[ clipped words, like a razor's edge; there it is again, that bare-faced aggression compacted through pressure and circumstance like so many diamonds. rough-cut and glittering, harder than steel.
(a distant, bygone memory of learning japanese proverbs in portuguese: "weaker dogs bark more often." later, he would come to understand that the lesson was meant to teach him humility and self-control in the face of a threat, but he'd talked and he'd talked and he'd talked during the subsequent spar regardlessγΌ taunts and jeers and provocations to match the clash of wooden swordsγΌ and didn't stop until his opponent broke their shinai against the wall and stormed off in a shaking rage.
his father'd kicked his ass for it. sam didn't care. everything is a weapon if you let it be.)
felix barks. all teeth, under that smooth purr. a gunshot, and glass kaleidoscopes around sam, the bullet's ricochet just narrowly missing the curve of his cybernetic shoulder. the only thing he sees through the fragmented lights is felix's shape. ]
Unfortunately [ he drawls ], I've got a prior engagement.
[ a date with a non-devil. suddenly far less appealing than the promise of blood and banter exchanged with the man trying to kill his mark, but business is business.
the blade that he unsheathes, finally, glows ember-red in the dim hall. pneumatics hiss, and his enhanced gear pushes his steps faster, his strides longer, his speed impossible considering his bulk.
he meets felix at the door. a flick of his wrist upwards, and he reciprocates the broken lightbulb treatment: the tip of his sword cutting fluorescents neatly in half, showering felix in retribution for the glass bits caught in sam's hair. petty bitch. ]
( two hours earlier, on the top floor of the gutted skeleton of a real estate project gone bad or broke: ortez fits a long-range scope on the stock of his rifle, and felix swallows through the ticklish burn of a swig of cheap tequila, tongue furled under the lip of the bottle. instructions, neatly laid out in ortez's low, toneless voice. task one: infiltrate the building. task two: find your mark on x floor at y time. task three: kill that greasy motherfucker dead.
important sidenote, in bold emphasis: the corridors on the top floor of the building are windowless. i won't be able to spot you, he says, and stares at felix evenly, resting his hands over the rifle splayed across his lap. felix shrugs his so what?
now, in the figurative and literal dark of this windowless corridor, felix turns his face away from the splash of shattered glass raining down on him. his heart is in his mouth; every beat thrums through him as hot and supersonic as an electrical shock. epinephrine, better than any high, jetting him from zero to a hundred in less than a few seconds.
and he thought this was going to be boring. )
That's fine, ( is his parry for sam's strike, wildly breathless. ) You can watch me take his dick.
( got a blade that's a perfect fit for the space between his mark's thighs, some actual goldilocks shit. might've had a quick death, if circumstances were different. now felix is going to make it fucking ugly out of spite.
onto the riposte, as felix braces his booted foot against the door and leverages his weight off the ground. he barrels the full brunt of his body into sam's chest, knees closing like a snapping trap into his hips, a mockery of intimacy. sidearm holstered, knife at his thigh ( hyperdense high-carbon steel, designed specifically to punch through metal, a memento from the war ) whipped free and slammed toward a seam in sam's exosuit, whatever he can sink into first. collar, throat. fuck him up, or see what he can do in his fancy toy before he inevitably breaks felix's spine into dusty fragments. )
[ now, you'd think that a petty criminal with too much red in his ledger would know, empirically, that it's a monumentally stupid move to black out in his apartment room without security, but that's just the sort of charming company that sam is meant to be carting out of the establishment. on the other side of the door is stupored silence, occasionally broken by the thin rattle of a humanoid weasel's snore.
(on page 4 of sam's discarded dossier, a note from an old flame: "you know the worst part? motherfucker wasn't even a good lay. don't ever let that asshole tell you his dick is worth chasing.")
with that in mind, and with hindbrain animal instincts hammering at his skull, sam sneers. guns sit pretty in the cradle of those hands, but sam is of the opinion that knives suit felix more: it forces proximity. eye-to-eye with the man you're slitting the throat of, close enough to spit on.
he likes that. like the last time, and every single time, sam refuses the offer of pain-inhibitors before a job; it's specifically for when he runs into people like felix, who won't hesitate to put something sharp where it shouldn't.
heels brace for impact. the bodyblow alone would've been enough to knock most seasoned mercenaries on their ass, but his gear cements him and provides a fulcrum with which to surge forward, momentum given for momentum gained. the pointed end of the blade, well-aimed and dangerously close to slitting sam's jugular, sears across his cheek instead: diverted by sam's repositioning, it cuts an angry red line that bisects the scar already splitting one side of sam's face. ]
Well [ he hisses, with blood trickling down onto his waiting tongue ], you wouldn't have much to take.
[ literally be his guest. as far as sam is concerned, as long as it doesn't kill the guy, felix is free to dirty his poor knife with dick gore. but, until then: ]
To your left, [ he warns breezily. a flick of his wrist, and his katana arcs gracefully and impossibly in the narrow space between them, threatening to lop off an entire limb if felix isn't careful. a cat battering at a ball of yarn. ]
( his strike misses his jugular, scant seconds away from puncturing his carotid artery, and lands across his face instead. the planes of sam's powerful, beautiful body are unbearably familiar, a niggling memory buried in the back of his mind suddenly sprouting from well-packed soil and gravel. a little different now, snugly wrapped in an unfamiliar rig, and the draconic part of felix that covets and selfishly hoards pretty, weaponized trinkets wonders, fleetingly, how it's powered.
gas or pressurized air, maybe, by the sounds of it. back home, or in his own rig, it'd be a fusion reactor between the shoulders, an easy target for a lucky bullet to jack up the supply and force the whole fucking thing into an emergency armor lock. easiest way to kill a man buried in several hundred pounds of rig: taking down his shields and paralyzing him, then shelling in his fucking faceplate.
protect the reactor, above all else. his co's mantra, back on reach. ortez's mantra, presently.
but reach is a smoldering corpse, plasma bombed to shit by the covenant, and felix is, for all intents and purposes, naked in this particular scenario. no reactor to protect, just his fucking spine and the implant on the nape of his neck, vulnerable out of the rig. and his limbs, apparently, as sam moves to neatly dismember him. he braces his knee into sam's hip and pushes, using the momentum to lurch from his perch on his broad chest. lands heavily on polished hardwood, staggering back.
a sliver of fabric from his jacket flutters to the ground; sam's blade, carving an indent into his bicep. felix hisses through his teeth, twisting away from the full brunt of his strike. forces distance and shakes his arm out, splattering blood onto the floor and wall.
that stung a little. )
To your left, motherfucker.
