duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

[unlawful]

TEXT / VOICE / VIDEO / ACTION NOTE: felix generally responds to everything in text, even voice or video calls. expect 90% of his replies to be text-based regardless of urgency.

Comments

[unlawful]

( not many people get his back at this distance, back home or here in duplicity. part learned instinct drilled into him since basic, and part reflex. protect the reactor in your rig, always. without your reactor you're dead, gates. watch your goddamn six. you're gonna get yourself killed.

beyond that: too many areas to protect, too many vulnerabilities he has permanently etched into him – the implant scar at his nape, just under his hairline, and the tattoo scrawled in thick, bold print behind his right ear, impossible to miss at this angle. LII.VIII.XXIII., a date he had printed on him six months after he bailed from reach. the same date he uses as a username for duplicity's network for shits and giggles, like the memory of it hasn't fucking haunted him for the past five years. a final fuck you, to isaac gates and samuel ortez, long-dead on a bombed out planet.

it can't touch him if he doesn't let it. nothing can.

he shifts against crais and tucks his hand between the cushions, groping blindly for the packet of wipes. once he finds it, he snags a wipe between two fingers and impatiently waves it over his shoulder for crais to take. )

You think I'm crazy.

( he's starting to think he's a little crazy, too. )

[notleavingquietly]

[ Crais would never have pushed Ephemera to put Crais at his back, not even verbally or as much as he had Felix. He might (but probably won't) examine the reasons for that, later. Because he doesn't really care why, and also he's not actually thinking about Ephemera in this exact moment.

The cryptic (to him) tattoo, he is thinking about. Felix, in general, he's thinking about.

He takes the packet when it's offered, and uses one hand and his teeth to tear it open, and fishes the wipe out of the foil lined wrapper.]

I don't think you're crazy; I know you are. I spent too long out of my mind not to recognize it when I see it.

[ he slides his hand down Felix's arm to the wrist then closes his fingers very loosely around the delicate bones, and starts cleaning up Felix's knuckles with his other hand and the wipe. Some kind of gentle, but not flinching or light with it. Direct and matter of fact and not trying to mitigate the sting at all.]

What's the tattoo mean?

cw mentions of substance abuse, general war trauma

[unlawful]

( aside from a small, shivering twitch through his shoulders, felix sits eerily still as crais mops up his bloodied knuckles. )

It's a date. August 23rd, 2552.

( a bargain he made with the unsettled dead, when he left reach behind to burn to fucking glass. it was a miserable failure. turns out the dead don't much care for dewy-eyed mementos. he still sees their faces in his dreams, still hears the moaning screams of whole cities plasma-bombed to bits beyond the cacophonous warning call of klaxons, nightly visits only kept at bay with a handful of pills and a splash of whiskey.

and now he carries their corpses with him, butchered and chained into a digestible, palatable memory neatly inked behind his ear. as if it could hold them. as if anything could hold them. as if all the liquor in the world would ever be enough to forget.

the wipe snags on crusted blood. carefully, felix flexes his hand until it flakes off between bony tendons. )

Sentimental bullshit. I was young and stupid. ( then, before crais has the chance to correct him: ) More stupid than I am now.

( he doesn't care. he's done so much worse since he left reach, transformed himself into a nightmare worthy of the covenant's wrath. something to fear. something to hate. something not human. felix, not gates. )

[notleavingquietly]

[ Crais is going more by feel and smell than sight, to know when he's finished. He is looking from behind Felix's shoulder. That limits visibility, and that's fine. Lack of further snagging and most of the smell of blood being gone is a clue that it's time to discard that wipe, get a new one and repeat the process on Felix's other hand. ]

There are better and worse kinds of stupidity - and insanity. I'll show you my back when we're finished here. If you're drunk enough to be able to sit still.

[ There's nothing wrong with some sentimentality, Felix. Also: ] What happened on that date?