Chapter Text
bastLives [BL] opened memo on board grumpy threshecutioner therApy corner
paterHelices [PH] responded to memo.
PH: Can’7 you a7 leas7 change 7he 6oard’s name for 7his.
PH: He’s no7 going 7o 6e happy seeing some cu7e-ass name you made up 7wo sweeps ago.
BL: he’s not going to be hAppy no mAtter whAt we do, the nAme doesn’t reAlly mAke A difference
PH: Yeah 6u7 do we really need 7o give him more ammo? He’s already go7 an ass high pile of 6ullshi7 grievances, and you know how cranky he ge7s over 7he smalles7 s7upides7 de7ails even when you’re 7rying 7o 7ell him some7hing impor7an7.
PH: You know I 7ried. Las7 perigee.
PH: Jus7 real su67le, floa7ing 7he idea 6y, and do you know wha7 he said?
BL: .(
PH: Do we really have 7o do 7his.
BL: you know why we hAve to
PH: I know I jus7.
BL: wish we could run from our problems And leAve someone else holding the bAg?
PH: No7 7he way I would have pu7 i7 6u7 yeah.
BL: you know they sAy A personAlity is just A series of behAviorAl pAtterns repeAted over And over until they become hAbits
PH: 7akes one 7o know one lady.
BL: .(
BL: i’m not chAnging the nAme
BL: if it mAkes you feel better, this is the lAst time we’ll ever use it
PH: Funnily enough i7 doesn'7.
horridHarbinger [HH] responded to memo.
HH: GOGDAMN. WHAT THE FUCK WAS SO FUCKING IMPORTANT YOU HAD TO CALL AN EMERGENCY CONCILIATORY MEETING AT TWO IN THE FUCKING AFTERNOON.
PH: We in7errup7 your 6eau7y sleep?
HH: NO. THANKFULLY FOR YOU CHUCKLEFUCKS MY COMMANDER HAD ME RUNNING DELIVERIES FOR HIS MORAIL UP ON DECK THREE, OTHERWISE I’D BE WAY MORE PISSED WITH YOU THAN I ALREADY AM.
PH: Oh 6oo hoo, someone had 7o do his jo6.
BL: jjAAkk
PH: Righ7. Sorry.
BL: gAberl there is something jjAAkk And i hAve to tAlk to you About
HH: OH GOG.
HH: I AM PRESSING THE BRIDGE OF MY CARTILAGINOUS NUB SO HARD RIGHT NOW ITS LEAVING LITTLE YOU SHAPED MARKS TO METAPHYSICALLY ILLUSTRATE HOW ANNOYED I AM RIGHT NOW.
HH: FOR THE LAST TIME I’M NOT GOING TO THROUPLE’S MINI-GOLF WITH YOU.
PH: Oh for fuck’s sake.
HH: I AM SERIOUS, YOU TRY TO BRING ME UP TO DECK TWO I WON’T EVEN BOTHER WITH THE AIRLOCK YOU’RE GOING TO SEE A REAPER SHAPED HOLE ALL THE WAY THROUGH THREE FEET OF TITANIUM EXOSKELETON FOLLOWED BY THE DISTINCT LACK OF SOUND IN SPACE AS I FREEZE TO DEATH AS FAR AWAY FROM THE MINI-EIFEL TOWER OF HUMILIATION AS TROLLIANLY POSSIBLE.
PH: I can’7 do 7his.
BL: you’re not leAving
HH: WELL I AM.
BL: not you either
BL: this isn’t About pocket sized club bAll
BL: or Ashen fAygo And pAint night or Anything else we’re just
BL: gAberl, we don’t think this is working
HH: WELL THEN TRY SOME BETTER TACTICS, BECAUSE I’M SURE AS HELL NOT GOING WILLINGLY.
BL: you’re not listening
BL: the we is jjAAkk And i
BL: And the this is
BL: well
BL: All of it
HH: WHOA WAIT. ARE YOU BREAKING UP WITH ME RIGHT NOW?
PH: Well we sure as hell aren’7 asking you 7o agglu7ina7e respi7e6locks.
HH: I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS TURNAROUND?
