at once, tries to articulate what he needs to say to convince him but can’t quite find the words. he reaches out to touch him, even despite how long they’ve worked together he’s so rarely ever touched his skin, certainly not while he was awake, certainly not out of enhancements and reparation surgeries. awake it feels as cold to the touch as when he’s inactive, a hand wrapped around a wrist, a delicate thing, a careful thing even despite his urgency. these are the types of motions they warn their scientists not to do, no sudden moves, don’t get too close, don’t touch or grab or do anything that could set them off. it’s in all the safety videos, all the written precautions on doors and clipboards around the facility and still he does it, still he holds his wrist to establish that, yes, he’s serious, and yes, this is life or death. 

if not mauled by his own creation then possibly taking a bullet to the back of his head. it’s all the same, it’s all damning and chaotic and wrong. the things you do for passion, the things you do for love.

of blind dates & drink tumblers

the thing that’s always stood out for jaewon about gael weon, passing him in the hallways and the mailroom and the laundry room, catching eyes randomly before ducking out of each other’s line of vision, is that he’s nice. there’s a lot to be said for nice, there’s a lot to be granted for it, a lot there that jaewon feels he could be attracted to, given enough time and incentive, even though he’s historically never been with anyone who was canonically nice. he’s not sure he’s allowed to think something like that though, since he’s only ever been with one person before, and she was a fucking trainwreck jaewon repeatedly jumped onto the tracks for. but whenever he watches movies or thinks to describe someone that he might be attracted towards, ‘nice’ isn’t necessarily low on the list of demands.

and gael seems very nice, a calm smile, a sweet voice, general friendliness against jaewon’s admittedly blunt personality, so perhaps gael wouldn’t be the worst person in the world to find next to him on those particularly grey days that jaewon has to struggle through. there’s nothing wrong with finding someone collected and tranquil, someone who doesn’t bring havoc with them wherever they go, destruction to whoever they meet, someone easy as a sunrise and amiable as a clear sky. there’s no downside, right? except perhaps jaewon himself?

“compulsively early, so noted,” he nods as though he’s actually saying anything interesting, which he’s definitely not, but he shifts in his seat and recenters himself, reminds himself that this is supposed to be fun and he’s not obligated to stay past an hour at most (thanks to losing a bet with ares over a card game; arguably his worst vice), and then he can leave, no harm done to either party. “i’ll take a bourbon, thanks,” he orders, before refocusing on the boy next to him, an elbow propped up on the bar, knuckles over his lips, molten gold irises scanning slowly over his figure. “i like your heterochromia, it’s interesting. i’ll bet you get a lot of people asking you to hold your eyes open real wide.”

was that dumb? probably. he really isn’t good at this, there’s a good reason why yang jaewon doesn’t date, a good reason why he doesn’t meet people at bars and strike up conversations with them– he’s bad at it. small talk makes him feel like he’s slowly dipping into insanity like a swamp of encrypted conversation, and he’s constantly missing his decoder ring.

but gael asks him anyway, kicks off the night with a banger of an opener and that thought is enough to blow out a small smile, like a sigh escaping his lungs, a shrug hunching his shoulders. “well, i run a moving crew, we do odd jobs around the city. which is actually better than the shitstorm it sounds like, it can get wild at times.” jaewon can still remember getting a job that included bringing a lazyboy chair up a fucking scaffolding unit. “i’m also studying for a ba in architecture, that’s what i do for most of my free time. which is why, as i’m sure you can tell, i don’t date much.” probably would have been best to leave that bit out, but there it is at least; gael can make of that what he wants.

the drinks come by and jaewon knocks back a gulp of his, willing his body to stop acting like the most nervous bag of bones alive; it’s friday night, there’s bound to be plenty other people in new york who are doing just as badly on their dates. he runs his fingers through his hair. “and you’re an engineer, right?” the question just slips out, although it’s more like a grab for confirmation, because yes, he is, jaewon remembers that from too long ago when he’d overheard the landlord talking about it, gossiping about how cute he was and how she wanted to convince an engineer with an engineer’s salary to marry one of her daughters. instead of crumbling to pieces from embarrassment though, the blonde has to fight against a grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “don’t ask me how i already know that, i promise i’m not a creep.”

