s i g h t l i n e d

indie private multimuse || primary: billy russo || strictly 21+ || heavy on combat + associated triggers || (iconless) para- to novella-length rp

hi, i’m ari (any pronouns). feel free to drop me an ask, DM, or find me on discord at: sightlined#7560

also at: @getinthefunvee || @redwhiteandbruised || @magisterivm (other blogs will be kept up as a permanent archive, but moved to this multimuse)

RULES / INFO / MUSES (Google Doc) || thread tracker (external)

It’s like this: soulmates are rare, but not rare enough that everybody doesn’t know what’s going down when two idiots suddenly start looking at each other like they’ve never actually seen each other before.

It’s like this: it’s matching marks; or hearing a heartbeat ever closer; or seeing color for the first time; or living through each other’s dreams. It’s touch, or voice, or being pulled together like magnets.

It’s like this: Hallmark cards and shitty movies, and matching t-shirts, and everyone being so happy for the joyous occasion. It’s parties and cake and settling into a life, slightly longer than average, slightly healthier than average, as though the rough edges of each half are softened and improved by yielding to the other.

It’s not meant to be like this: a grainy video; a ghost coming between close friends; the clash of metal on vibranium.

It’s not meant to be like this: the sear of heat and the raw kick of pain, unexpected, shared. It’s not meant to be betrayed brown eyes finding resigned, stormy grey-blue for a split second before a shield crashes down, breaking the sight line.

It’s not meant to be like this: Tony gasped for breath, staring up at the monolithic concrete ceiling, his left arm numb-hot-wrong, the world sinking out from beneath him.

It’s not meant to be like this.

             the world is a blur of

      the world is a blur

the world is a blur of loudspeaker noise brokenglass underfoot screaming angerlaughter wet asphalt wet trash sewerdrainsteam and it’s

                                      too much too fast but

there are places the trackers don’t follow like holloweye disappointment like the son of howard stark is expected to maintain certain standards of decorum like for fuck’s sake can’t you stop shitting on the business i’ve built for one goddamn second like the underground storage vaults where antistatic keeps dust away but it’s cold and cold and cold and

                        and the noise stops

                                                                         and the noise doesn’t ever truly stop

and the noise is the quiet hiss of air ducts hydraulic lullaby click of gears hum of servers and

he can lay down cradled by wires and the darkness and the soft blinking on off of alert lights and it stops it all stops and whatever was in his veins is purged and

                                                          you are not my child

is true because this is his cradle this is where his hands know there is no wrong way to be and the humming at the center of his broken chest finds a datamined echo in the surrounding air and

the disappointment that is himself cannot be seen here cannot be exposed like the frayed end of a cord with the insulation stripped away and every last strand kinked into stuttering oblivion

hours before his brainwaves settle into anything approaching cohesion and it’s the closest he gets to how he presumes the world around him functions, how soft and muted and innocently distanced it all must be for everyone who isn’t

               this is your fault if only you had

him

and his eyes focus slowly, not wanting the toomuch sharpness to return but it’s still dark and dark and cold and he can breathe here where the air tastes like ozone and plastic and warm circuitry

consoles in stasis, but this isn’t his usual haunt, he’s needed to branch out

                                   he’s too good at finding me putting me away putting me

and the facility is old but when his fingers slide over the physical keyboard the plastic is reassuringly uncracked even if the casing clicks, and the screen comes to life, dim but brightening, and the prompt is a simple control is a simple request and why can’t life be code and why must people

                                                 ¿  POWER  ON  Y/N  ?

he always is and that’s the problem and machines aren’t philosophy and it’s far easier to trust the calm linear logic of a program than the unending antfarm

whatever is in the tanks can’t be worse than what’s in his head and

                                                                    [ Y ]

there’s a hiss like steam releasing seams that have been stiff too long and the console is beatifically blank is unresponsive is suddenly a pale blue screen and he wonders what, if anything, can possibly still exist down here that could be powered on by such outdated modes of

                        [ BIOMETRICS CONFIRMED ]

                        [ WELCOME USER_STARK ]