( except the blade he untucks from his wrist and looses at sam like an arrow from a bowstring hurtles to his right. surprises, he's ambidextrous. )
jesus died so these two could sin, thank you jesus, happy birthday
[ he could will himself to forget the planes of felix's body, to be sure. too many details in any given situation destroys a man's focus; better to triangulate on the easy binary of life or death, and how to stay on the right side of that equation.
better, but not satisfying. so he makes some personal allowances, and lets feral instinct conjure muscle memories of felix's struggling weight under his foot, the perfect arch of his back that pulled bruised hips from a peeling wall.
that lying mouth, too. does felix's voice sound better through a wrecked windpipe, or battle-hiked the way it is now? food for thought.
everyone hates powerlevel talk, and we all wish sam wasn't some bullshit OP samurai who can cut bullets when he's shot at, but here we are. the knife throw is, again, expertγΌ anyone else probably would've found themselves missing an eye or breathing through a punctured lungγΌ but sam is a professional motherfucker who manages to deflect the incoming blade with the flat of his own. clang.
up the knife goes, turning perfect circles in midair before it's caught by sam's gloved hand. he has the bare-faced fucking gall to toss it back at felix, brow raised. try again, in not so many words. we hate to see it. ]
Should I take off my exo? [ a theatrical sigh. ] You might enjoy that too much, hm?
in a perfect mirror image of that fateful night in felix's trashy motel room, sam flings his own knife back at him. a quick sidestep, and the knife streaks over his shoulder, lodging into the wall. should've worn his rig, actually, thank you, ortez. might not have made a bit of difference in the end, but it certainly would've given him a minor edge against this menacing fucking death trap looming over him, threatening to swallow him whole. that's his move, bitch. the nerve, times two.
not his fault, he'll say later, whether he survives or dies here, his corpse cleanly bisected down the middle. a tanky brazilian samurai wasn't written into the fucking equation. he returns his combat knife into the holster on his thigh and reaches for his sidearm again.
time for the other half of what felix is good at: distraction. )
Aw, babe. ( with an equally dramatic sigh to match sam's infuriatingly condescending ass. he pushes out his bottom lip in a faux-pout, running his index finger down his cheek. so sad, so sorry. ) Think I'm gonna have to reschedule, actually.
( it's not you, it's him. et cetera.
a snap of his arm, and two consecutive shots: one bullet for the sprinkler spout, one bullet for the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall to sam's right. chaos in the form of water from rusty, unused pipes, and a wild, spiraling spray of potassium bicarbonate depressurizing all at once, right up in sam's direction. felix skids across the floor as he dashes for the door, and throws his weight into the wood panel, shoulder first.
not headed for his mark, now. that's temporarily on pause. just the window in his bedroom, and a clean line from ortez's scope. )
[ two bullets, and neither for him. disappointing, but smart: his tech might not be hydrophobic, but his eyes don't love the sudden shot of white christmas tangled in his lashes. he hesitates, and that could've been the difference between him standing here, alive, and slumped against the wall, bleeding from the fucking neckγΌ
γΌbut felix bolts. also smart.
too much noise, suddenly. enough that it wakes up the still-drunk motherfucker draped on the living room couch, who promptly drops like a lead sack onto his carpet and screams shrilly for his dead first-floor security detail. no pity spared for a cornered rat; should've known better than to do shit by halves.
no guardian angels left. sam, who strolls into the room and spits white onto velour, takes one look at the man he's meant to be protecting (for a given value of that term), and makes the executive decision to knock the blubbering weasel out. cybernetic toe, meet jaw. down for the count, and for good reason: there's only so much babbling sam can stand before he, too, becomes tempted to jam the sharp end of a blade through someone's skull.
with that done: felix. ]
"Reschedule". [ he takes note of the new position, the window (an exit or an entrance for reinforcements, hmm). even strides bring him closer to the bedroom, where felix is standing and framed, beautifully, by the light of the planet's too-big moon.
he really is easy on the eyes. a pity and a shame sam might have to kill him. ] After you bothered to make me shower.
[ a click of his tongue. he is, in fact, dripping everywhere. thanks for that. ] What else are you going to surprise me with, prettyboy? Another gun? More knives? [ lingering by the entrance, his gaze flits over to the mattress. suggestive, but dispassionate. ] What've you done until now to save your skin?
( bad form to corner himself into a room with only one fucking exit. even felix β careless and reckless as he is, a perpetual flirt with impending disaster β knows better, and both instinct and muscle memory scream against it as he splinters the goddamn door in its frame on his way into the bedroom, illuminated only by the light of the moon.
but, despite corralling himself like a fucking animal onto a silver platter for sam's convenience, he's light on his feet, pivoting on his heel and wedging his hip against the bedstand table littered with uncapped pill and liquor bottles. he strips off his waterlogged jacket, unconcerned. blood rolls in thin rivulets down his arm, siphoning off his fingertips and dripping on his boots; felix flexes his hand into a sliver of pale moonlight cutting through the dark, intently studying the mess. samuel, inked in neat letters on his ring finger, barely legible through a thick smear of red.
feels like karma, almost. a lot of things have felt like that lately. fashionably late, and here to rock his shit. )
Just got lucky, I guess.
( i don't need luck, he'd said, the last time they met. his luck is a towering machine of a man in full-body armor staring down the funnel of a scope into this specific bedroom, unblinking.
sam lingers by the door, and felix follows his eyes to the bed, empty and crisply made. the dutiful work of some poor, long-suffering housekeeper, no doubt. his turn to raise a neat little eyebrow, accompanied by a leisurely, indulgent glance over the length of sam's body. never seen a rig that leaves so little to the imagination, but he's not complaining. wouldn't be the worst fucking sight in the world, if he had to die. )
I could beg again. ( he eases his full weight onto the bedstand, thighs spreading into a sprawling v. a handmade invitation, just for sam. ) Can you even fuck in that thing? Looks a little ( a hitching pause, as his eyes return to sam's face, ) tight.