he’s trying, gael can see that much. he’s attempting to make conversation best he can but he’s a little stilted, a little rusty around the hinges, and that’s alright, he humors it, laughs at the appropriate moments, a joking note of, “if i’m ever just on time or, god forbid, late, assume the worst.” he’s talkative to fill where the other isn’t, only talking about himself the appropriate amount, trying to avoid the curse of simply waiting for the other person to end their sentences to get your turn and instead trying to listen to very few things the other man says. dating is a game, it’s a balance, it’s a social outing far more complex than any other. there’s a pressure to it, an expectation for more dates, for a relationship, for sex, to achieve whatever intentions the two people have. “well, thank you!” he says, “i think it’s my most memorable feature, i’ve been called ‘eye guy’ probably more than i’ve been called by my name.”

gael finds it’s best to start with a good conversation, with getting to know each other. although the more he sips on his drink the warmer the room is getting, the longer his gaze is starting to linger. he’s a touchy tipsy, the kind to reach out and grab a shoulder to emphasize a point, to lean into personal space when he laughs, to rest a hand on a thigh without really thinking about it. he once again ponders the fact that no matter what they’re technically going home together in some regard or another, entryways mere steps from each other. 

“but you’re one to talk, you have beautiful eyes. they look gold, they’re very alluring.” that’s flirting, gael’s flirting.

achara would lose her mind.

“oh, i believe it. i’ve never seen a new york city apartment with a wide enough hallway to comfortably fit a couch up the eight flights of stairs. you’re practically a superhero, i feel like i should be thanking you for your service.” he laughs a little. “hey, nothing wrong with that, just means i’m getting the first shot.” a hand running through his hair while he talks, his smile getting just the slightest bit suggestive with a playful tilt of his head, every so often leaning forward just a tad in the animation of his mannerisms. definitely flirting. obviously flirting. “architecture, though, that’s impressive. i’ve heard the workloads brutal. i tried to get through college as fast as i could, took way too many classes at once. didn’t do a lot of dating myself until my junior year when i quit my serving job at the time.” if you could call what he did that year dating at all. “it’s hard to go back, especially when you work like that, i have a lot of respect for it. i don’t think i’d be able to make it work.” he says honestly, sincerely. 

break me apart in all the ways that matter

@neosy

“i just need you here for support, you know?” she insists for probably the fifth time since arriving in the food court, her words bent and mushy around the hour-old bubble gum she’s still chewing out of sheer force of habit, the worry gnawing at her insides similarly. she feels sick, nauseous, nervous, regretting having gotten a basket of orange chicken just for it to sit in front of her on the table, cold and inedible now, tilted and toppled every which way by her fork for the past twenty minutes while they’ve waited here. “you don’t even have to do anything, just sit there and look pretty, you can play on your phone, whatever. i just don’t want to get murdered or anything by a stranger, right?” she tries to say it like a joke, she tries to say it like a quip, like a pun, like something out of a cartoon she used to watch when she was smaller and still believed her parents when they told her they were her parents.

so many things have changed since then.

she doesn’t even glance over at her cousin as she speaks to him, her eyes too preoccupied, scanning the ebbing crowds around them, the mall high class and beautiful but busy nonetheless, everything clean and expensive, but growing chaotic by the second. she wishes there weren’t so many people here, she wishes she’d picked a different meeting place, somewhere outside perhaps, somewhere under the sun where her bright red heart-shaped shades would actually make sense instead of being simply a fashion accessory. she has to wear them anyway, to match her crop top and earrings, but at least outside she would have had more directions to bolt, should this meeting turn absolutely sour.