                        [ BOOTING WS01_JB …5% ]

flickering display hardly reassuring but another hiss, another three, and the soft gong of a proximity alarm makes him look up to see one of the manhole-looking round floor segments rotate, and

                       [ BOOTING WS01_JB …20% ]

what rises up is a cryotube and those were meant to be outlawed, were meant to never exist because they’d been used for every innovation that kept him alive medical atrocity and stark industries had gone on record to say they had never used would never use could never have fathomed using

                       [ BOOTING WS01_JB …64% ]

but this was the proof and if he needed it he could blackmail his father with just the existence of this and maybe if howard tries to shove him into another this is just to make you better and it’s for your own good and damn it tony stop being a selfish fucking brat you’re too old to protest whatever it is that’s meant to make him obedient

                       [ BOOTING WS01_JB …89% ]

                       [ WS_Server / info : SYSTEM ERROR ]

                       [ WS_Server / info : SYSTEM ERROR ]

hands slip over the keys easy as breathing easier on the days when the smog gets bad enough that he can taste each chemical compound that’s lodging itself into his alveoli and the code is ancient, the code predates him but he knows this framework and it gives beneath his touch like warm dreams

                       //: LAUNCHING : [ MINIMAL MODE ]

                       //: OVERRIDE MODE USER_CTR_FN_STAT

                       //: RUN RE_QUERY_ERR

                       [ ERROR COMP: INTL_MEM_ERR SENS_FUN_ERR SHUTDOWN_ERR ]

                       //: OVERRIDE INTERNAL MEMORY RESTRICTION_

                       //: OVERRIDE SENSORY FUNCTION DISABLED

                       [ INTERNAL MEMORY RESTRICTION OVERRIDE FAIL ]

                       [ HARDWARE ERR_688_09_1 DETECTED ]

                   [ SENSORY FUNCTION ENABLED ]

                       [ BOOTING WS01_JB …100% ]

and the steel sheath over the glass tube retracts and it’s lessthan morethan he expected and the exposed metal is crude, is an atrocity, and the parts that have been hacked off and soldered back on look like the first attempts of a toddler to work out circuitry and

“Why would they hurt you like this?” is past his lips because no machine should have to endure this degree of indignity and he’s moving, and the glass panel parts beneath his palm, softslide of metal and an exhale of cold, and he wonders why the eyes look so haunted unfocused alive different but android tech has moved on and

“Boot sequence cross-check: basic function status?”

and the lines of code start filling the screen beside him

and he smiles, because he can fix it, he can fix whatever is wrong, and if his memory isn’t faulty and it isn’t it hasn’t been fried into oblivion despite their efforts this could actually be an early-model android prototype and if that’s the case then the AI is at least made to think it’s human and

“Hi. I’m Tony. What’s your name?”

"I don't know," James said tightly, "I think it's going pretty good so far, all things considered."

Another sniper round whizzed past, clipping a piece off the already flimsy cinderblock wall he was doing his best to squeeze completely behind. On the other end of the roof, Castle was flat on his back, expression as pleased as would be expected, considering if he so much as inhaled too deeply he'd be a sitting duck.

"So, uh, on to Plan B? I throw a couple of smoke bombs, you roll on your stomach, grab that rifle, and try to cover me so I can close?" The angles were all wrong, but they didn't have much of a choice. Any longer like this, they were going to get flanked. "You owe me a beer for any bullet I catch."

At least that way there'd be something to look forward to. James glanced up at the clouds overhead, internally calculating the wind velocity, and tossed the first smoke bomb without waiting for Frank's reply.

@sightlined​​ (AU #457)

Blood. He could hear it pulsing through veins. The thump of hearts beating to the staccato rhythm of life. It drove him to distraction. Overhead lights streaming from all around, blinding him as he stumbled into the side of someone, felt their warmth rush through him and the bloodlust call to him. With the terrified widening of bloodshot eyes, it drove him underground. Finding solace in the darkened subway. The steady rumble of machines over steel. Airconditioned hallways and spiralling staircases. 

