я є и є g α ∂ є

@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.

@syharper

somewhere on board the firefly class spaceship named serenity, there is a baby crying.

it’s not a sound endymion ever thought he’d hear on the supposedly terrifying pirate ship, especially not after the tales and stories saito has told him about his own travels on the ship in a past life, his history long and complicated, his knowledge of the verse and planets skewed interestingly in twisted, secret ways. saito knew a lot of different things about a lot of different kinds of people and places and laws, but the princeling wonders if he’d have any sort of experience dealing with the situation endymion is currently faced with. namely, the sobs and whines of a fussy child.

jaewon had to let him out from his designated room at some point, despite his obvious hesitancy with it, if only to let endymion eat and wash himself, which he supposes the doctor would have him think is a mercy he should be grateful for. the captain still won’t speak with him though, won’t even entertain him-- the guy just walks out of every room endymion enters and locks himself up inside his navigation room, or the bridge to fly the ship, and won’t open up no matter what endymion threatens or promises. every time they land somewhere, captain yang bolts the zephyran inside his room and leaves him there until they take off again, as though endymion isn’t even trustworthy enough to set foot on another planet, as though he’s ready to run given the slightest chance. which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s insulting nevertheless.

so he finds himself wondering quite a bit while they fly, trying to bother henry as little as possible, occasionally sitting with galiad and reciting the prayers and hymns he still remembers, which admittedly, embarrassingly, are only a few. his sister melliandre would be ashamed of him; he can already hear the kinds of scolding she’d dole out on him. he would butcher all the stars in the sky just to hear her again, to get that opportunity again, to be spoken to by her even if it’s in anger. as long as she’s still alive to do it, he wouldn’t care.

ares doesn’t believe in the idea that there can be too much of a good thing-- good things when they are in abundance simply become interesting things, thickening plots and messing with heads, and ares, a true agent of chaos, he adores it all in some fashion or another. he likes when things get heated, he enjoys the tension too much, watching people descend into anarchy, lose their scruples and their manners and their carefully constructed walls-- it’s all fun and games, even when someone gets hurt. the thing he hates the most in this life is boredom.

so when achara seems particularly aimed at him, fashioning herself like an arrow or a knife, her features amused but annoyed at the same time, he only scoffs vaguely in her direction and leans even more into gael than before, flauntingly. “that’s a bullshit rule and i don’t hold to it. the point of the game is to get as wasted and fucked up as possible, that’s what i intend to do.” he knows there’s all sorts of parameters and barriers to games, but this weekend is an exercise in getting away from the world and engaging in all their sins and wanton havoc, and he intends on immersing himself in that to the fullest extent, which includes trivial things such as guides to games.

he raises his cup to neo for coming in with the jab, his eyes shining even as achara takes the center stage and deals out her cards across the metaphorical table, striking a blow at gael that no one saw coming. immediately, jaewon looks like he wants to die across the room, sinking low into the couch with his hand over his brow, his face pained and stressed by the onslaught from seemingly all directions. ares bursts into laughter so loud and uncontrollable, he has to lean up away from gael for a moment, curling up on the couch until he wipes wetness from his eyes. he’s not sure if he’s delighted more by achara’s ruthlessness or the way she went straight for the jugular of her best friend, the one person in the room who most resembles a puppy, innocent and fluffy and soft.

he supposes if this had come any earlier in their relationship, ares might have been angrier about it, might have been frustrated and burning and bothered, once upon a time causing such distress in the atmosphere around him as to damage not only his relationship with jaewon over his pent up feelings about gael, but also damaging jaewon’s face over it as well. but by now, ares has fucked gael so many times across so many different surfaces (pretty much anything he can bend gael over onto) that he can barely remember what those insecurities felt like, how he could have ever fallen prey to such nonsense.

“what the fuck, achara?” jaewon growls, probably feeling like the whole world is ganging up on him tonight. ares can only agree.

lianna is scandalized. “oh my god, what? you didn’t!”