BL: it wAsn’t meAnt to be A blindside gAberl, we’ve both tried to sAy something before
BL: And we still cAre About you, neither of us wAnts to hurt you
HH: OH BULLSHIT. IS THIS BECAUSE I WON’T GO TO YOUR STUPID EXTROVERSION ACTIVATES? BECAUSE COMMANDER DOESN’T WANT TO GO EITHER, I JUST SAVE HIM THE TROUBLE BY MAKING A BIG ENOUGH FUSS THAT HE DOESN’T HAVE TO STEP ON YOUR TOES.
HH: YOU KNOW THAT’S ALL I’M DOING RIGHT? I’M JUST FUSSY. THAT’S NOT SOMETHING TO BREAKUP OVER, RIGHT?
BL: it’s not About the Activities
HH: COMMANDER HELP ME OUT HERE. YOU’RE SCARING ME.
HH: SEVEN SECONDS AGO I JUST WHINED LIKE A WIGGLER AND CALLED MYSELF FUSSY AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN GO FOR THE THROAT.
HH: I KNOW YOU’RE STILL THERE I CAN SEE YOUR LITTLE BLUE ORB AS ACTIVE AS A DRONE DURING FILIAL SEASON.
PH: Reaper, I 7hink Ana’s righ7.
HH: WHAT THE FUCK.
PH: I7 was nice. Well no7 nice I guess 6u7 i7 was media7ed and i7 made 6eing around you 7olera6le. 6u7 like she said 7hings aren’7 working anymore and I 7hink we’re jus7 no7 compa7i6le as an auspis7icism.
BL: it’s not thAt you did Anything wrong, gAberl
BL: it’s more thAt jjAAkk And i Are At different stAtes in both our lives And imperiAl stAnding thAn you And it doesn’t seem fAir to put thAt sort of strAin for the sAke of An AlreAdy contentiously vAcillAting relAtionship
HH: OH, SO WE’RE GOING FOR THE OLD, “IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME”?
HH: WEAK.
HH: CAN’T EVEN GIVE ME THE DECENCY OF A REAL REASON.
PH: 7ha7 is our real reason.
HH: IS IT? OK HOTSHOT, TELL ME THE REASON, RIGHT NOW **IN YOUR OWN WORDS** AND NOT THE VERSION CAPTAIN COACHED YOU ON.
HH: GO.
HH: AAANNND SIX MINUTES WITH NO RESPONSE. MOVING ON TO SUSPECT NUMERO DOS.
HH: IF THIS RELATIONSHIP WAS GETTING SO MESSED UP WITHOUT ME KNOWING, WHY DIDN’T YOU DO ANYTHING O GLORIOUS FASCILITATOR?
HH: ISN’T THAT SUPPOSED TO BE THE AUSPISTICE’S JOB?
BL: i Am doing something
BL: And this is it
HH: AND WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW? UNLIKE FUCHSIA-STAR WINNING HERO-BOY OVER HERE, I DON’T HAVE A BACKUP MATESPRIT TO FALL BACK ON
BL: i know you’ll figure something out
BL: we still love you gAberl, we just cAn’t be responsible for you Anymore, unless you
BL: chAnge
HH: PASS.
HH: WHAT ABOUT YOU, APPARENTLY FORMER KISMESIS? GOT ANY EMPTY LOVE CONFESSIONS YOU WANNA GET OFF YOUR TORSO PILLAR?
HH: THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT.
HH: GOODDAY EVERYONE, AND GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
HH banned HH from responding to memo.
You whistle low and long as you reach the last line of the chat log. Then you read it again quickly and whistle even longer.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“Damn,” you say, propping yourself up slightly on the loungeplank. “And I thought the way you left us was cold. This is like the double slam breakfast of vague breakups.”
From the corner where he’s only half paying attention to you, you can see his profile flinch. It’s not as visceral of a reaction as it used to be, which you feel you can pat yourself on the back for. You’ve always belonged to the school of thought that any significantly painful point can be numbed by prodding it enough, which you apply as equally to other people’s buttons as embarrassing things you did when you were six.