He found her there. A woman, flanked by two. Her terrified screams bringing him creeping onto the scene. He had the closest offender against the wall in an instant, growling out a “go!,” without even looking toward her. Her flurried steps receding into the distance was all the cue he needed, sinking into flesh, giving in to the frenzied hunger.

It was good, euphoric. Drowning in an insatiable need  that could never be quenched. Heat rushing over teeth and swirling through a body cold as ice. Lust. Like he’d never experienced, wanting and wanting, and wanting. He drank, and he drank, heady and intoxicated. Vision swimming with dazed pleasure. 

A piercing to his back brought him out of the haze long enough to realise he had been stabbed from behind, turning to tackle the remaining man to the floor. His fate was already sealed, had been the moment he entered this dimly lit corridor. 

Frank fed.

Fed like he hadn’t eaten in months. A softly satisfied moan leaving him as the last thread of life flowed out of the man below him. Revelling in it, soaking it in–

–Pulling away with a startled grunt as the realisation suddenly hit him. It sickened him, looking down at the mess he’d left in his wake. Frank had seen his fair share of bodies but nothing as savage as this. Bodies ripped open where claw-like nails had shred as though slashing through paper. Ribs cracked open, blood and flesh scattered like a trail of crumbs. Pale skin luminescent against the artificial light that flickered in from the end of the hall. 

He stumbled away, wiping the back of his hand against his mouth and grimacing at the blood that came away from the touch. Knowing it covered his clothes, his body. He was drenched in it. The high from the kill still lingered, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he enjoyed it more than anything he’d done before he awoke like this. Woke with this gnawing hunger that ate at him.

Hands stuffing into the pockets of his black hoodie, he slunk back above ground. Keeping to the quiet streets, the back alleys. Wandering without destination, hungry and afraid of what he’d become.

A familiar scent caught in the wind, and without conscious thought Frank tracked it. Scaling an empty apartment block with cat-like grace. Leaping across roofs as his target wandered through the busy thrum of life. Frank tracked above, silent and unseen. Waiting until the man on the street below turned into an empty alley, cut-through from the night-life on his way to something or somewhere– a social life that Frank never could’ve entertained.

He dropped to the ground in front of Russo. Soundless. Swathed in black, he sidestepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight, wincing against the harshness. Now that he’d caught up to him he didn’t know what to say. But even now he was creeping closer, seeking out comfort, Billy’s scent overwhelming him and Frank had to fight the urge to bury his face into the crook of Billy’s neck. Growling in warning even as he raised his hands in supplication, voice scratchy and unused. 

“Bill… I need help.”

The world had stopped making sense somewhere around the point of return from the desert, back from the hollow silence interrupted by staccato gunfire, explosions, scrams; back to the constant unending screech of traffic, buzz of music, hum of millions of conversations happening simultaneously. 

Billy had been left reeling - but like every other time life had thrown him, he’d landed on his feet. Maybe there was a fine line between high-level private security and being a mercenary; maybe he toed the line better than some of the people he brought on board, but that was on them, not on him. Billy Russo was thriving, at least in all the ways he’d been hungry for since learning that it was just him against the world, and the only thing he could count on was his own smarts, his own resilience, his own strength.

Maybe, for a while there, he’d also thought he could depend on the unit at his back, but Cerberus had changed all that, had scattered their loyalties and scattered their morals, whatever those were. Rawlins had pushed for a greater show of loyalty in exchange for a foot up the ladder - a financial injection that would get Anvil off the ground in a way that nothing clean ever could.

Maybe it’d been worth it. Maybe it’d damned him.

But he’d rather be damned in a clean suit, deep bank balance, and full stomach than righteous in hungry uncertainty. Righteousness was the domain of the independently wealthy, the comfortably well off, the poor idiots brainwashed by religion to think their poverty was piety. Billy knew what poverty really was: a lack of power. And he’d never let himself feel powerless again.

And the nights spent grandstanding - that knife edge between too cocky and too demure, a high-wire act with profit at stake - weren’t what fuelled him, but good whisky and another signed contract helped to make it tolerable.