( come closer and tell him all about it, sweetheart. )
Edited (editing an hr later bc i left a single "he" out of a sentence n could not let it stand for one more second) 2021-12-26 18:57 (UTC)
[ is it honor or obstinacy that's kept sam from his world's prolific use of cybernetics? on this planet, his little journey in being spirited away, he still has his right arm and what's left of his pride; wears it in his flesh and blood, which is visible through all the seams in his so-called armor. the players in his little future drama will marvel, after he's laid dead, that he barely had any enhancements at all.
moonlight scatters over his various partsγΌ too far, still, from the window, to catch its blessing in full. chestplates, stomachplate, the sleek metal of his leg braces to keep them intact against impossible torque. under that, the mesh weave of his dark-olive undersuit.
sam stretches, and eyes the lines of felix's open body. in 99.9999% of all cases, this would make him feel nothing in the context of a fight; he's never hesitated to cut anyone down, His Type or no.
he still wouldn't. but, if pressed to answer under duress, he'd have to admit that, in this moment, he's looking. feeling? jury's out on that one. leonine features remain still, and the razor-fine sharpness of his focus still whispers to him, accurately, that this is bait. (one exit and a window? obvious.) ]
Not as "tight" as you are, I'd expect. [ cheerily, with the joke never reaching his eyes. takes the fucking bait by stepping forward and towards the bed, blade still unsheathed. wants to see felix show his hand, show him everything.
the flood of light from outside hits him harder, casts something jagged over him. water mixes with the blood still trailing down his cheek; the diluted red streams down, stark against the green of his armor. ]
( sam steps closer, past the threshold of the door; a fucking grim reaper in steel, wielding a katana instead of a scythe. it'd be enough to make even the hardest criminal recoil or shit themselves in paralyzing fear, but felix remains seated. unusually still, for him: just the hitch of his heartbeat timed to his rapid breathing, all lithe, shuddering muscle visible past the soaked layer of his shirt now adhered to him like a second skin. his only tell. only human, susceptible to his body's instincts. the fragile, glass-like parts of himself he couldn't viciously kill.
here's the thing about samuel ortez: a respectable six feet, eight inches in full rig, known only as locus to anyone in the milky way that isn't felix because everyone who might have known him before his metamorphosis into the cold reckoning he is today perished in an impossible fucking war, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. a man who pulls the reins on felix's untamed, feral bullshit more often than not, the unyielding thumb on his wild pulse. a man who doesn't hesitate, or miss.
felix, in contrast, a honey-eyed and honey-tongued dreamy nightmare, has been bait his whole fucking life. some shit is innate. hook, line, sinker.
so very lightly, ) Wanna open me up and find out?
( better this way, before felix's budding fixation on this gorgeous psychopath turns ugly and ravenously hungry, like it always does. a brief moment of remembrance for his body, and the slick curl of his tongue in his mouth. he still has the bruises on his throat, faded into a barely perceptible yellow. ortez did, in fact, ask about it. he owes him a drink.
sam won't get a laser through the window as his only warning, just the abrupt shattering of glass and a hollow-point round spinning directly for his temple. felix β who previously watched sam stop his fucking knife in midair, and who isn't stupid, despite the hilariously poor choices he's made here tonight β springs into movement, hooking his foot under the leg of the bedstand table at his hip and flinging it across the room at sam's chest, uncapped bottles and all.
[ only human. felix, with blood in his teeth, please clipped on that lying mouth. in response to the posed question, distantly, sam thinks that he might want toγΌ open felix up and make him spill everything he has, ideals and fears and all.
no time to dwell on that massive emotional incongruity, because the world fragments. blown-out windows and broken glass, an upturned table and a bullet near his skull. here's to you, samuel ortez: you don't miss. that's some king shit. it's only the perfection of the trajectory that keeps sam from spraying his grey matter all over the wallpaperγΌ instinct tells himself that that's where he'd aim for, too, on the other side of a crosshair, and his katana whips up to meet the 7.62 mm and cleave it cleanly in two.
the half that doesn't immediately hit the wall cuts another line on his face, parallel to the previous knife wound. cosmic irony, probably; sam wouldn't fucking know. the table is an afterthought, but it, too, crumples to the ground like so much detritus under the smooth cut of his blade.
no more playing, then. ]
I see. [ he laughs. ] You brought your own date.
[ his sam? likely. a partner, a lover, some fucked-up chimera of relationship statuses? also likely. sam, two wounds into this expedition, feels his heavy heart pound under his chestplate. pupils in amber eyes blown wide, focused and unfocused.
the katana arcs. two quick slashes under their feet, and the apartment floor caves, bringing the entire foundation of the room with it; sam laughs again in time to the fall, using the tilting bed as a foothold to leap forward through the debris and towards felix.
if the stars align, he gets his hand around felix's neck. again. grabs him as they tumble down to the room directly below them, felix's back as the cushion, and, if he's luckyγΌ
γΌpins him to the floor. literally. sword in his shoulder, straight through into carpet. ]
( ortez's ominous words from earlier in the night ring into deafening focus as several things happen all at once, quicker than felix's adrenaline-drunk brain can process.
( this isn't right. this isn't right. this isn't fucking right. )
first: sam doesn't drop, impossibly. a glint of steel that glows like a single ember in the ashy dark, and the bullet sinks solidly β and harmlessly β into the wall instead of sam's brain. second: the floor is quicksand, caving beneath his feet and swallowing him whole. third: sam's hand around his throat, his weight on top of him steering him to his doom. he's falling, out of the sight and safety of ortez's scope.
one moment stretched into infinity, a horrifying scene in slow motion.
well-honed reflex unleashes the knife from the holster at his thigh, slashing violently at the hand at his throat, but gravity gets to him first. he hits the ground, debris raining around him. his knife lurches from his fingers and spins over the carpet, just out of reach, and it's not the impact itself that wrenches a wounded sound from him, strangled and tight, or the cracked ribs he sustains in the process.
it's the sword in his goddamn shoulder, ripping past fabric and muscle and tendons to pin him, cleanly, to the carpet.
a shattered fuck, hitched out of him involuntarily. the pain throbbing through him like a beating heart is secondary to the skin-crawling, crushing realization that he has been effectively and thoroughly restrained. sam's face kaleidoscopes into a blurry, dark shape, fragmented through the thick fan of his lashes; an onslaught of furious tears, his body instinctively responding to the relentless assault of stimuli. )
Fuck you, psycho bitch. ( venomously, all his faux coy sweetness shattering into something visceral and barbed and hysteric, another mercurial sea-change. he grips sam's blade where he's punctured his shoulder, slicing through the leather of his one gloved hand into the meat of his palm. slicks his blade in more blood, doesn't notice because minor pain doesn't register, after a certain threshold. just bucks his hips and kicks β for sam's hip, his chest, his smug fucking face.
the last-ditch effort of a cornered, rabid animal. too familiar. )
I'm gonna rip your fucking throat out.