she has no idea what to expect, honestly. finding out that she has a birth mom who’d given her away as a baby was harrowing enough, that her parents aren’t her parents, that her family isn’t her family, but then also finding out that the woman who’d discarded her went and adopted another child at some point felt like both a blessing and a slap. she can’t organize her emotions, she can’t set anything straight. she doesn’t even know what he looks like, having only contacted him through a genetics blog he hadn’t ever bothered to change the anonymous features of.

she chews her gum and bounces her knee against her chair, her other leg pinned between her torso and the table, and flips one of the orange chicken pieces over, picking at her own nails absentmindedly. where is he, where is he, where is he, why is he making her wait so long, why isn’t he here yet? she inhales, exhales, tells herself she doesn’t need to text him again.

strangely enough, as soon as he steps around a far corner, she knows it’s him instantly. she’s never seen him before, he looks like no one to her, like nothing to her, a complete stranger, a foreign entity, but the way he turns and searches the space around her, gazing, frowning, hunting; she knows it’s him. and he’s not like anything she’d expected, blonde and tall and all in black like a funeral; he strides into the area with all the subtlety of a knife cutting through butter, something impossibly direct about it, impatient, powerful, unkind, inconsiderate of everyone else in his vicinity. she can hear his boots against the floor even over the cacophony of the cafeteria, see the seriousness in his features as he passes her by, like she’s a cowering creature against the onslaught of a roving storm.

she doesn’t like that comparison. she pushes herself to her feet, and even though she is not tall, she still stands as straight as possible. “jaewon yang?”

he flips around, yanked on by the sound of his name and she catches her first sight of his eyes, oddly yellow, bright against the surrounding fluorescence. “lianna devereaux?”

she nods and he steps closer to her, carefully, cautiously, blinking as they formally meet each other, and she gets the sense he’s sizing her up, taking her measure, aligning her with her mother and contrasting the two. how does she match up? how does she fit, in his eyes? “this is my cousin, neo,” she introduces, gesturing vaguely towards him, shooting him a nervous glance as she sits back down again.

jaewon yang sits down across from her, his eyes on the other male for a moment. “the back up, i assume?”

when she had asked for his help he couldn’t say no. 

as much as he liked to feign flippancy, as easy as the shrug came to his shoulders when he said, ‘well, i wanted needed to go the mall anyways,’ he wouldn’t have turned her down for anything, had called to reschedule appointments, meetings, told the people at work to deal a day without him. this was a big deal for her, though he honestly didn’t understand it, didn’t get why she needed more family, how she could think she’d find anything better than what she has now. her ‘brother’ be damned, as far as he was concerned she was of the same blood as him, and the man she craned her neck searching for in the busy food court was the one who was fake, was the imposter in her life, and if anything seemed even the slightest bit out of place, if he seemed even the tiniest bit odd, neo wouldn’t hesitate to break a plastic fork and prison shank the motherfucker.

well that or he had a tendency to concealed carry. was he planning on whipping out a gun in the middle of a busy food court? not really. would he if someone started putting their hands on his baby cousin? he wouldn’t hesitate.

but still he’s sat comfortable, phone in hand, scrolling through instagram with huge sunglasses perched on his nose, darkly tinted to the point that from the outside perspective it’s questionable if he can even see inside (the answer is yes, though it’s only because he wear sunglasses inside so often he practically honed night vision), his posture relaxed, casual, as if this wasn’t one of the most anxiety inducing scenarios of all time and he says, “i know, baby girl, i get it. you know me, best support in the world, so warm and open to new people, so excited to welcome some fuckin’ commoner into the family, yada, yada.” he says at first, not looking up from his screen before pausing, rolling his eyes and putting his phone down on the table looking up, trying to sound as close to sincere as he can when he says, “i know this is important to you and i’m glad i’m here.” before immediately picking his phone back up and swiping on tinder.

it’s a few more minutes of idle chatter and held breath, lianna searching, all anxious and on edge before he hears her speak the strange man’s name and he looks up curiously. 