“such memories!” ares is beyond ecstatic. he tries to give jaewon one of those longing, nostalgic gazes, as though they’ve shared something together, as though it was all a bonding experience amidst the three of them, instead of the catastrophe it was, but jaewon won’t even glance in his direction, his hands wiping his face anxiously. so instead he looks at gael, who’s turning a blossoming shade of red. “what a ride we’ve all taken together, huh?” and of course, when he says ‘ride’ he means it in a very particular way, his smile sharpening, his eyebrows quirking.

but then achara gives something of herself away, a quick irritated dig at gael and ares’ relationship, and something occurs to ares that he hadn’t considered before; she’s genuinely unnerved by their  physical proximity to each other, the dynamics of everyone’s seating positions spreading them in such a way that demands she only be a spectator to how ares unfurls himself across gael, and how gael reacts to such attention. which only interests him more.

so of course, ares does what ares does best, which is to aggravate the situation even more by crawling up onto gael even further, this time straddling his lap and biting the edge of his jaw playfully. “is this better, achara?” he’s still grinning like a demon, hungry now for everyone’s discomfort, thirsty for their vexation, running his fingers through gael’s hair as though it’s a competition. he whispers into his ear, “i like it when you turn red, kitten.”

behind him somewhere, jaewon is desperately trying to control what he can of the disaster, his tone obviously meant for neo. “it was one time and neither of us care about it anymore.”

“yeah, you really look like you don’t care anymore, jae,” lianna goads him as she leans back into achara, treating the other girl as her pillow, but after a moment of laughing, she narrows her eyes at him. “wait, if gael’s slept with two people in the room, then that means that you…” she points at jaewon, suspicion crawling in her gaze, an eyebrow lifting. “aren’t you going to drink, too?”

he doesn’t say anything, too stunned for a moment.

she gasps loudly, clearly getting on ares’s level with the enjoyment of other peoples’ discomfort, her hand shooting out towards her half-brother. “never have i ever slept with neo!”

jaewon’s mouth clicks shut as his whole face turns scarlet. he doesn’t reach for his cup.

“oh my god!” she screams.

“lying is against the rules,” ares reminds them, in his best achara impression-- which is only out to make her sound whiny. “don’t be sacrilegious.” when jaewon still doesn’t drink, his agitation morphing into genuine anger, ares’ eyes shift to neo for an explanation, distrust prevalent in his eyes. “you guys stayed in this beach house all damn day together, you seriously expect us to believe ya’ll didn’t fuck?”

space distorter

“we never do,” mae says derisively. “time to get out and see where we ended up. with some luck there’s some edible stuff around here. hopefully something we can convert to water, too.” he hears the sound of her safety belt snapping loose and then she’s up and about already. he doesn’t try to stop her. he’s not the leader of this ragtag band of whatever they should be called. he’s just the one with the knowledge on how to do all the science things, he lets the others settle the hierarchy among themselves. as long as no one messes with his attempts to recalibrate the distorter to get them home, he doesn’t care about anything else except for getting thomas and eloise home with him - alive.

to say that thomas hawkins expects a lot from his little brother, is a gross understatement, however harsh or backwards it might sound to other people or other families not associated with theirs. it is the way things have always been to the hawkins boys, or at least the way it has always seemed to thomas-- that his own contributions to the family name are somewhere between not ending up in jail every fortnight over some small skirmish or other, and maybe someday settling down with someone stupid enough to wed him despite his many faults; those are the highlights of his possible achievements, and nothing more. his parents have long since despaired of him, his friends are either of the same sort of rakes or they remain barely contrived acquaintances, and his lovers are fleeting and devastating.

he certainly knows enough about himself to understand how useless he is.

but lucas isn’t like him, never has been. lucas the dreamer, lucas the stargazer, lucas the inventor, always filling more of the atmosphere around himself than anyone else, as though his aura shines out through his skin, a star in and of himself. he always wanted to learn more, do more, be more, so when he’d announced to thomas and the rest of the world that he and several other brilliant minds had created a way to travel through space, despite the doubts and scoffs of many people, thomas hadn’t doubted him for a second. if anyone could conceptualize a teleportation machine, as insane an idea as it was, it would be lucas. thomas wouldn’t have missed that launch for the world, and despite what’s happened since then, and he doesn’t regret it, because regretting it would mean losing lucas to its unfathomable directions, being trapped in this transporting hell without him. thomas has many, many faults, but leaving his brother to the confusion of this mess alone is not one of them.

but ever since leaving that initial launch, thomas has noticed how hesitant lucas is to take any sort of charge of the situation, which irks him quite a bit. he understands that lucas thinks this whole thing is a muck-up, and he’s right, but if anyone were going to take command of the people here and get them through the next stages of this mess with as little turmoil as possible, thomas thinks it should be lucas. this is his expedition.

