deadboyfriendd

[deadboyfriendd]

Elevator scene:

[deadboyfriendd]

The Hawkins Tinies (with apologies to Edward Gorey)

[deadboyfriendd]

this is so unbelievably stupid

[deadboyfriendd]

You Meet Soap, Twice (18+)

Part one of The Chemicals Between Us

First, there was nothing. 

And then, there was everything. 

Eden was built around Adam– then he was given Eve. You wondered if he had willingly subjected himself to the idea of that kind of mutilation before the idea had ever been thought of. Before there were people to be sick and twisted and do it for fun. You’d wondered if he would feel the chasm linger and throb with the phantom pain of ribs removed, or if he felt the creation of Eve from the nerve endings left exposed. 

You wondered if he kept bleeding from that hole in his chest from where she had risen. Did he wear it like a badge of honor or had he learned to resent her– to see her as something to be removed from him? You wondered if he would have done it again. 

Had Eve been all of the best parts of him? Something strong-willed and just as holy, but with enough of his softness, had it provided a balance for these things? Or had she been too strong-willed, too soft? Did he learn to see her as the mirror image of all of the worst things carved from that clandestine ivory piece of him? Did he wait to see if she would become something he could learn to hate with time?

Surely she had not been something other than a derivative of him. 

Was that what Adam thought about at night? When she tucked herself back against that chasm in his chest, had it felt like she was returning home or simply rubbing it in– the existence she had gotten to have without pain, with every rib in her chest, void of the solemnness that came with being the first of your kind– of never having to know what it felt like to be alone. It had been the precept of Saint Thomas placing his fingers into the lance wound of the Risen Christ. They had been there first. They had been loved by God first. They had been His children, too. 

To be a piece of someone is to never be anything but a piece. To give a piece to someone is to never be whole. You guessed that had been the purpose of it all. 

And then they were cast from the garden. You’d wondered if he learned to resent her for that too. Or if she hated herself enough for it to quell that desire to devour. 

Maybe you were reading too deep into it. 

Historically speaking, you could pinpoint the exact moments the puzzle pieces of your life will themselves into formation with far less celestial greatness than you were fathoming now. Numbers along a blanket of time sewn together to mean what? Nothing? Everything? A code for the life you lived, a slew of informalities and feigned coincidence passed off as the hand of God?

You turned numbers and dates over in your head in a flippant attempt to make sense of the algorithm that was your life. It was easier to be cynical. You were still too tired to think of a grander scheme on the throes of religion, but they still crawled over the fine pink matter of your mind like ants.  

The graphic design program was piloted in 1991, and you served as a guinea pig for the initial launch of the fully online curriculum in 2020. It felt like the guiding hand of God then, your mother’s life-long dreams of you becoming a nurse replaced by an art degree that you could propose to her as computer science. Something that made money. Something that contributed something to the world. She cut you off anyway. 

You graduated in December of 2023. And then promptly started this job a month later– after a stint as an artist that would never fully work out. It felt less like the hand of God when the senior designer of a private military contractor interviewed you via unplanned phone call, signed, sealed, and delivered over the hands-free feature in her Prius on her way out the door for the day. Her leading question was, “Are you emotionally sensitive?” 

Your swift and nimble, “no.” was what landed you this position. 

This career had been practical. A real, honest-to-God, big girl job. And, at $70,000 a year, you would have been absolutely stupid to pass it up. 

The Ford Motor Company created the Model–T in 1908. Your big gold explorer hit the market in 2018. The Model–T didn’t have plastic parts that rotted off and made you take the longer, slower route to work lest the plastic pieces of your car flew off and landed you in some sort of expensive, un-winnable lawsuit. You tried not to be too sour about it. 

The United States Marine Corps was established on November 10th, 1775. And now, in the year of our Lord, 2024, this base was crawling– more so than it usually did. 

But you wondered if this had been your destiny, to be this boring. 

Your phone had shattered that blissful stagnation of silence at 0500, its shrill voice the preemptive tenor to the commandeering bass crescendo of your boss– Sergeant Blake. Had it not been for the fact that he most definitely had a wife to return to at night, signified by the titanium band that he fiddled with at a near-constant, you would have sworn that he spent every night pacing a trench into the flooring of your building, a secret-clearance office located in the heart of the marine base leased out to the private contractor that currently employed you. He called with the waking reminder that WTI started promptly at 0600, despite your contracted hours not starting until 0900. Why he needed you there for at the absolute break of dawn, you didn’t know– but two extra hours of sleep was not a battle worth fighting for, and you could make up for it over the coming weekend. 