at first glance he wasn’t much to look at, the opposite of flashy, dressed like fucking john wick, all tall build and combat boots, more coat than man, the most striking thing his blonde hair, but then he actually looks at him for a second, the phone screen fading to black in a timeout and neo pushes his sunglasses into his hairline, body turning out towards them though he doesn’t stand up. neo’s one of those people who bleeds rich, who’s made of it, who embodies it. he’s the type of person who doesn’t need to say the words, ‘you don’t belong here,’ for the other person to get the message, and this man certainly doesn’t belong here, doesn’t deserve to stake a claim on his baby cousin though his status doesn’t have as much to do with it as he’d like to pretend -- it could be prince harry himself and he’d think the same thing. he’s defensive, he’s taking him in intently, not shy in scanning him from head to toe, eyes hooded and head tilted. this is how to make someone self conscious, this is how to let them know they’re being watched.

he’s fucking hot, yeah, handsome features and from what he can see despite the thousand layers of black on black on black he seems to have a nice body, neo’s not blind to that, couldn’t be as someone so vain, so intent on appearances. it’s fucked up but he’d be even more weary of him if he were unattractive. that’s how the cookie crumbles, that’s how the high class function, he wants to say ‘you’re lucky you’re pretty,’ but instead he just smiles like a shark, all sharpened teeth and glinted eyes, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, all ‘watch your step, jaewon yang’ when he says,

star shopping

when ares was first created, he was meant to be a downe feather, he was meant to feel others’ emotions and soothe them of their sins with sins of his own, he was a creature of sensitivity and blank slated servitude, kissing the shoes of men and women with more power than they knew what to do with, people who could have him decimated with a flick of their wrists. even after his transformation, calculating his opponents’ stride and weight balances have always been crucial to how easily he beats them, how quickly he can snuff out a battle, his likelihood of keeping or losing limbs or motor functions.

he still utilizes that area of his cortex, still navigates his way around reading humans and human counterpart reactions with all the scrutiny of a ruthless computer, measuring the angles, the lines, the distances between objects in space, bodies in a crowd, muscles tensing, eyelids widening, even if it’s just a fraction of a number, it’s noted, it’s documented, it’s serialized, when ares the war machine is paying attention. if gael thinks he’s doing a good job covering his frazzled state, if he thinks he’s getting away with the thinly controlled nuances in his voice, if he thinks ares cannot see crystal clear the defensiveness in leon, the guard, the worry, the trepidation, mixing in with gael’s own internal panic and discomfort– if he thinks any of this is flying over ares’s head, than he hasn’t watched the proto operate nearly as closely as he claims to.

this could be over in a single second and ares would walk off this planet with zero legal consequences. somewhere in his left shoulder blade, a bullet turns over, mulling.

but the machine keeps his grin and the mechanic introduces him as ‘boyfriend’ and it takes nearly all of his effort to keep from asking “really? is that what i am? is that what we decided? was i decommissioned when we had that discussion?” not because he doesn’t believe that, titles or no titles, gael belongs to him, but because he feels there’s something arrogant about gael just announcing this to a complete fucking stranger without mentioning it to him first. and it ties the title down in a way that ares cannot argue with or further the conversation about without seeming like he doesn’t want that connection with gael, a connection that he very much obviously already has and shouldn’t have to put on a fucking display for gael’s….

ex lover. yeah. that’s what this is. none of this ‘old friend’ bullshit nonsense, gael and his lies can fuck a tree– ares isn’t blind. leon and gael have fucked, probably often, probably serenely, probably mushy and sweet like a puddle made of sugar in water, smiling and soft in each other’s embrace, and gael probably liked it because it was probably closer to gael’s preferred speed. and leon is human, after all. leon the human.

ares flashes back to that warehouse, less than a week ago, when he’d ripped a guardsman’s spine out of his body.

a muscle in his neck tightens a moment, but he keeps smiling.