( it'll take ortez too long to move positions. sam'll dice him apart before he even gets another round off, and hysterically, felix thinks he'd rather shove his own blade into his eyeball before he lets this motherfucker kill him, out of goddamn spite. between his thrashing, and the frantic, hummingbird flutter of his chest, he stretches for his knife. )
[ brittle bone, soft flesh. contrary to the accusations felix leveled at him before, with his dick in his hand and his pleasure curled on his tongue, sam's had decades to become anesthetized to the intimacy of close-ranged death; its novelty wore off in youth. pain is inevitable, like high and low tides, pushing and pulling against the shoreline of this mortal coil. sam learned that, too, before his voice broke, before he grew into his restless joints.
the curl of his lips settle. for a breath of a millisecond, sam is devastatingly still as he towers over felix in the warzone of this apartment bedroom, dark eyes like the bottom of a still lake, his scrutiny leveled with alarming clarity. he receives the kicks and the hissing with morbid patience, an implosion to felix's constant explosion.
no please-s. no don't kill me-s. just furious defiance and misplaced conviction in his own ability to maintain control, even in the absence of it. asserting dominance by refusing to let sam say it, first, that he's fucked.
sam twists his wrist. the blade in felix's shoulder rips from vertical to horizontal, and the tremors that come with a body writhing in shock travels up from sam's metal-covered arm to his nape. rising up to full height, a foot rests on felix's heaving chest before it travels, lightning-quick, to kick whatever weapon felix tries to draw from his hand.
again, sam is struck by the improbable desire to run his tongue over those trembling lashes, to lick the salt from the corner of those eyes. what does it taste like, someone's unbridled rage? what could it be like to feel so much, and so violently? is it nihilism? self-preservation?
interest fractures sam's calm. even when he steps on felix's hand, almost hard enough to break the delicate map of his fingers, he doesn't take his eyes off of the other man's face. ]
Oh?
I'd like that. [ someone to kill him with the brunt of their obstinacy and foolish ideals; that's a turn-on. he knows he's probably pretty fucked in the head. when he grins this time, it's with all of his teeth and too much enthusiasm. ] Do it with your teeth, when you do.
[ maybe not tonight, though. sam still has checks to cash. his focus flits up to the broken ceiling, back towards his mark. ]
( the blade in his shoulder twists unkindly, shredding firm muscle like tissue paper. another oh fuck squeezes from his convulsing throat, and he arches against a needling wave of white-hot pain, legs kicking and heels grinding into the carpet uselessly. stay in your fucking head, he thinks, rabidly. stay in the moment. you're drifting.
snap to a single thought, a lit buoy in choppy waters. focus. ortez is either headed for the next floor down, to level his rifle at the window and save his skin, or he's making a beeline for their mark's position, to save their op. he swallows around the acrid taste of metal in his mouth, and wonders, almost idly, if he'll dream about this, too, when the dust settles, when everything is said and done.
like reach, a once flourishing planet glassed to cold oblivion. like some innie motherfucker cutting him out of his rig with a power torch as he screams and writhes. like sam, and his cheshire smile, and the hot bulk of his body pinning him flush to a wall. his cock in his hand. his sword in his shoulder. one of these things is not like the other.
an invading horror, to be witnessed and forever internalized until it rots him inside. sam doesn't belong here, with the rest of felix's horrors.
get out. get out. motherfucker, get out.
he twitches. small, hairline tremors shiver through his limbs straight to his fingertips, now crushed under sam's foot. )
Not gonna fuck me, then, Sam? ( ragged but bitterly contemptuous, as if he's not a bloodied mess at sam's feet. he sucks in a slow, hiccuping breath through his teeth, and follows sam's gaze, to the floor above them. their mark. of course. still gunning for the fucking bounty. felix is many things but a graceful loser isn't one of them. ) Not gonna kill me?
[ there's the word: attractive. choking on his own anger, spitting bile between clenched jaws. felix is frenetic and alive, when so many people have set aside their humanity for survival or pleasure or dispassion.
(it's so often that his battlefields are populated by breathing corpses, by men and women who might as well already be dead, thrown into circumstances against their will or beyond their conviction.)
the dust does settle around them. mortar and frayed paint, desiccated wood. sam, wet hair sticking to the strong angles of his face, white and red still streaked over sun-blessed skin, finally pulls his sword from the clench of felix's body. innuendo intended. ]
Don't get me wrong. Would have loved to.
[ fuck him? kill him? sam doesn't draw the line in the sand, and leaves the delineation to what may or may not happen in the future; fate likes to play games, and he doesn't like to roll dice. what he knows now, with his blade now angled at the bob of felix's throat, is that he'd like to kiss him.
so. he does. the katana still a sweet threat by felix's jugular, and his knee touching the fractured ground to grant him access, with the curve of his spine, to felix's poison-stained mouth. the implied get out ignored, and with the knowledge that, a few yards away, samuel ortez may be watching from the other side of a scope.
he tastes iron and fire in felix's mouth. those furious eyes are fucking gorgeous, just the way he remembers them. ]
γΌRain check, kitty-cat.
[ their lips part (likely not without a bite or two or three). he's been distracted enough; time to finish what he came here to do. ]
( for a wretched, treacherous moment, felix's mouth goes slack and warmly pliant under the carnivorous press of sam's mouth. his chest hitches as he exhales shakily around a probing lick from sam's tongue, and the sharp taste of salt and copper, an organic cocktail of felix's tears and sam's blood. he'll blame it on blood loss later, as he's taking meticulous stock of his injuries ( a punctured shoulder, several cracked ribs, a profusely bleeding cut on his bicep ) and losses ( cash, pride, a stolen kiss ).
he won't realize β now or later, until it's too late β that what sam leaves behind is far worse than anything he could ever take from him. a minuscule seed, buried in the upturned soil of felix's insides, finding root in his softest, ugliest parts and sprouting thorns. a disease. a fucking infection. he's going to fucking kill him, slowly, viciously. he's going to use his guts as garland. he's going to hook his thighs around his hips and beg him, tearstruck, to fuck him here, on top of bloodied carpet and splintered furniture, in full view of ortez's steady scope. he wants to be hollowed out and thoroughly emptied. he wants to feel fucking nothing.
this isn't right. get the fuck out of my head.
he chokes on a guttural, animal sound, throat seizing violently. by the time he thinks to go for the blade in his boot, sam is gone, out of reach, and felix is left to slash madly at empty air. oh fuck, he thinks feverishly, and rolls to his knees, crawling over dusty rubble for his jacket pinned under the busted remnants of a wooden wardrobe.
in his right pocket, a biofoam injection from home sweet home, to staunch the bleeding, stabbed directly into his gaping shoulder. he retches through the pain as his chest convulses on a wheezy sob. never gets any easier. never hurts any fucking less.