but he doesn’t say anything about those thoughts, at least not yet, not when too many other people are here and too many of them are frustrated and lost and scared-- and angry. don’t forget angry.

thomas is looking around at them all when lucas answers him, causing him to take another look around beside him to finally notice eloise. she’s so physically miniature, his gaze sometimes slips right by her. “oh. there you are, i didn’t see you, lo, you’re so tiny.”

she fixes him with her best scalding look. “charming.” but it’s obvious she’s still in too much a state of shock to give him any of her real pique, her thin jacket ruffled around her shoulder, her blonde curly hair a mess around her ears, her hand over her stomach. when lucas offers a bucket, she waves his concerns away, but won’t look at him. “no no, i just need a moment.” she is turning a rather alarming shade of green however, but of course it’s improper to admit to needing to barf.

a confession that thomas is long since past. “think we better get her one anyway, lucas.”

“do not. i’m fine.” to prove it, she glares at them both.

thomas lifts a hand in submission to her and straightens up, finding the nausea lessens when he isn’t crouched over, his gaze once again scanning over the strange metallic room. it’s huge, nondescript, with no windows and, now that he’s really paying attention, no ceiling either. above their heads is nothing but darkness, which would explain the strange echoing of their own voices all around them. this might be a massive room but no matter how he quints, he cannot see anything up there.

“if you happen to find any brandy as well, miss norton,” he calls out to the beautiful fiendish woman, “do be a dear and bring that for me as well.” thomas misses brandy, as he misses any sort of drink, but he doesn’t honestly expect anything.

jaewon doesn’t think any of the others appreciate how calm and collected he’s already being about this whole thing, given that he didn’t even want to go on this trip in the first place, and he definitely didn’t want to be anywhere near the ocean for a vacation that’s supposed to be relaxing. he knows ares isn’t the one who decided they should all go out for a long weekend together-- or at least, he’s not the only one-- but jaewon would put good money down on the certainty that ares pushed hard for a beach location, knowing how badly jaewon hates massive bodies of water, just to make him uncomfortable. but other than some initial pushback about it, jaewon has been trying hard to keep his cool. he doesn’t whine, he doesn’t complain, he doesn’t fuss; he just stays inside, he just insists on doing what he wants to do. isn’t that good enough?

but apparently not, because ares of course has to push further and further into the frustration zone, insisting that they all get high now, insisting that this is the only way to have fun. couldn’t they just drink and watch movies or something? and now even neo is getting in on it, and jaewon tries not to glare up at him as he steps before him, holding out a bowl that the blonde is obviously meant to take and inhale, all intentions clear, all unspoken words between them obvious. neo stayed in the house with jaewon while everyone else went swimming, he owes him this much. jaewon’s jaw tenses, clenches, strains, but he takes the pipe and lighter and breathes in the poison anyway.

it’s not that jaewon has never smoked before, he’s in college, he’s existed on this earth for a good couple of years by now, and in new york nonetheless, but in the back of his head he can still hear the rushing of waves, the sea churning in its depths below the rip tides and the currents. this whole house seems designed to accentuate the noise, like a shell echoing the supposedly calming sounds, but no one else seems to hear or mind it except for him, and it’s making his stomach twist, it’s distracting him, making him feel like something is coming, like something is wrong. he doesn’t understand the beginnings of this fear he has for the water, for how dark it is, how incalculable it is, how unfathomable it is-- deep and mysterious and spanning on and on and on, but anything could be in there. there’s too much of it.

across the living room, gael and ares lose themselves momentarily in each other, grinning and touching, ares ignoring the others as they mock him, in favor of feeding gael more chocolate and licking the crumbs off his lips (how can he be so oblivious to everyone else sitting here?), and jaewon tries not to think about four hours earlier when he’d had neo spread across the length of his bed upstairs, his lips sucking and biting at his neck. he glances over at neo making drinks in the kitchen and wonders if he’s mad at him for not taking their makeout session all the way, for not being in the mood for sex with the ocean so near. he does seem kind of pissed. jaewon will have to make it up to him later.

