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]

i'm never happy
if you knew that you'd stop answering me

( no amount of enough is ever enough. ephemera drew him in vivid detail, but felix doesn't see himself when he looks at the sketch. he sees a stranger with his throat exposed, mortally vulnerable and unraveling at the edges. he sees the seconds after that moment, when the world went quiet. )

[requiemshark]

i should have stabbed you in the goddamn face.

[ Should have. Didn't. That's the part that keeps tripping him up. ]

but this place. this fucking place. nothing gets to lie, does it?

[unlawful]

stabbed me in the face
shot me in the head
shoved a blade into my throat when i took off my helmet
lots of things you should've done but we don't operate in should haves

( should've done all of this on the rooftop, too, but felix isn't talking about that encounter. that encounter was a result, brought on by a particularly fraught catalyst. unavoidable. expected. )

do you know why i kissed you, terrence?

[requiemshark]

have a feeling you're going to tell me

[unlawful]

because i wanted to

( because he wanted him out of his head. )

because i do whatever the fuck i want whenever the fuck i want to do it and you're just collateral damage
i wanted to kiss you
i wanted you on top of me
i wanted my tongue in your mouth like how i wanted you to put a bullet in my brain to shut me the fuck up
motherfucker
go sit and spin miserably on that

[requiemshark]

you wanted to make it quiet.

[ He hates that he understands. That it makes sense in some simple, fundamental way. Like a bullet to the brain. Everything laid out stark and brutal. Ephemera flexes his hands and wonders if he wants to say fuck it and get drunk. End this, however temporarily. ]

and now?

[unlawful]

( now. fuck. like that doesn't have a more fucked up answer than anything else he's told him. )

now i want you to fuck off before i kiss you again and make this shit even worse

[requiemshark]

[ There's a pause. The easiest thing would be to just step back. Retreat into himself or one of the murals he's tossed up. Lose himself in the art, however temporarily.

Yeah. That would be the smart thing. ]

then why respond at all

[unlawful]

poor impulse control
i can't help myself
i'm extremely accustomed to getting the last word after over a decade of working with locus
pick one or all three or none, i don't care

i don't particularly give a fuck how much i fuck you up, which is really the important factor here.

[requiemshark]

you aren't the one who fucks me up. came in too late for that.

[ Half a lie. The damage was done long before they ever crossed paths. This is just the aftermath. ]

[unlawful]

nah terrence
i didn't fuck you up
but i do fuck you up

[requiemshark]

nobody calls me terrence anymore

[ A dodge. Not a very good one. ]

[unlawful]

( even over text, he's an easy read. )

good thing i'm a nobody then, huh?

[requiemshark]

[ Too goddamn easy. ]

get fucked

[unlawful]

i keep making shit so easy for you and you keep tripping right back into my lap despite everything
over and over again
kinda like you can't help yourself
kinda like you want it
don't think for a second i won't take you down with me in the fallout. i can go further than a little kiss and my gun in your hand. i can take us all the way down. there's no coming back from that shit. ask locus.

we're done, ephemera

[requiemshark]

[ It'd be easier to back off. Regroup. Smarter. Felix already said he likes to have the last word so let it fucking lie. And yet.

And fucking yet. ]

you two finally go at each other or did you finally just get cornered? never actually knew.

[ A distraction. A feint. Away from him. ]

[unlawful]

( congrats. that gets him twitching. )

i would saw my fucking balls off and gouge out my eyes with a rusty spoon before i ever fucked a partner like that

( not just a partner. ortez. never, ever, ever, ever ortez. now he's going to rip off his limbs if he ever sees him again, but that's not an important detail to mention. they're a united front. have been, since even before force recon. it's a facade felix feels compelled to maintain.

locus should've put him down, if he felt so strongly about it. not the simmies. it'll fucking burn forever that he just stood by and watched it happen. )

he was preoccupied
i was ambushed

survival of the fittest and he's always been the fittest. unfortunately neither of us made the cut, so here we are.

[requiemshark]

[ It works. It gets Felix off on a tangent. For now, at least. ]

karma.

[ Or something. They probably deserve this shit. ]

he was solid, for what it's worth.

[unlawful]

he was off his fucking rocker
but he was the best

( especially when felix was at his worst. )

only reason i didn't throw you out the airlock alongside price is because of him

[requiemshark]

i didn't need you. all i needed was the armor. everything that happened after was just noise.

[ An easy trade, at the time. ]

dont know why you bothered with price. that fucker was useless.

[unlawful]

he had information locus thought was vital to understanding the freelancers and their motivations, as if it fucking mattered when they were walking corpses anyway
didn't need to understand how they tick on the inside to blow them the fuck open
i thought he was useless too
locus insisted

( very firmly, leaving little room for argument. felix submitted, unwisely and against his better judgment. if he'd known he was going to be fucking with locus' head in the process, he would've slit his goddamn throat and watched him bleed out. )

i think you made a stupid fucking choice on chorus and you're making stupid fucking choices now

[requiemshark]

apparently im crazy. and dead. so that's fun.

[ Opinions seem to vary on the crazy part. But Grey was pretty damn clears about how he ends. It's hardly a surprise. ]

[unlawful]

yeah you've mentioned
inevitable if you were going 1v1 with a freelancer and her battle-ready ai

( not to mention if she had wash flanking her six. he must've been nearby, at the very least. she'd shown up with wash on the bridge shortly after ephemera stopped responding on comms. )

[requiemshark]

[ So it goes. He used to think he’d do it again if he had the chance. ]

You and locus still tried it. Money that good? 

[unlawful]

carolina wasn't written into the initial equation
it was just wash and his simmies and wash was a soft damaged bitch

( in retrospect, he should've ended up with felix. it was a mistake leaving him with locus. wash turned out to be more of a threat than felix could've ever anticipated. )

we didn't need to kill them head-on, besides
we just needed them out of the fucking way
that's where you came in, obviously