then, finally: ear-ringing silence, punctuated by felix's choppy breaths. it feels like hours, but ortez arrives to this decimated bedroom in record time, his savior framed in fading moonlight, dressed head-to-toe in black steel. he's greeted by a wild, screaming felix, who tries ( and fails ) to stab him no less than twenty times. why didn't you go for the fucking mark, you stupid fuck? you think i give a fuck what happens to me? you think i care? fuck you, locus. this shit is on you.
locus β all silent bulk, all frightening faceless patience β tanks the rogue waves of felix's rage with seasoned experience, unbreaking. until the world tilts under him, and blood loss really does catch up to him. distantly, felix registers ortez's grip on his wrist tightening into a bruising vise.
he slips under as he's hauled effortlessly over ortez's shoulder, limp as a rag doll, and drifts to a dark, warm place, to dream of sam. )
[ some people don't get high on their first exposure to noxious fumes; it happens later, when the brain registers on the second hit that it knows what this shit is meant to do now, and gleefully succumbs to being fucking wasted.
the hangover comes before the rush. felix wants to feel nothing, and sam is gliding from floor to fucking floor, suddenly in tune with everything and anything, his awareness like piano wire pulled just to the brink of breaking. broken lights, mirrors, the smell of exorbitantly expensive cologne mixed with rum and tequila, the weight of an unconscious criminal slung over his shoulder. the unnamed sniper doesn't come to put a hole in sam's fucking skull during the few minutes that sam spends in technicolor, and, as he's maneuvering through and out into the blissful stench of this foreign hellscape, sam tips his bloodied face to the moons hanging above him and shutters his eyes.
out of his fucking mind, he thinks.
what else is new?
(what happens next is: he trades his mark for six months' rent. interrogation isn't his style; he leaves that to an affable-looking sociopath with rubber gloves snapped up to his fucking elbow, and casually gets the name of whoever else in this latrine of a city would've wanted their half-baked crimelord dead.
contacts three-times removed and two-times dead later, sam finds the bank account that felix was supposed to have his reward wired to, and puts in exactly one month's worth of rent and the amount to buy precisely two cocktails in a shitty downtown bar in said account.
an attached message, in Portuguese: he who barks the loudest. no explanation; just an admission and an accusation. "you got to me, you motherfucker.") ]
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(a distant, bygone memory of learning japanese proverbs in portuguese: "weaker dogs bark more often." later, he would come to understand that the lesson was meant to teach him humility and self-control in the face of a threat, but he'd talked and he'd talked and he'd talked during the subsequent spar regardlessγΌ taunts and jeers and provocations to match the clash of wooden swordsγΌ and didn't stop until his opponent broke their shinai against the wall and stormed off in a shaking rage.
his father'd kicked his ass for it. sam didn't care. everything is a weapon if you let it be.)
felix barks. all teeth, under that smooth purr. a gunshot, and glass kaleidoscopes around sam, the bullet's ricochet just narrowly missing the curve of his cybernetic shoulder. the only thing he sees through the fragmented lights is felix's shape. ]
Unfortunately [ he drawls ], I've got a prior engagement.
[ a date with a non-devil. suddenly far less appealing than the promise of blood and banter exchanged with the man trying to kill his mark, but business is business.
the blade that he unsheathes, finally, glows ember-red in the dim hall. pneumatics hiss, and his enhanced gear pushes his steps faster, his strides longer, his speed impossible considering his bulk.
he meets felix at the door. a flick of his wrist upwards, and he reciprocates the broken lightbulb treatment: the tip of his sword cutting fluorescents neatly in half, showering felix in retribution for the glass bits caught in sam's hair. petty bitch. ]
Not sure if he's into threesomes, either.
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important sidenote, in bold emphasis: the corridors on the top floor of the building are windowless. i won't be able to spot you, he says, and stares at felix evenly, resting his hands over the rifle splayed across his lap. felix shrugs his so what?
now, in the figurative and literal dark of this windowless corridor, felix turns his face away from the splash of shattered glass raining down on him. his heart is in his mouth; every beat thrums through him as hot and supersonic as an electrical shock. epinephrine, better than any high, jetting him from zero to a hundred in less than a few seconds.
and he thought this was going to be boring. )
That's fine, ( is his parry for sam's strike, wildly breathless. ) You can watch me take his dick.
( got a blade that's a perfect fit for the space between his mark's thighs, some actual goldilocks shit. might've had a quick death, if circumstances were different. now felix is going to make it fucking ugly out of spite.
onto the riposte, as felix braces his booted foot against the door and leverages his weight off the ground. he barrels the full brunt of his body into sam's chest, knees closing like a snapping trap into his hips, a mockery of intimacy. sidearm holstered, knife at his thigh ( hyperdense high-carbon steel, designed specifically to punch through metal, a memento from the war ) whipped free and slammed toward a seam in sam's exosuit, whatever he can sink into first. collar, throat. fuck him up, or see what he can do in his fancy toy before he inevitably breaks felix's spine into dusty fragments. )
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(on page 4 of sam's discarded dossier, a note from an old flame: "you know the worst part? motherfucker wasn't even a good lay. don't ever let that asshole tell you his dick is worth chasing.")
with that in mind, and with hindbrain animal instincts hammering at his skull, sam sneers. guns sit pretty in the cradle of those hands, but sam is of the opinion that knives suit felix more: it forces proximity. eye-to-eye with the man you're slitting the throat of, close enough to spit on.
he likes that. like the last time, and every single time, sam refuses the offer of pain-inhibitors before a job; it's specifically for when he runs into people like felix, who won't hesitate to put something sharp where it shouldn't.
heels brace for impact. the bodyblow alone would've been enough to knock most seasoned mercenaries on their ass, but his gear cements him and provides a fulcrum with which to surge forward, momentum given for momentum gained. the pointed end of the blade, well-aimed and dangerously close to slitting sam's jugular, sears across his cheek instead: diverted by sam's repositioning, it cuts an angry red line that bisects the scar already splitting one side of sam's face. ]
Well [ he hisses, with blood trickling down onto his waiting tongue ], you wouldn't have much to take.