“you didn’t actually make all these yourself, did you, ares?” lianna asks, taking on a different tone from the others’ teasing, her fingers unwrapping one of the chocolate bars. of all of them here, jaewon thinks lianna might be the most eager to get high as quickly as possible.

ares finally peels his gaze away from gael for a moment, a gleam in his eyes. “i bought most of it. unlike achara, i don’t pretend i can cook and then disappoint everyone.”

neo coming over and sitting down with jaewon isn’t that big of a deal, but neo coming over and putting a hand on his leg narrows every single brain cell in his head to that exact location, all his attention zooming in on the weight and heat of it. he doesn’t know how to react at all; he doesn’t want to shove neo off of him and give him a bad impression that he doesn’t want to touch him (god knows how terribly that would go), but public displays of affection are not jaewon’s strong suit, even ones as seemingly innocuous as this. it feels like a stake, like a claim, and he’s so preoccupied with it, he doesn’t even hear neo’s question properly until lianna answers it.

“ooh, we should play a game,” she offers, leaning slightly into achara, as though it’s everybody’s job now to couple up. jaewon worries he might start hyperventilating, so he gulps down another swig of his beer. that’s when his half-sort-of-adopted sister reaches for the peanut butter and holds it out to him, with a spoon, as though she can feel his internal disquiet. “jaewon. you don’t like sweet stuff, right? try this.”

it’s entirely unprompted, but jaewon accepts the peanut butter with a nod.

“actually,” ares announces with a grin as wide as the horizon. “i was thinking we should play a marijuana version of ‘never have i ever.’ the more things you’ve done, the more you have to smoke, that sort of thing. and drink. we should also drink.”

“so you’re trying to get us all vomiting by the end of the night,” jaewon deduces.

ares is a menace and he’s enjoying this way too much. “now you’re getting it! i’ll go first. never have i ever… been in a threesome.” and then he immediately takes a shot, delighted.

“you’re an asshole,” jaewon calls.

“take a hit.”

“i told you that in confidence.”

“take a hit, jaewon!”

but when henry goes off and gets a chair, endymion somehow feels even worse, disliking his own need for it, the shame of the urgency he feels to sit down and rest. the trauma must still be coursing through his veins, the worries, the discomfort, but to refuse such hospitality would be indefensible, so he sits in the chair and accepts the water and listens to his… friend. he remembers henry speaking about the ship he loved and traveled on, but somehow when endymion had pictured it, it hadn’t been such a wreck. the prince peers around himself, glancing down the open hallway, watching the engine spin in the middle of the room, all the wiring and piping lines that lay bare and unprotected throughout this great beast of the ship. “this is…? the ship? your firefly?” he tries not to wince and instead covers his initial reaction to the revelation by dutifully drinking his water. “please don’t take this the wrong way but when you described your endearingly bewitching vessel to me before, i thought it would be a little less catastrophic.” he grins despite himself. “i suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder though, right?”

and who knows, perhaps endymion himself could learn to love a monstrosity such as this one-- he’s loved far worse things that have hurt him far more before. he makes a mental note later to explore the boat a little more thoroughly, to discover what it is about this place that holds such allure for someone as distinguished and talented as henry lau. endymion had wanted him to stay on zephyr, to help him build more mechs, to enrich the defenses and armories of his kingdom, but henry had been set on his own goal and his own plan, searching for someone specific out in the verse. endymion tries not to think about that, he can’t very well ask about it now.

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.

“i’m just gunna yknow… head out.”

ares gets home late of course, because he’s never even heard of the concept of being early, but despite all he’s done tonight, despite who he’s done tonight, he finds himself hungry but not sleepy, already knowing by the time he kicks off his shoes and pads into the kitchen, that he’s going to be up for another couple of hours into the night. he grabs a beer and a bag of chocolates and spreads himself out across the couch, flicking on the television and settling on the news channel, reminding himself why they even still have a news channel instead of just sticking with the apps on their roku menu.

he couldn’t explain it to anyone else why he enjoys watching this particular news show with this one particular news anchor, whenever he knows jaewon is trying to establish something with someone, whenever he knows jaewon is attempting to be romantic with a new person. jaewon’s never told ares about his relationship history, but then jaewon never tells ares anything if he can get away with it, as though constructing a conversation that takes longer than two seconds while either of them are fleeing out the door is the epitome of torture for the tall, blonde tragedy of a man. ares doesn’t take it personally though, he just learns to be more observant than most; he adapts.