“ohhhh, come on, enough with that noise! i’m not stupid, you guys were together, right?” and here is ares with a needle in his hand, and here is ares, doing what he does best with a needle; sharpening it. “our boy gael is always so modest with the lines and the titles and things, but it’s okay to admit you’ve made mistakes in relationships, right?” his eyes slip between the two of them but his words seem mostly targeted towards leon, because frankly, so many dangerous things with barrels and teeth are targeted at him right now, so why not. “that they end sometimes, and all that? that the person you claim to love sorta stops loving you eventually, does undercutting things every once in a while to put you in difficult situations you’d rather not be in, ever?” he shrugs.

he might be talking about himself, but he also might be talking about gael; it’s a toss-up.

“so you go and get an upgrade.” perhaps it’s far-fetched to call himself an upgrade, but he’s certainly not a down-grade. “we were just talking about that actually, upgrades. have you seen his new arm?”

when they get to the meeting portion of this fantastical game of nerves and nerve endings, ares waits for gael’s reply, waits for him to do the inevitable backsliding, cowardice, piece of shit move he knew he was going to fulfill, scared and wiggling like a caught bug, and he almost wants to spit. instead he just tsks. “stop it, kitten,” he playfully pouts at gael, nudging his shoulder lightly before explaining to leon, his eyes bright, his internal self-destructive tendencies running high, “gael actually saved my life. i have quite a few moving mechanical parts on me, including my head, eyes, arms, hands, chest, legs, feet, and toes, and he stitched me all back together again like humpty-dumpty. except for my dick, of course, that’s pretty much the only thing about me that’s never broken.” heart eyes. “it was super romantic.”

nevermind that ares was drenched in about five peoples’ blood at the time, or the fact that ares and gael have never had a traditional relationship until like two days ago– nope! it’s all cookie-cutter, kitchen-table, bedroom-pillow-talk romance for ares and his kitten.

he actually starts answering leon’s question about where they’re staying, already beginning to list him directions and coordinates to the middle of an ocean somewhere and ask if leon would like to come visit them, have dinner, play a board game, drown underneath all that pressure and blue, blue water, but gael breaks him off with his determination not stay too long, and ares falls quiet when leon leans in. he bends in and breaks gael’s atmospheric barrier once again, to lower his voice this time as though it makes a fucking difference, as though ares couldn’t hear him even if they were all the way on the other side of the marketplace. for the first time during this conversation, ares lets his glee dim, let’s the curve of his grin fall, so that when leon actually looks at him this time, what he sees is the blank slate darkness ares has been recommissioned for.

“actually no. i do mind.” he steps forward, this time making himself more clear to the other male to stop trying to get between him and gael, to stop pulling him out of ares’s reach, to stop breaching through the space he’s not invited into. ares steps between them, a shoulder in front of his mechanic protectively, his eyes dark like fixed points in a midnight sky. “i guess your powers of observation are lacking–low iq is such a pandemic to the youth today– but gael is healing from a rough up he got from some guys a few days ago; he was attacked and mugged and beat all to hell, and i wasn’t there to help him. big regret, but i think even you can understand how hesitant i am to let him out of my sight with a stranger– not that i haven’t heard great things about you, my guy, i’ve heard so many things and all of them great!” again, that smile, even if it doesn’t last. “but just the same, i’d rather you didn’t.”

again, in his shoulder, the bullet turns over.

it’s ticking like a time bomb, he can hear the chamber turning in his mind, can see in ares’ stance something vicious, hear it in his words and the bite of his teeth. gael’s wound tightly, he’s nervous, he’s stressed the fuck out -- he doesn’t want someone to die here, doesn’t want leon to to get torn to pieces. it’s not because they were together once, not because he wants anything back with the other male, but because he can’t have blood on his hands like that. realistically, as much as it makes him sick to think of life in such a selfish way, he has no use for leon anymore, hasn’t seen him in years and hopefully will never see him again after this, but to snuff out a life over a spat about relationships? about ares and whether or not he’s his boyfriend and whether or not leon and gael used to have a thing like they’re all fifteen years old? 