[ literally be his guest. as far as sam is concerned, as long as it doesn't kill the guy, felix is free to dirty his poor knife with dick gore. but, until then: ]
To your left, [ he warns breezily. a flick of his wrist, and his katana arcs gracefully and impossibly in the narrow space between them, threatening to lop off an entire limb if felix isn't careful. a cat battering at a ball of yarn. ]
happy birthday jesus hope u like violence
gas or pressurized air, maybe, by the sounds of it. back home, or in his own rig, it'd be a fusion reactor between the shoulders, an easy target for a lucky bullet to jack up the supply and force the whole fucking thing into an emergency armor lock. easiest way to kill a man buried in several hundred pounds of rig: taking down his shields and paralyzing him, then shelling in his fucking faceplate.
protect the reactor, above all else. his co's mantra, back on reach. ortez's mantra, presently.
but reach is a smoldering corpse, plasma bombed to shit by the covenant, and felix is, for all intents and purposes, naked in this particular scenario. no reactor to protect, just his fucking spine and the implant on the nape of his neck, vulnerable out of the rig. and his limbs, apparently, as sam moves to neatly dismember him. he braces his knee into sam's hip and pushes, using the momentum to lurch from his perch on his broad chest. lands heavily on polished hardwood, staggering back.
a sliver of fabric from his jacket flutters to the ground; sam's blade, carving an indent into his bicep. felix hisses through his teeth, twisting away from the full brunt of his strike. forces distance and shakes his arm out, splattering blood onto the floor and wall.
that stung a little. )
To your left, motherfucker.
( except the blade he untucks from his wrist and looses at sam like an arrow from a bowstring hurtles to his right. surprises, he's ambidextrous. )
jesus died so these two could sin, thank you jesus, happy birthday
better, but not satisfying. so he makes some personal allowances, and lets feral instinct conjure muscle memories of felix's struggling weight under his foot, the perfect arch of his back that pulled bruised hips from a peeling wall.
that lying mouth, too. does felix's voice sound better through a wrecked windpipe, or battle-hiked the way it is now? food for thought.
everyone hates powerlevel talk, and we all wish sam wasn't some bullshit OP samurai who can cut bullets when he's shot at, but here we are. the knife throw is, again, expertγΌ anyone else probably would've found themselves missing an eye or breathing through a punctured lungγΌ but sam is a professional motherfucker who manages to deflect the incoming blade with the flat of his own. clang.
up the knife goes, turning perfect circles in midair before it's caught by sam's gloved hand. he has the bare-faced fucking gall to toss it back at felix, brow raised. try again, in not so many words. we hate to see it. ]
Should I take off my exo? [ a theatrical sigh. ] You might enjoy that too much, hm?
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in a perfect mirror image of that fateful night in felix's trashy motel room, sam flings his own knife back at him. a quick sidestep, and the knife streaks over his shoulder, lodging into the wall. should've worn his rig, actually, thank you, ortez. might not have made a bit of difference in the end, but it certainly would've given him a minor edge against this menacing fucking death trap looming over him, threatening to swallow him whole. that's his move, bitch. the nerve, times two.
not his fault, he'll say later, whether he survives or dies here, his corpse cleanly bisected down the middle. a tanky brazilian samurai wasn't written into the fucking equation. he returns his combat knife into the holster on his thigh and reaches for his sidearm again.
time for the other half of what felix is good at: distraction. )
Aw, babe. ( with an equally dramatic sigh to match sam's infuriatingly condescending ass. he pushes out his bottom lip in a faux-pout, running his index finger down his cheek. so sad, so sorry. ) Think I'm gonna have to reschedule, actually.
( it's not you, it's him. et cetera.
a snap of his arm, and two consecutive shots: one bullet for the sprinkler spout, one bullet for the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall to sam's right. chaos in the form of water from rusty, unused pipes, and a wild, spiraling spray of potassium bicarbonate depressurizing all at once, right up in sam's direction. felix skids across the floor as he dashes for the door, and throws his weight into the wood panel, shoulder first.
not headed for his mark, now. that's temporarily on pause. just the window in his bedroom, and a clean line from ortez's scope. )
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γΌbut felix bolts. also smart.
too much noise, suddenly. enough that it wakes up the still-drunk motherfucker draped on the living room couch, who promptly drops like a lead sack onto his carpet and screams shrilly for his dead first-floor security detail. no pity spared for a cornered rat; should've known better than to do shit by halves.
no guardian angels left. sam, who strolls into the room and spits white onto velour, takes one look at the man he's meant to be protecting (for a given value of that term), and makes the executive decision to knock the blubbering weasel out. cybernetic toe, meet jaw. down for the count, and for good reason: there's only so much babbling sam can stand before he, too, becomes tempted to jam the sharp end of a blade through someone's skull.
with that done: felix. ]
"Reschedule". [ he takes note of the new position, the window (an exit or an entrance for reinforcements, hmm). even strides bring him closer to the bedroom, where felix is standing and framed, beautifully, by the light of the planet's too-big moon.
he really is easy on the eyes. a pity and a shame sam might have to kill him. ] After you bothered to make me shower.
[ a click of his tongue. he is, in fact, dripping everywhere. thanks for that. ] What else are you going to surprise me with, prettyboy? Another gun? More knives? [ lingering by the entrance, his gaze flits over to the mattress. suggestive, but dispassionate. ] What've you done until now to save your skin?
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but, despite corralling himself like a fucking animal onto a silver platter for sam's convenience, he's light on his feet, pivoting on his heel and wedging his hip against the bedstand table littered with uncapped pill and liquor bottles. he strips off his waterlogged jacket, unconcerned. blood rolls in thin rivulets down his arm, siphoning off his fingertips and dripping on his boots; felix flexes his hand into a sliver of pale moonlight cutting through the dark, intently studying the mess. samuel, inked in neat letters on his ring finger, barely legible through a thick smear of red.
feels like karma, almost. a lot of things have felt like that lately. fashionably late, and here to rock his shit. )
Just got lucky, I guess.
( i don't need luck, he'd said, the last time they met. his luck is a towering machine of a man in full-body armor staring down the funnel of a scope into this specific bedroom, unblinking.
sam lingers by the door, and felix follows his eyes to the bed, empty and crisply made. the dutiful work of some poor, long-suffering housekeeper, no doubt. his turn to raise a neat little eyebrow, accompanied by a leisurely, indulgent glance over the length of sam's body. never seen a rig that leaves so little to the imagination, but he's not complaining. wouldn't be the worst fucking sight in the world, if he had to die. )
I could beg again. ( he eases his full weight onto the bedstand, thighs spreading into a sprawling v. a handmade invitation, just for sam. ) Can you even fuck in that thing? Looks a little ( a hitching pause, as his eyes return to sam's face, ) tight.