he stares into the face of the girl he knows jaewon used to love as she tells him and all the rest of her viewers about the ever-present bad news coming from the world at large, and he thinks about how people change, about how they crumble under the weight of life, about how they succumb to pressures and greyspace. eventually he changes the channel to some trash reality dating show.

he’s taking a gulp of his beer and unfastening a few of the top buttons on his shirt when a noise catches at his attention, the presence of another, and for a moment, he thinks it’s jaewon coming out for a midnight snack or something, so ares is already grinning by the time he looks over, intent on asking him every messy, nasty question that pops into his head. jaewon will, of course, deflect everything but at least ares can gauge out how the sex was based on his reaction. but the boy standing in his living room is new and infinitely more interesting just for being there. ares’ grin only widens.

“so soon? what’s your rush?” ares wants to laugh but he keeps it to a low chuckle as he leans forward in the seat, the light from the kitchen silhouetting the other’s features while the television flickers light onto his face. it’s hard to see him clearly. “oh no,” he guesses, still smiling like a fiend, his eyes bright despite the darkness, “was it that bad? i keep telling him to work on that bedside manner of his, but the guy has all the charm of a daisy cutter bomb.” he sighs, pretending to be distraught, his eyes peering towards the direction of jaewon’s bedroom, even though he’s sure his roommate cannot hear them out here. “wish i hadn’t worked so hard on grooming him. he was raised by wolves, you know.”

he feels her fingers tracing lines over his skin and he would be a liar if he denied that it doesn’t hurt or sting as much as he constantly worries it might, her touch warm against the persistent chill of the ship, the cold depths of space aching around them, surrounding them from all sides always, like an enemy. she’s warm in his arms, the two of them pressed against each other, but for a moment he can’t hardly look at her, the intensity of her fingertips, of the brush of her lips against his cheek, the lilt of her voice, it brims inside his head, threatens to drown him, to engulf him, to absolve him. he doesn’t know when she became so soft, doesn’t know what could have happened to her in the year since he’s seen her to make her this pliable and dulcet, but it’s infecting him. he holds her closer.

he supposes he’s changed a great deal in the last year as well.

he keeps his eyes downcast, not wanting to singe her with the flames in them, but he leans his forehead against her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, watching the way her lips move as she speaks, the hushed tones held between them like gently glistening star-clusters. he doesn’t want to be talking about endymion, he especially doesn’t want harper to be talking about endymion, not in that way that shows that she knows him on some level, that they’ve been having conversations alone, but he does enjoy the way her mouth forms the words she needs to describe it. even if it is to carefully, soothingly scold him for his lack of insight.

“you’ve been… spending a lot of time with him?” he tries to say it as though it doesn’t matter, as though that’s fine because harper is her own person and jaewon has no right to tell her who she can or can’t have a conversation with, and what’s between them is too new right now for him to even attempt to get jealous over, but he’s not sure how successful he is at it. he tries again. “he hasn’t been bothering you about yala, has he?” he’d kill him instantly if he were.

he understands what she’s saying though, about how he ought to see beyond his own initial frustrations with the princeling and focus on whatever sort of help he might give them, what purpose he might be able to fit into, in the scope of what’s needed for serenity to confidently sail again, and she right. jaewon knows he ought to release his prejudices-- and usually something as petty as this doesn’t phase him, doesn’t break into the sheer amount of focus and efficiency jaewon prides himself on, but with so much of it tied up with saito, the captain finds putting his emotions aside to be more difficult than normal. with vera already gone, he can’t help himself, he can’t help how protective he finds himself being with the family he has left.

“i can’t ask you or henry to fly the ship, i know,” he winces a bit. “henry’s already pretty frustrated at me for letting serenity get as bad as she has been, and i’d rather you took care of yala than get distracted by anything else anyway.” he’d need to see how endymion pilots a spacecraft, since he knows next to nothing about the boy, and far less than what everyone else seems to know about him, but maybe if he can convince the prince that they could help each other, he won’t be such an annoying prick all the time. “you’ve spoken to him then, can i ask your opinion? does he seem like the type to hijack whatever ship he’s on and force us all straight back to zephyr the first chance he gets?”

granted, if endymion did try to pull off such a stunt as that, jaewon would put a bullet in his brain as soon as possible, but the bridge does have a design function that cuts it off from the rest of the ship, locking the room down while the pilot steers serenity, and it would take a lot of maneuvering from henry to get back into the room again from the outside. not impossible, and certainly ending in a death onboard, but it’s not an appealing scenario. “i just don’t know how his gratitude measures up to whatever bullshit duty he feels he has to the rest of his people.”

