Dust gathers along the glow of the lone lamplight. Beneath it, the bench creaks beneath the combined weight of two figures. The splatter across Butcher's shirt is of dubious origin. Everything turns the same colour in the half-light anyway, dull and duller. It should've been an easy win. The B-list supe should've been dead. The virus files should've been in hand. They should've been halfway home by now, arguing over takeaway orders instead of sitting in the dark like a pair of miserable bastards. @awkwardcourage has the good sense not to chirp in his ear. His earlier attempts at conversation had ricocheted off Butcher's refusal to acknowledge them. The periphery of his vision has been permanently blackened, and every which way he looks, the shape of his own vexation gathers at the edges. Smoke coils through it as he drags on the cigarette, turning the whole world hazy around the edges. It hounds his head, and it'd eat the lad alive if Butcher gave it half a chance, V in his system or not. In some last-ditch effort to salvage this shite, against any sane instinct of self-preservation, 𝗛𝘂𝗴𝗵𝗶𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝘀 𝘂𝗽, ❛ Look on the bright side: we’re never going to have a worse week than this one. ❜
The laugh it drags out of Butcher is gnarled, a throttled articulation of amusement dragged through scar tissue and habit, ❛ Said every poor sod right before life dropped its trousers and bent 'im over. I've got a fiver says this time next week, you'll be lookin' back at this mess like a bloody holiday. ❜ He says, in lieu of telling Hughie to shove the optimism up his arse. He wasn't particularly keen on having this discussion ━━━ He dragged on the cigarette and tasted heat, ash, and the last fraying threads of his patience. The fact he was still standing here having the conversation at all ought to qualify him for canonisation. Fucking Saint-level forbearance he had not to throttle the lad. One more bright-side platitude, one more attempt to put a cheerful ribbon around the corpse of a failed operation, and he might find himself going back on that testament. ❛ Go 'round playin' Under the Dome with me again, we'll be havin' words, yeah? From 'ere on, you're with me, or you're in my way. Simple as. ❜