He could still taste the peat from the silky single-malt as he turned into the alley, collar turned up against the evening chill. 

He didn’t hear Frank impact with the ground, and that disjoint between what his eyes saw and what his ears didn’t process made his hackles rise and his pulse smooth out with the familiar pre-fight flush of adrenaline.

“Frankie.” 

It couldn’t be - Frank Castle was dead - but the evidence to the contrary was right in front of him. To his credit, Billy stood his ground, though he had to forcibly unclench his jaw back into the semblance of something casual. There wasn’t a scrap of Frank’s body that wasn’t covered in blood and worse; the hands he held up were black with it, and the tell-tale smear across his mouth was enough to make Billy’s heart sink.

“You looking for help or for a meal? Jesus, Frank... what the fuck happened to you?”

The first words Billy Russo said to Frank Castle were: “Queens is a shithole.” 

The afternoon sun was already doing its best to melt the bleachers. Billy had his faded baseball cap pulled down low, which almost managed to obscure the black eye, but his bare forearms were slowly turning from pink to lobster red, as were the tips of his ears, which he wasn’t going to grow into for another year or two. He wasn’t allowed in the dugout since he wasn’t playing, though the one kid with a leg brace was down there, enjoying the tepid knockoff Gatorade from their cooler.

Maybe Billy was looking for a fight; maybe that was just how New Yorkers made friends. There was a ancient-looking baseball mitt clutched in his right hand, knuckles too tight to be casual. If Frank wanted to shoot something back, he was interrupted by his coach, who yelled for him to get his ass back on the field. Billy flashed a grin that was all teeth.

The next week, the weather had turned shittier; the rain came down in sheets, turning the field into a mud pit, but that wasn’t enough to cancel the friendly. Billy was still parked on the sidelines. The black eye had mostly cleared up. The baseball cap was gone. His hair was cropped short, an unkind buzzcut that’d left a few noticeable nicks and at least two deeper cuts in its wake.

There was something particularly sullen about his expression, like the rain was just there to provide a dramatic backdrop to his mood. His threadbare jeans were soaked through, scuffed knees visible where the fabric had disintegrated completely, a single huddled figure excluded from the equally miserable huddle on the field.

When Frank idled on first base and caught his eye, Billy blew water off the tip of his nose and flashed him a mocking salute.

By the third game, Billy was still sidelined. The sun was back with a vengeance, but the baseball cap wasn’t. Billy’s nose was sunburned. A ball went wide, landed high up in the bleachers, and Frank trotted out to get it - of course he did, nothing but pent up energy and the constant need to move, even if everyone else wanted to lie down in some scrap of shade; Billy took the stairs to the top two at a time, met him half-way, tossed the baseball the last few feet between them.

“You might wanna teach the rest of your team the objective is to actually hit the ball with the stick,” he said, head tilted. “Nice home run earlier, Queens. You’re not as hopeless as that haircut makes you look.”

“You’re what, two beers in and you’re tapping out on me? Weak, Frankie.”

Maybe it was closer to four beers and three shots, but the point was that it didn’t take a tremendous amount of alcohol to render Frank Castle pleasantly shitfaced. Nobody would have believed it until they saw it, either, but he was a friendly drunk - stupid, sure, and sort of handsy, but never with anyone he didn’t know would be down for it - which explained the arm slung over Billy’s shoulders.

“And it’s not like I’m asking you anything crazy. I just can’t believe, considering your skill set, you’ve never been shotgunned.”

The first known targets were a product of their own creation; not victims, instigators — scientists and security, caught in the fallout when people playing God made their human mistake and smashed three vials of crazy on humanity’s shoe.

Not that he and Bill knew that back when. They didn’t need to. The missions fit their skill set and the price was right, even if every brief and explanation they got handed was more batshit crazy than the one before it: Russians, North Korea, 5G, irradiated ground water, Tesla.

( Though Tesla, maybe, that one he could see. Guy already looked like a cartoon vampire melted. )

What they knew for sure was there were things walking the earth that shouldn’t be, and those things were alive when they needed to be dead. Him and Billy, they could help with that.