jesse doesn’t usually pick up the phone on the calls that come in via the hotline, but this particular case has gone on long enough and piqued enough interest that he can’t afford to be seen doing anything else, and he’s already poured himself all over the clues and trails left behind the murders of several men, both prominent and gutter-level. he’s on his third cup of coffee, pushing back the need for sleep as long as he can, determined to stay here, to fight here, until his body breaks down and continuation is impossible. he’s a bloodhound with scents like these, with mysteries like these, insatiable, unstoppable, determined to find the correct conclusion if it’s the last thing he does in this world.

so when the phone rings and he answers it, the first thing he catches onto is the cool, smooth, lilting voice of the caller on the other end, a stark difference to the careful yet nervous tones of previous callers, normal people who aren’t sure what they know or if they really know what they know, hesitant or accusatory. this caller’s timbre is all velvet and confidence, his name in her mouth sounding like a flirtation, which makes him frown instantly. “yes, this is detective wakeland.” he flips open a notebook, grabbing a pen to write down everything she says as accurately as possible. “i can assure you, no matter what the intel is, i’d rather hear it than not. is this about the murders?”

he writes down the address she gives, noting that strange calm cadence with which she speaks, her words and the strange pauses painting a picture in his head about what she’s doing as she’s talking, what she might be reaching for, what she might be looking at. when she reaches the end of her sentence, he realizes the situation, hears that slight upturn in her voice that signals a release, a pleasure, a joy in what she’s seeing, not fear. she doesn’t sound worried or scared, because she’s not. “you know their names well enough to know who and what they are. did you know them personally?” he holds up the notepad to a colleague and mouths that they need to get the hell over to this address right away, which spurs the other officer into action immediately, calling it in to other officers.

“okay, then. you know why she’s here now, you’ve answered her question. why are you here? you don’t really seem the type to drive all this way to meet a stranger out of the kindness of your heart. in fact, you seem pretty fucking antsy to get out of here.” neo’s eyes are snake-like, his pupils might as well be slits, he’s venomous, he’s starving, he’s angry. he doesn’t like how this man is talking to his cousin, how he’s looking down on her. neo’s all drawn lips, turned head and intense curiosity, feigned a certain amount of composure, the calm in the eye of a storm, the chaos of this not even half finished. “so why did you even come? just to be an asshole? break my poor cousins heart?” he looks stoic, he looks flat, voice almost monotonous. but he leans forward, only slightly, teeth too sharp in his mouth, expression not giving away much besides danger, testing, looming. “so what is it, then?”

it’s taking all of lianna’s composure, all her self-control, all her will power, not to cry, not to crumble under the weight of this new information given, delivered to her with all the charm and enchantment of a bodiless head on a plate, set right before her on the table. she doesn’t know what to do now, she doesn’t know what else to say, how to press on with this heavily one-sided conversation, what other sort of questions to ask. what else would she want to know? how her mother died? if she knew anything about lianna at all, if she’d ever wanted anything to do with her in the first place? these aren’t easy answers she’s likely to get from this steel-plated boy, not when she has to rend and tear at him to even get him to speak more than three syllables at a time to her.

but then neo perks up angrily, quick to defend her, quick to lash out on her behalf since she’s too shellshocked to do it herself at the moment, her usual bite and brittle dispersing out from her in a rush too swift to catch, leaving her too bereft and empty to come up with a decent enough insult to hurt jaewon back with. she’s not sure if he’d intended to hurt her with his admission, but he hadn’t even tried to soften the blow whatsoever, hadn’t even considered how finding out that vera blackhound was dead would affect lianna.

at neo’s attacks though, something in jaewon does flare up, his eyes shining as his eyebrows pull together menacingly, his face contorting and twisting into a snarl, teeth on display, the gold in him burning, his posture shifting to lean in towards neo with a blazing amount of fury and frustration in his tone. “look, i get that the two of you are deciding out of nowhere to look for vera, but she didn’t ever mention she had a daughter, alright? she didn’t have any family, and i thought that she’d adopted me because--...” his voice cuts out suddenly, his jaw clenching, his lips pressing together so tightly they turn white and he turns away from both of them, trying to redirect the flames in his eyes somewhere else.

but now lianna is curious, confused, worried. “because why?” she asks.

he waits another long moment before answering, inhaling deeply but keeping his gaze away from her. “because i don’t have any family either. i never have. i thought we were the same. but we’re not, obviously, since she had you.”

when he does finally look directly at her, it’s like looking into the sun, emotions roiling together in a cacophony of violence, heavy and burning, thousands upon thousands of pounds of seething jealousy, bright and hot and damnable. she almost shrinks away from the force of it, but stays her ground, frowning at the pity that bubbles up inside of her. “that’s not my fault.”