then ares confesses his mechanical parts and leon’s face fills with something like understanding, like sadness -- the feeling is pity and gael wants to hit him. he hates that expression, hates that look on his face, the curve of his brows, the low dip of his frown that all show his thoughts so clearly. he thinks gael had to build someone to compensate and to make it worse he says,

“what are you doing, gael? another project?” all soft tone like he’s nursing a baby bird, like he knows anything about what’s going on here, like he knows ares, like he still knows gael, like he has any right to judge him or get involved and still it escalates, still it gets worse. there’s no saving the situation, no gentle parting or ‘nice to see you’s but instead an atmosphere only getting more and more tense and leon looks at him, confused, worried, concerned when he asks, “what is he talking about? some guys? what are you getting involved in?” and the string snaps, he sees how south this has left to go, ares only able to be pushed so far, himself only being able to take so much pity, so many assumptions, before he takes over the situation, shouldering past ares to stand between them, frustrated and exhausted he turns to face leon, all clenching fists and pounding headache.

“okay, no, that’s enough, how about this? everything on the table, let’s straighten this out so this whole... thing can be over. first off all, what i’m involved in is none of your business, where i’m staying is none of your business, and my relationship is none of your business, but if it puts your mind at ease -- no, leon, ares doesn’t hit me. yes, he’s a proto as he just so very well explained and no, not a project. i know what else you’re thinking and, no, i didn’t build him the fill the big empty void in my chest from when i left you, because there wasn’t one, and if you're so intent on talking about relationships and their flaws let’s talk about the one that you actually know anything about -- you wanna know why i really left? ‘cause it wasn’t to ‘spend time finding myself’ like i told you it was.” there’s barely a pause following and he sees leon’s eyebrows knit together, sees something like pain, like apprehension -- he doesn’t wanna know, he doesn’t want him to say it but gael needs to make leon disappear before he gets shot in the face, needs a clean break with no fight and so he does it anyways, launches into a spiel that could break any human heart, cause pain to any brain filled with hormones and chemicals when he says,

“i left because you were boring. you were so content with everything staying the same all the time, with just settling down and rolling over every time there was push back. by the end i barely touched you, i even stopped talking to you, and you still insisted it was fixable. i wanted you to leave so i didn’t have to and you couldn’t even do that. you were so docile, so submissive and needy and, oh my god, it was boring. we’re just too similar for it to work, we’re too much alike, you couldn’t give me what i wanted and i couldn’t do that for you either. i’m sorry, leon, you’re so nice, it was boring, it was suffocating, i wasn’t happy. i really don’t know what you're trying to do here, i haven’t seen you in years and now you find me on the street and try to start problems in my relationship? causing a scene? it’s a bad look.”

he takes a breath, all created of solid parts and broken things, more machine than man in the stability of his voice he says, “is that enough or do you need me to keep talking? because there’s more, i haven’t even gotten into the pointless conversations or the bad sex or your super weird relationship with your parents.”

and there’s leon, his heart in his feet, his eyes wide and sad and confused, his voice weak, fragile. “you’re different then i remember. you’re meaner. i just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” and gael knows it’s true, knows that this isn’t the person that leon had known back then, knows he’s not the gael that he’d fallen in love with, and it makes him feel almost bad. he knows how it must feel, knows that he was harsh, almost cruel but he couldn’t let them fight anymore, couldn’t let them tear into each other over something so goddamn stupid because ares would fucking kill him. this was how to keep the peace, this was how to make leon go away, this was how to wrap everything up with a pretty little bow. maybe even give some closure. 

he had things to say to ares too, had a different monologue for him, but that would happen in private, like adults, because they had that choice. leon didn’t, leon didn’t have the option to step into the other room for this conversation, it had to happen here and now or never -- very public, very unkind, with what’s possibly the worst audience of all time. he wants to apologize, wishes he could, things he would never say before, things he couldn’t mean back then. if anyone was wrong it had been ares, it anyone was acting out it was ares, but still he attacked leon, still he turned on him for just trying to help, even if he was overstepping.

defend them in public, correct them in private -- that’s what they say, isn’t it? then why does it feel so bad?