And help they did — 74 confirmed kills in the last 19 months alone, spread out over 27 countries.

How it all came to happen, how the virus spread from a small DARPA lab in Central Europe to almost every continent on earth, was a timeline they’d pieced together one incineration at a time. They were resilient pieces of shit (designed to be ) so fire was the only real way of making certain the job was done, and so-called apex asshole or not, when the fight was done and they got to building the fire those creatures got to bargaining – with whatever they knew or thought they knew.

To begin with, Frank didn’t wanna hear it; just didn’t give a shit what those mutated monstrosities had to say about the things they’d done or why.

Jerk the zipties tighter, shove a kerosene soaked rag between the incisors, light ‘em up.

That was it. That had been their rinse and repeat since day 1, ol’ faithful, up until the Kosovo deployment.

Sometimes, when it got too quiet or stuck on an empty highway, Frank’s mind would empty and the smell of those woods drifted back. The sound of boots on Soviet concrete stairs; five pairs of eyes reflecting in the dark. A culmination of final words.

Shit.

Shit was right.

Shit that shouldn’t be able to get any weirder and now just wouldn’t quit.

The last week had given Frank more quiet moments than his sanity was good for. The privacy to take a shit with the door open and jerk off whenever had quickly devolved into the privacy to get kicked out of all the local watering holes and, eventually, the bad idea to call the kids while their mom wasn’t home.

According to a judge in New York he wasn’t supposed to do that, but he figured it would take them a while to rat him out. Maybe.

( Frank’s divorce had been a shit-show from start to finish. It was their second tour, three steps off the plane and surrounded by half his unit, when some sweating pissant wearing in his daddy’s cuff-links had served him standing on the tarmac of Camp Dwyer.

Yeah, it had pretty much all gone downhill from there. )

So by day four he was ready to say screw it and take the next job solo.

Day five, he was tempted to call Billy’s phone from a boiler and hang up until he got this girl named ‘Flu’ and tell her all about how his ex-boyfriend Russo gave him herpes.

Day six, he woke up to a nightmare about a soda fountain and a shower curtain and knew something wasn’t right. So it didn’t surprise him none when the phone lit up only nine miles out from the GPS marker he was honing in on.

The truck idled as Frank flicked the screen open and stared at the new messages, feeling his vague sense of misgiving twitch in their hole.

[ Frankie is typing … ]

[txt: BILL] sure she ain’t terminal? [MSG DELETED]

[txt: BILL] gimm [MSG DELETED]

[txt: BILL] beer and stromboli in 20

The screen lit up the second Billy set it down, and leave it to Frank never to leave him on read. Billy stared at the message for longer than the five words warranted, as his manic brain tried to decide if sending back a thumbs up emoji would be overkill  ( yes )  and whether he should do it anyway  ( no )  before he finally threw the phone back down on the couch with a soft but very emphatic, “Fuck.”

It was closer to 15 before he heard the sound of Frank’s truck engine, diesel-guzzling and perpetually thirsty, rounding the corner, the speed indicating Frank had already been on his way and was trying to stall to save face. That didn’t bode well, but shit, what would he have done if their situations had been reversed?

( He could imagine himself growing increasingly concerned as 12 hours without a reasonably long response grew into 24, into 36; didn’t think he’d have lasted longer than that before setting up shop opposite Frank’s bedroom window, sun at his back, visible only because Frank would have known where a sniper’s sweet spot would put him. 

Maybe he would have seen movement; maybe Frank would have flipped him the bird through the window, and he could have called him. Or maybe there’d be nothing, just still blackness and a drawn curtain, five hours into ten, and then he’d have been that asshole who rappelled down a brownstone wall to see what the fuck was going on. Codependent wasn’t the right word; they lived or died by each other, what the fuck did civilians know about what that did to a guy. )

The footsteps on the stairs, down the hallway? Too loud, and Billy had known Frank was still very slightly favoring that left leg when the weather got cloudy, but hearing the imperceptible hitch in the creak of the leather...