“i didn’t say it was.”

“but you obviously don’t want to be here.”

“no, i don’t,” he confesses, the lines of his face sharp and angular and cutting, his molten eyes shifting back to neo as though he’s about to stand up and fight him. “i don’t like admitting that i don’t know things about people i should know things about, and i didn’t know either of you existed until i got that message a few days ago. she lied to me!” that last sentence was almost shouted, spoken too loud for a cafeteria of this calibre, the uptown couples and mom friends looking over disapprovingly at their table, but only lianna seems to notice. jaewon’s own words seem to hit him like a pile of bricks, his gaze dropping downwards in defeat or sorrow, lianna can’t tell. his voice softens. “she lied to me.”

now see, this here, this is where lianna understands jaewon, this is where lianna and jaewon’s emotions intersect, because lianna’s parents have been lying to her all this time as well, she knows what it’s like to suddenly have her whole layout of the world flipped on its end. almost unconsciously, she reaches out for neo’s hand, even as she directs her next sentence towards jaewon. “you might not have been the same as vera, but,” she shrugs a little. “you’re kind of the same as me.”

he winces at her in her heart sunglasses and her bright attire, contrasting dramatically against his all-black ensemble, as though he thinks what she’s claiming is unlikely. “how?”

jaewon barely reacts to henry’s insinuation that the captain even has wiles to begin with in order to use on the shopkeeper, both of them knowing the answer to that idea without him needing to say it out loud-- plenty of people have said it enough already: jaewon has all the charm of a dry, arid desert. he doesn’t particularly worry about the lack of this ability, even when he knows it could serve him to be a little more pliable in certain situations, but he finds more purpose in life for himself when he is being truer to his direct self, when he is strong and undeviating, indomitable and inevitable. he gives no quarter, he bends not an inch.

he does grin though, slightly, just a curling at the edges of his lips when he hears how henry decides to deal with this shop owner as opposed to the one they’ve just left, and keeps his hands by his sides as the older man acquiesces to his desires. “see, look how well you’re learning,” jaewon teases, looking at him as though he’s proud, a small shrug in his shoulder as the items henry demanded are being wrapped up for him, the credits taken, the transaction completed. perhaps henry is growing weary already, being out this long with jaewon, perhaps he is tiring of his company, or jaewon’s own disposition is rubbing off on him. either way, it makes the captain want to chuckle.

as they step out of that place, a flash of metal on the other side of the road catches at jaewon’s attention, making him tense up at first, thinking it might be the shine off the metal of a gun, but instead it’s some sort of pin on the lapel of a jacket, it’s surface facing up towards the sky for a single millisecond. after a heartbeat, jaewon recognizes the face and body the clothes are attached to, the familiar features of an informant jaewon has met various times before, and he knows instantly that something is different, something needs his notice. now. a million reasons race through his mind, all of them troublesome.

he stops walking with henry but keeps his tone nonchalant and unbothered, hoping this won’t descend into something disastrous. they’ve already had a lot to deal with the last few days. “hey, you go ahead without me, pick up the rest of what you need. i’ll meet you back at the ship in a few hours. we leave at sundown.” but before henry can take off, jaewon grabs the bag he has that’s holding the items he’s just purchased, and drops his stolen goods from the first store into it, emptying out his pockets and turning to stride away without another word.

he makes his ways across the marketplace, through meandering crowds and families and officers, as relaxed and casual as someone like yang jaewon can be, his every footfall disturbing the dusty ground with such heavy boots, his coat billowing in the breeze behind him, tugging at him gently. he makes his way to where hawk sits at a small table, the cafe busy and bustling with hungry, thirsty strangers, and sits down across from him without a word at first, picking up the electronic menu. he waits a long moment before finally saying anything. “i hear this place has great kimchi.”