Instead, you forego breakfast for five minutes of lying there, opting to sip your weekly batch of cold brew black out of the kitchen cup and free-floating straw, which will inevitably spill out into your cupholder and make your life a sticky Hell for several hours afterward. Though thoughtfully pitted against yourself, this would be your rebellion for the week. 

On a technical level, the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course is a graduate-level training program for the U.S. Marine Corps that provides advanced training in aviation weapons and tactics. Your senior designer explained it as Top Gun for crayon-eaters. 

To you, as a curriculum developer, this was your red carpet. It was the bi-annual sun in which the renewal of your contract orbited around waiting for implosion. 

When you flash your ID and pull through the gates, you notice that this place is already crawling worse than it had been for the last week. A government-funded anthill. It's the same kid that’s posted there every morning, and he waves you through with a tired nod. 

The population of the marine base expanded to nearly triple overnight, with people from all over, enlisted from all branches, subcontracted employees, and whatever government officials could be bothered enough to show face. The population of your city swelled with the number of people flocking for training, the two-lane freeway clogged with military vehicles and trailers toting classified weaponry from the base to the bombing ranges on the city's outskirts. 

The speed limit was reduced to five miles an hour past the threshold of the base, and it feels even more like you’re crawling now. You fight to stay awake as you navigate towards your building, nestling your car as far away from anyone else in the sparse lot. 

The tension in the building is palpable, an atrocity strung more taught by Sgt. Blake pacing his typical trench on the floor of the near-empty building, despite the deliverables having been met and exceeded and run through thrice before this. You don’t call his attention, instead opting to nurse your half-empty glass of coffee while you idly spin yourself by the toe of your shoe in your chair, awaiting the rest of your team for what will promptly be the most mind-numbing impromptu morning meeting of your life. 

Your department is comprised of three people. You, a second junior designer whom you seldom speak to, your own cynicism mixed with your demanding schedule and catalyst to your lack of interaction, and Rebecca, the senior designer. She is the only other person you answer to next to Sgt. Blake– except for maybe the President of the United States or God himself. 

You didn’t mean to be this way, but your clientele had pulled this from you. Exhumed this cynicism from you like a grave. If you weren’t, then you’d be an assistant, a coffee girl, or someone to run their copies and organize their filing cabinets– for some of them, even a prospective wife. This was not what you paid thirty thousand dollars for a degree for. This was not what you spent hours slaving over exhibitions and design theory and visual communication studios for. No, you had as much of a right to be here as anyone with more incentive to leave if you felt provoked. The turnover rate for this position had been less-than-satisfactory in the past, with stints of unfilled positions for months in between. But you were tough. Or desperate for money.  

In a steady trickle, you watch people file in from the low walls of your cubicle, peering over them with unseen, watching eyes. These were not your typical patrons, captains and sergeants and employees of other private contractors who leased this offic e space. The men that strolled through these doors had a foreign air about them, strolled with a certain cockiness that only marked them as instructors– people that had been deemed the best of the best as fast as military tactics went. And, by the way they scanned this place, they had known it, too. 

Your name beckoned from the lips of your boss commanded you to rise, your body reacting faster than your brain can in the haze of the pre-contracted hours, and you make your way to where he stands.

“Gentlemen,” He nods towards the group, “My graphics team. They are responsible for the curriculum that you will be using over the next several weeks.” You can tell Blake means business, by the way he has his military voice out. He seldom uses it with you now, but it still catches you off guard. 

“For which curriculum?” One of them asks, PRICE printed in block letting over his shirt. His accent is thick and it takes you by surprise. There is an air about him, still domineering but without the strain and formality of the way Blake talks. An international unit wasn’t necessarily out of the norm for something as large as WTI but it was rare that they meandered their way into your private sector. 

Blake claps you against the shoulder, snapping you from your stupor, “All of them.” He preens– like a proud father. It wasn’t often that you received praise from him. You nodded in succession. 

Price sticks his hand out for you to grasp, and you do, shaking it once as he introduces himself, “Captain John Price, with the Task Force 141.” You nod at him as he goes down the line of introducing his other men. All equally burly with equally heavy accents. More of your team has begun to roll into the office now, all looking equally as tired and nursing similarly large coffees. You listen to them chatter back and forth, both included in the conversation and not. Something about Special Air Services and an impressive track record of deployments over the last several years. Most of them were here to test new artillery and would be doing a few demonstrations at the ranges. 