He had his forehead braced against his forearm, waited until Frank stopped outside the door; didn’t wait for the knock, because Frank never knocked, and Billy could only drag in a few harsh breaths - hyper-aware of the smell of denim, aftershave, sweat, overheated cardboard, melted cheese and how much more intense it’d be when there wasn’t a door between them - before easing open the locks and dragging the door open, grin wide and feeling not nearly half as shit as he undoubtedly looked.

“Oh man, have I missed you,” he said warmly to the boxes in Frank’s hands, dragging his teeth over his lower lip before flicking his dark gaze up to Frank’s ‘don’t bullshit me’ eyes. “You too, I guess.” He pulled the door wide with an unnecessarily tidy pivot, overzealous real estate agent welcoming in a schmuck about to overpay. “I may have started on the beer a little early, but I got plenty for you.”

@sightlined​ Frank & Billy​

He thought it had ended with Rawlins, but the ties to dirty money and the former Director of Covert Operations  lead him to believe otherwise. For all that Madani had threatened to shoot him if she ever saw him again, it turned out to be all empty words when she was desperate for information.

“What’s he doing, Frank?”

“I don’t know, Madani. Isn’t that your field of expertise?”

“Clines, Turner and Frederickson. What does a cop, a lawyer and a civil engineer have to do with Billy Russo? Why is he killing them? Are they linked to Kandahar?”

“If you’re asking me that you already know.”

He knew she knew, just as he knew. He knew Billy better than he knew himself and once the bodies started dropping he recognised the trail for what it was. A mirror of his own path. Vengeance against the unpunished, the people behind the veneer, the puppet-masters. Curt tried to talk him out of it, told him Russo had made his decision and to let sleeping dogs lie but even as the words left his mouth, he knew Frank had already made up his mind.

Because Frank had had time to think between now and then. Had time to think about how he’d left Billy behind when he shipped out. Left him to the likes of Schoonover and Rawlins. As much as Bill protested otherwise, he knew the confused anger for what it was. Knew Bill had always leaned on him to help keep him on the straight and narrow. That was his fault. His failure, and he wasn’t leaving Russo out to dry a second time around.

It was an old missile silo out in South Dakota. To anyone else the trail Bill had left right to him was sloppy. He was losing his touch but Frank knew better. Knew there wouldn’t have been anything left to find if Billy didn’t want to be found. He was reaching out to Frank, and Frank took that lifeline with both hands, walking into the underground maze unarmed and alone.

“Bill… It’s me. I’m right here, Bill. Why don’t you come out, huh?”

The net was tightening, and he was the spider at the edges, drawing the unbreakable silk threads between his fingers just to feel the flies twitch.

Or maybe.

The net was tightening, and he was the shark stuck in the middle, unable to breathe if he couldn’t move forward, his lungs burning, desperately trying to push through the crush.

There was a net. There were bodies.

There was a center.

Billy stared down at his hands, the blood on them sticky along the seams, already starting to flake at the edges, faster than aged paint.

His head wouldn’t stop pounding. He knew that if he could just get it to stop, he’d be able to see into the murky corners, make sense of the broken shadows, pull the edges together into something that approximated a picture. 

Instead he was just here, the blood going dry on his hands, his heartbeat steady and sure, his mind a jungle razed by napalm, all charred twigs and the broken outlines of buildings. He ran his fingers through his hair, but even that wasn’t right, that wasn’t how it felt in his head it should be, the short buzz scraping at the blood and making the sensory memory shudder to a stop.

“Bill...”

Frank’s voice was like a homing beacon, the deep boom of it, reverberating weirdly off the thick concrete walls; the gravel beneath, the hardness around the edges that didn’t make any sense. Frank was his friend. Frank was his everything. And somehow, somehow it’d ended in this.

“You here to finish the job?”

From his perch, he could see Frank’s brows furrow, head tipping as he tried to triangulate the location in a space determined to distort everything. Frank’s hands were empty, loose at his sides; gear belt empty, knife in his boot, probably a couple flash-bangs, but Frank didn’t appear to be carrying anything ranged. Walking in here unarmed was a gamble, or was he trying to lure Billy out so he’d have an easier time of things?