( come closer and tell him all about it, sweetheart. )
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moonlight scatters over his various partsγΌ too far, still, from the window, to catch its blessing in full. chestplates, stomachplate, the sleek metal of his leg braces to keep them intact against impossible torque. under that, the mesh weave of his dark-olive undersuit.
sam stretches, and eyes the lines of felix's open body. in 99.9999% of all cases, this would make him feel nothing in the context of a fight; he's never hesitated to cut anyone down, His Type or no.
he still wouldn't. but, if pressed to answer under duress, he'd have to admit that, in this moment, he's looking. feeling? jury's out on that one. leonine features remain still, and the razor-fine sharpness of his focus still whispers to him, accurately, that this is bait. (one exit and a window? obvious.) ]
Not as "tight" as you are, I'd expect. [ cheerily, with the joke never reaching his eyes. takes the fucking bait by stepping forward and towards the bed, blade still unsheathed. wants to see felix show his hand, show him everything.
the flood of light from outside hits him harder, casts something jagged over him. water mixes with the blood still trailing down his cheek; the diluted red streams down, stark against the green of his armor. ]
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here's the thing about samuel ortez: a respectable six feet, eight inches in full rig, known only as locus to anyone in the milky way that isn't felix because everyone who might have known him before his metamorphosis into the cold reckoning he is today perished in an impossible fucking war, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. a man who pulls the reins on felix's untamed, feral bullshit more often than not, the unyielding thumb on his wild pulse. a man who doesn't hesitate, or miss.
felix, in contrast, a honey-eyed and honey-tongued dreamy nightmare, has been bait his whole fucking life. some shit is innate. hook, line, sinker.
so very lightly, ) Wanna open me up and find out?
( better this way, before felix's budding fixation on this gorgeous psychopath turns ugly and ravenously hungry, like it always does. a brief moment of remembrance for his body, and the slick curl of his tongue in his mouth. he still has the bruises on his throat, faded into a barely perceptible yellow. ortez did, in fact, ask about it. he owes him a drink.
sam won't get a laser through the window as his only warning, just the abrupt shattering of glass and a hollow-point round spinning directly for his temple. felix β who previously watched sam stop his fucking knife in midair, and who isn't stupid, despite the hilariously poor choices he's made here tonight β springs into movement, hooking his foot under the leg of the bedstand table at his hip and flinging it across the room at sam's chest, uncapped bottles and all.
you know, just in case. )
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no time to dwell on that massive emotional incongruity, because the world fragments. blown-out windows and broken glass, an upturned table and a bullet near his skull. here's to you, samuel ortez: you don't miss. that's some king shit. it's only the perfection of the trajectory that keeps sam from spraying his grey matter all over the wallpaperγΌ instinct tells himself that that's where he'd aim for, too, on the other side of a crosshair, and his katana whips up to meet the 7.62 mm and cleave it cleanly in two.
the half that doesn't immediately hit the wall cuts another line on his face, parallel to the previous knife wound. cosmic irony, probably; sam wouldn't fucking know. the table is an afterthought, but it, too, crumples to the ground like so much detritus under the smooth cut of his blade.
no more playing, then. ]
I see. [ he laughs. ] You brought your own date.
[ his sam? likely. a partner, a lover, some fucked-up chimera of relationship statuses? also likely. sam, two wounds into this expedition, feels his heavy heart pound under his chestplate. pupils in amber eyes blown wide, focused and unfocused.
the katana arcs. two quick slashes under their feet, and the apartment floor caves, bringing the entire foundation of the room with it; sam laughs again in time to the fall, using the tilting bed as a foothold to leap forward through the debris and towards felix.
if the stars align, he gets his hand around felix's neck. again. grabs him as they tumble down to the room directly below them, felix's back as the cushion, and, if he's luckyγΌ
γΌpins him to the floor. literally. sword in his shoulder, straight through into carpet. ]
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( this isn't right. this isn't right. this isn't fucking right. )
first: sam doesn't drop, impossibly. a glint of steel that glows like a single ember in the ashy dark, and the bullet sinks solidly β and harmlessly β into the wall instead of sam's brain. second: the floor is quicksand, caving beneath his feet and swallowing him whole. third: sam's hand around his throat, his weight on top of him steering him to his doom. he's falling, out of the sight and safety of ortez's scope.
one moment stretched into infinity, a horrifying scene in slow motion.
well-honed reflex unleashes the knife from the holster at his thigh, slashing violently at the hand at his throat, but gravity gets to him first. he hits the ground, debris raining around him. his knife lurches from his fingers and spins over the carpet, just out of reach, and it's not the impact itself that wrenches a wounded sound from him, strangled and tight, or the cracked ribs he sustains in the process.
it's the sword in his goddamn shoulder, ripping past fabric and muscle and tendons to pin him, cleanly, to the carpet.
a shattered fuck, hitched out of him involuntarily. the pain throbbing through him like a beating heart is secondary to the skin-crawling, crushing realization that he has been effectively and thoroughly restrained. sam's face kaleidoscopes into a blurry, dark shape, fragmented through the thick fan of his lashes; an onslaught of furious tears, his body instinctively responding to the relentless assault of stimuli. )
Fuck you, psycho bitch. ( venomously, all his faux coy sweetness shattering into something visceral and barbed and hysteric, another mercurial sea-change. he grips sam's blade where he's punctured his shoulder, slicing through the leather of his one gloved hand into the meat of his palm. slicks his blade in more blood, doesn't notice because minor pain doesn't register, after a certain threshold. just bucks his hips and kicks β for sam's hip, his chest, his smug fucking face.
the last-ditch effort of a cornered, rabid animal. too familiar. )
I'm gonna rip your fucking throat out.
( it'll take ortez too long to move positions. sam'll dice him apart before he even gets another round off, and hysterically, felix thinks he'd rather shove his own blade into his eyeball before he lets this motherfucker kill him, out of goddamn spite. between his thrashing, and the frantic, hummingbird flutter of his chest, he stretches for his knife. )
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the curl of his lips settle. for a breath of a millisecond, sam is devastatingly still as he towers over felix in the warzone of this apartment bedroom, dark eyes like the bottom of a still lake, his scrutiny leveled with alarming clarity. he receives the kicks and the hissing with morbid patience, an implosion to felix's constant explosion.
no please-s. no don't kill me-s. just furious defiance and misplaced conviction in his own ability to maintain control, even in the absence of it. asserting dominance by refusing to let sam say it, first, that he's fucked.
sam twists his wrist. the blade in felix's shoulder rips from vertical to horizontal, and the tremors that come with a body writhing in shock travels up from sam's metal-covered arm to his nape. rising up to full height, a foot rests on felix's heaving chest before it travels, lightning-quick, to kick whatever weapon felix tries to draw from his hand.
again, sam is struck by the improbable desire to run his tongue over those trembling lashes, to lick the salt from the corner of those eyes. what does it taste like, someone's unbridled rage? what could it be like to feel so much, and so violently? is it nihilism? self-preservation?
interest fractures sam's calm. even when he steps on felix's hand, almost hard enough to break the delicate map of his fingers, he doesn't take his eyes off of the other man's face. ]
Oh?
