unlawful | duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

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duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

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.

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yeah.

[ He's kept the gun cleaned. The knives sharp. He doesn't say, glad you're back. ]

good boy

( he's nearly tempted to ask why he passed off his rig to crais, but he swallows the question down because ultimately it doesn't matter. his rig is back in his possession now, tucked in a corner of his room in the down, meticulously examined in reverent worship the millisecond he shut the door and was alone with it.

like most things with ephemera, felix has to actively remind himself that he doesn't care. )

you wanna hand it off yourself?

[ There was a time that would have made him bristle. Now, it's just a thing they're saying. A moment. ]

yeah. where are you?

the down
back in the starter apts

( right back where he originally started. it burns. )

i can meet you somewhere halfway if you want

i'll come to you. drop me a pin.

door's open
invite yourself in whenever

( he sends him the pin, then rolls across his bed to stand at the open window and light a cigarette (snagged out of the front pocket of a stranger at a nearby bar), preempting his restlessness and any potential fidgeting with the slow, settling burn of nicotine. he waits, flicking ash onto the windowsill. )

[ He shows up not long after. The door is unlocked, just like Felix said. Ephemera still takes his time, checking for blind spots. For potential ambushes. There are none.

And so, he pushes the door open. ]

Felix.

[ Alive and in the flesh. Ephemera pushes his hood back, staring for a long moment. Wondering at the relief he feels. ]

You got more of those?

[ Cigarettes. The bad habit he hasn’t managed to shake, unlike binge drinking and flipping his shit whenever people brush against him on the street. But some things are burned in deep and even if he’s wearing an eyepatch instead of the prosthetic that never fit right, even if his hair’s long enough to tie back now, some still bleed true in the end. Nicotine settles him, maybe in the same way it settles Felix. ]

( the room is different from his last room in the down provided housing, but sparser now, unlittered with any of his personal belongings or glittering collection of half-empty liquor bottles. his rig is tucked away in a sturdy container that he assumes belonged to either ephemera or crais, shoved beneath his rack once he was finished scanning it for any recent cosmetic defects and system bugs, shit he'd need to eventually fix before it saw active use again.

there weren't any that he could find. ephemera took good care of it in his absence. crais, too, though felix suspects he never touched it to begin with and that it sat in his apartment collecting dust until felix returned to collect it like a wayward stray.

he swallows a mouthful of smoke as the door creaks open behind him and ephemera says his name, gravel-scuffed, upsettingly familiar. part of him doesn't want to look at him. part of him wants to tell him to leave his gear on the bed and get the fuck out. that's how it always starts. looking at him. seeing him as anything other than an asset to be squeezed dry and discarded. but felix isn't a bitch. he turns and wedges his shoulder against the wall, leveling his eyes on ephemera's face. he seems different. less twitchy. his hair's longer now. no more prosthetic, either. idly, he wonders how long he's gone without it.

other than his taped-up knuckles, felix is a mirror image of the man who disappeared from the city three months ago: neatly dressed in the clothes he arrived (and disappeared) in, with his heavy black boots laced up to his calves over his jeans and his hair aggressively finger-combed away from his face. one unruly strand falls in a silky-dark wisp across his forehead. )

Sure as fuck don't, but you can have mine. ( he holds out his busted hand, cigarette dangling between two long, inked-up fingers. an olive branch, or a i come in peace until you give me a reason to bite offering. ) C'mere, T.

( no challenge or dare in it. he's unreasonably tired for a man who's just come back from the dead. again. )

[ No one else calls him T there. No one else has ever tried to. Ephemera touches his knuckles to his mouth, wondering what that means - if anything. Names have weight to them, an impact beyond the obvious, but how he and Felix orbit each other seems to defy the usual logic. But here they are.

He shrugs and moves to stand next to Felix, taking the cigarette easily. He doesn't realize he's put Felix into his blindspot until it's already happened. ]

You look tired. Where'd you go?

[ It comes out soft. They're both dead men come back. Right now, the only place they're alive is this fucked up city. ]

( ephemera stands on his right instead of his left, giving him his blind side. felix's throat tightens strangely. )

Where'd I go? ( he echoes, and exhales raggedly. where does anyone go when they're already dead? ) After I left, you mean? Nowhere. Chorus. The dirt. Back to being a corpse.

( the before is more complicated. he hadn't intended to go anywhere except back to the down after cutting ephemera loose with the thought of permanently leaving him to his own devices. his rig had been his goodbye and a weird, fucked up version of an apology. sorry for all those times i stabbed you. sorry for making your life more complicated. sorry for giving a fuck, that was my bad. won't happen again, swear on my multi-million dollar rig's life. they weren't supposed to meet again after that, as long as felix could help it, as long as the city didn't sabotage him.

he should've known better, really. karma's not quite finished with him. )

You look good. ( punctuated with a gentle tug to ephemera's hair. his knuckles brush his nape as he drops his hand, hanging loosely at his side. they're close, standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. ) It kinda suits you.

( the long hair. reminds him of ortez, before he shaved it all off. )

I figured.

[ Ephemera takes a long drag on the cigarette, letting the nicotine burn as it goes down. Letting it settle in him, another one of those bad habits that gentles his edges. That lets him remember what it's like to breathe and exist without all the shit that made him what he is. Was a time not so long ago when he had a different name. When he was, at best, only half a person. Felix knew him then, though not well. But then, that had been the point. They hadn't been a thing to each other by design.

The answer, he supposes, really isn't much of a surprise. He's never been one for god or afterlives. But he huffs a little as Felix tugs his hair, a faint smile ghosting over his face. It doesn't hurt. ]

I've never had it this long, ever.

[ He exhales, and watches the smoke spiral. And he watches Felix too, and wonders. After a moment, he pulls Felix's sidearm out from his jacket and hands it over. It's loaded. Maybe that was a mistake - or would have been, at one time. ]

I don't know. Think I like it.

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