“What goes around comes around, I guess,” he says, and turns until all you can see is his back. He’s been trying to fix the leak in his quarter all morning, but if there’s something the Talon is known for, it isn’t prompt maintenance request responses. For now, he’s tied a handkerchief around the leaking pipe and shoved a bucket into the middle of the slowly expanding pool. You’ve already exhausted all the jokes you could make about that, and when he saw you were getting restless, he shoved his palmhusk into your hands so that you would leave him alone.
“I still can’t believe you were triangulating off with a pair of bluebloods!” you say, scrolling up to try and glean more about the other members of Reaper’s failed relationship. “And old-ass ones too. Who still says ‘agglutinate respiteblocks’?”
“I’m not exactly young either, anymore…Starting to rust.” A wrench appears from his fetch modus and he tightens a coupling. If you didn’t know him better, you’d swear he just made a joke.
“So that’s the end of the story?” You wave the palmhusk around. “The Incident occurs, and you never see ‘em again?”
“No.” The smile you imagined on his face is gone now, and the mood in the room drops until it’s on par with the physical dampness. “It ends before I even got court marshaled.” He’s not even turning the wrench now, just making a show, pretending like his hands are busy. “They were assigned to a mission less then a wipe later, first one without me. It went south. Some fight with a bunch of rogue gamblignants. No one made it back.”
“Oh.”
The bucket is almost full now. Every now and then cold condensation drips from soaked fabric into the waiting maw below it, filling the room with the steady drip drip drip of a ticking clock.
“So, you’re saying if they hadn’t ditched you, you’d probably be dead too?”
Reaper says nothing.
You get up off the loungeplank, and make your way over to him. You pap him on the side of the face and tell him, “aw, it’s alright buddy. Not your fault or nothing.”
It’s not even a pap really, just a blasé pat against his cheek as you stand on your toes to reach him. He stiffens, but other than that, doesn’t react, so you give up and peel away. You’ve always been told your shoosh-pap game is garbage (mostly by him) but that’s still remarkably unresponsive even for him, you so you decide to saunter back from whence you came.
“Besides,” you say, sashaying your hips as you do so, “they seemed like a couple of bulge scrubs. Got what was coming to ‘em.”
Suddenly, there’s a constriction on your arm, and you barely have time to register it before Reaper spins you around to face him. “They did not get what was coming to them,” he tells you in no uncertain terms.
Damn he closed in on you quickly. He’s hauling you upward, his face mere inches from yours, hostility flickering in the deep maroon of his eyes. The short spikes of his horns are so far forward on his scalp they nearly sprout from his forehead, and if he leaned down further, he would be butting them right into you.
You suppress a gulp and instead offer a grin. “You still holding a candle for them after all these sweeps, Gabe? C’mon Boss, you deserve way better than those bozos.”
His hands are cold and wet. When he shoves you away, he leaves a print on your arm.
“They are not bozos and they are not bulge scrubs, or anything else your ignorance tunnel can come up with.”
You can’t tear your glance nuggets away from him. You want him to keep looking at you like that, want him never to stop. That means what you think it means, right? That you want to infuriate him, want to be the object of his contempt.
When you say nothing, he turns, and you do the only thing that makes sense: you reach forward and hold his arm in place.
“I’m series Boss. You deserve waaayyy better,” you tell him, chipper as you can be while you sink your claws into the black mesh.
He tries to jerk away, and he may be strong but you’ve got laughsassin blood in your veins. You hold steady and he demands, “oh yeah? Better how?”
“People who won’t die on you,” you say through sharpened teeth.
Without warning, the tension between you reverses, and Reaper comes flying at you with murder in his eyes. You manage to pull him off balance, send his weight past you instead of through you, but your arms are still intertwined and he brings you down with him. You clatter on the loungeplank, his fangs bared and your hand around his collar. You knee has landed between his legs and the two of you are locked in and inescapable standoff as he looks at you with pure hatred. When will he learn? When has he ever opened himself up to you and been better for it?
You want to make him regret it. You’re leaning forward, breathing heavy, watching the way his lookstubs flick to your lips, suppressing every part of you that knows this is a mistake-