I'd like that. [ someone to kill him with the brunt of their obstinacy and foolish ideals; that's a turn-on. he knows he's probably pretty fucked in the head. when he grins this time, it's with all of his teeth and too much enthusiasm. ] Do it with your teeth, when you do.
[ maybe not tonight, though. sam still has checks to cash. his focus flits up to the broken ceiling, back towards his mark. ]
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snap to a single thought, a lit buoy in choppy waters. focus. ortez is either headed for the next floor down, to level his rifle at the window and save his skin, or he's making a beeline for their mark's position, to save their op. he swallows around the acrid taste of metal in his mouth, and wonders, almost idly, if he'll dream about this, too, when the dust settles, when everything is said and done.
like reach, a once flourishing planet glassed to cold oblivion. like some innie motherfucker cutting him out of his rig with a power torch as he screams and writhes. like sam, and his cheshire smile, and the hot bulk of his body pinning him flush to a wall. his cock in his hand. his sword in his shoulder. one of these things is not like the other.
an invading horror, to be witnessed and forever internalized until it rots him inside. sam doesn't belong here, with the rest of felix's horrors.
get out. get out. motherfucker, get out.
he twitches. small, hairline tremors shiver through his limbs straight to his fingertips, now crushed under sam's foot. )
Not gonna fuck me, then, Sam? ( ragged but bitterly contemptuous, as if he's not a bloodied mess at sam's feet. he sucks in a slow, hiccuping breath through his teeth, and follows sam's gaze, to the floor above them. their mark. of course. still gunning for the fucking bounty. felix is many things but a graceful loser isn't one of them. ) Not gonna kill me?
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(it's so often that his battlefields are populated by breathing corpses, by men and women who might as well already be dead, thrown into circumstances against their will or beyond their conviction.)
the dust does settle around them. mortar and frayed paint, desiccated wood. sam, wet hair sticking to the strong angles of his face, white and red still streaked over sun-blessed skin, finally pulls his sword from the clench of felix's body. innuendo intended. ]
Don't get me wrong. Would have loved to.
[ fuck him? kill him? sam doesn't draw the line in the sand, and leaves the delineation to what may or may not happen in the future; fate likes to play games, and he doesn't like to roll dice. what he knows now, with his blade now angled at the bob of felix's throat, is that he'd like to kiss him.
so. he does. the katana still a sweet threat by felix's jugular, and his knee touching the fractured ground to grant him access, with the curve of his spine, to felix's poison-stained mouth. the implied get out ignored, and with the knowledge that, a few yards away, samuel ortez may be watching from the other side of a scope.
he tastes iron and fire in felix's mouth. those furious eyes are fucking gorgeous, just the way he remembers them. ]
γΌRain check, kitty-cat.
[ their lips part (likely not without a bite or two or three). he's been distracted enough; time to finish what he came here to do. ]
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he won't realize β now or later, until it's too late β that what sam leaves behind is far worse than anything he could ever take from him. a minuscule seed, buried in the upturned soil of felix's insides, finding root in his softest, ugliest parts and sprouting thorns. a disease. a fucking infection. he's going to fucking kill him, slowly, viciously. he's going to use his guts as garland. he's going to hook his thighs around his hips and beg him, tearstruck, to fuck him here, on top of bloodied carpet and splintered furniture, in full view of ortez's steady scope. he wants to be hollowed out and thoroughly emptied. he wants to feel fucking nothing.
this isn't right. get the fuck out of my head.
he chokes on a guttural, animal sound, throat seizing violently. by the time he thinks to go for the blade in his boot, sam is gone, out of reach, and felix is left to slash madly at empty air. oh fuck, he thinks feverishly, and rolls to his knees, crawling over dusty rubble for his jacket pinned under the busted remnants of a wooden wardrobe.
in his right pocket, a biofoam injection from home sweet home, to staunch the bleeding, stabbed directly into his gaping shoulder. he retches through the pain as his chest convulses on a wheezy sob. never gets any easier. never hurts any fucking less.
then, finally: ear-ringing silence, punctuated by felix's choppy breaths. it feels like hours, but ortez arrives to this decimated bedroom in record time, his savior framed in fading moonlight, dressed head-to-toe in black steel. he's greeted by a wild, screaming felix, who tries ( and fails ) to stab him no less than twenty times. why didn't you go for the fucking mark, you stupid fuck? you think i give a fuck what happens to me? you think i care? fuck you, locus. this shit is on you.
locus β all silent bulk, all frightening faceless patience β tanks the rogue waves of felix's rage with seasoned experience, unbreaking. until the world tilts under him, and blood loss really does catch up to him. distantly, felix registers ortez's grip on his wrist tightening into a bruising vise.
he slips under as he's hauled effortlessly over ortez's shoulder, limp as a rag doll, and drifts to a dark, warm place, to dream of sam. )
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the hangover comes before the rush. felix wants to feel nothing, and sam is gliding from floor to fucking floor, suddenly in tune with everything and anything, his awareness like piano wire pulled just to the brink of breaking. broken lights, mirrors, the smell of exorbitantly expensive cologne mixed with rum and tequila, the weight of an unconscious criminal slung over his shoulder. the unnamed sniper doesn't come to put a hole in sam's fucking skull during the few minutes that sam spends in technicolor, and, as he's maneuvering through and out into the blissful stench of this foreign hellscape, sam tips his bloodied face to the moons hanging above him and shutters his eyes.
out of his fucking mind, he thinks.
what else is new?
(what happens next is: he trades his mark for six months' rent. interrogation isn't his style; he leaves that to an affable-looking sociopath with rubber gloves snapped up to his fucking elbow, and casually gets the name of whoever else in this latrine of a city would've wanted their half-baked crimelord dead.
contacts three-times removed and two-times dead later, sam finds the bank account that felix was supposed to have his reward wired to, and puts in exactly one month's worth of rent and the amount to buy precisely two cocktails in a shitty downtown bar in said account.
an attached message, in Portuguese: he who barks the loudest. no explanation; just an admission and an accusation. "you got to me, you motherfucker.") ]