“Sweetheart,” Blake starts, pulling your attention back to him, “Why don’t you take a half day today? Captain Price has extended the invitation to dinner tonight and your presence has been requested.” He gestures towards Price, whose cheeks pull up in a friendly smile. 

You can tell the second his military voice has switched off that Blake is overcompensating niceties. The way he calls you sweetheart is meant as nothing more than endearingly. It was a tone he had learned to take on with the employees that he oversought that were not enlisted, in a robotic attempt to be more conversational. More like an employer and less like a sergeant. 

Several months ago, within your first weeks of employment here, you had made it abundantly clear to him that he would not speak to you as a subordinate, but as an employee of the subcontracted company you were contracted with. You remember, in your calm, cynical rage, the way you had threatened to walk off of the job entirely, leaving him to meet the first deliverables for this event that had been due for revisions within the week on his own. Rebecca had watched with wide eyes and her mouth agape. 

This had been when the niceties started, and, though she would never thank you openly for it, her nod of approval as he turned on his heel and left your cubicle told you everything she needed to say. 

And, while you had been both flattered and terrified at the invitation, you furrowed your brows in confusion. This dinner, traditionally, was a formality extended between higher-ranking military officials– a way for them to rub elbows and talk about whatever they talked about with each other. War machines, maybe. What did Blake talk about when it wasn’t about work? You wouldn’t receive your answer. Instead, you nodded your head with a curt thank you before taking it as an out from that conversation. 

It didn’t take a tactical specialist to feel the way the eyes scanned you in this room. You weren’t particularly introspective or anything, but if it wasn’t for the force of habit, you would have assumed the worst. 

You go home to get ready at one. 

+

Your mind is only half-there as you arrange curls in a way that you kind of hope is doing something to make you halfway presentable at whatever place they had you meeting at. You tried not to dwell too hard on the ripe, hazy lines forming beneath your eyes, or those dastardly little wisps of scraggly white at your crown. When these things started to show up, you could never pinpoint an exact answer. In the same way, you couldn’t pinpoint when you had begun to create rules for yourself. 

No looking in the mirror after a certain span of time. Yes, you can have that cocktail but only if you have half of the dressing on your salad. Sleep by 9 to be up by 5 to be at work by 9 to come home at 5 and do the entire thing over again. Sunday resets cleaned with bleach every other week and as–needed in between. 

When had you become so rigid? Had the military infiltrated you thus far, even without being enlisted? Was this what your life entailed now– meals prepped the week in advance from greasy plastic containers, rules and routines, and the same culmination of five outfits rotated between days to break up the monotony of it all? 

Something stirred in the pit of your chest at the idea of being boring, but your thirty seconds of close-up mirror inspection was over. The thought had to stop there. 

Somewhere, deep within yourself, you’d clung to the idea of Rebecca being there. You weren’t particularly close, and you hadn’t ever needed someone to cling to, but, having someone there that shared your civilian status was a comforting thought that you allowed yourself to have. 

It wasn’t like anyone had been unfriendly, albeit intense, any of the men you had ever met who held an upper rank were like that. You figured if it were some sort of psychological thing. It had to be, a phenom that made men that cold and calculated, kept their spines rigid and fingers curled around each other. 

You thought about Price. Had you seen him in the street, as just another face in the crowd, you wouldn’t have thought him otherwise. Something in the way his cheeks upturned into crow's feet that pressed haughtily against the kiss of his lashes. Maybe he would have been a father– and a damned good one. Maybe he already was. He didn’t carry that poignant stare– that coldness– as some of the other higher-ups did. Maybe he was just really good at hiding it. 

You tried not to dwell on the thought too much. 

The restaurant was an upscale experience in the heart of the downtown quarter. You had never thought much of this place, first because you couldn’t afford it before this job, and now because you wouldn’t spend the money eating here alone. You had frequented the lower–scale dive bars of the downtown quarters just a year ago, and you remember the feeling of the bushes well as you skirted past them, warily. 

It was intimate, micro-dining, someone had called it. They had closed the entire place for this event for all the twenty people invited. A private bar greeted you at the front door in a horse-shoe, the mirrored mercury tiles leading you back to the restaurant portion, where flames shot towards the ceiling in an exposed kitchen with open dining. 

Suddenly, you felt underdressed. 

There wasn’t a person here that didn’t don some sort of collared, buttoning shirt. Well, save for you, now, that is. Suddenly the pleats of your black palazzos felt entirely too brittle and the soft cotton of your black shirt felt too thin. Suddenly the rings you wore felt childish and slick with sweat as you rotated them around and around.

Rebecca was missing in action, nowhere to be found. You prayed she had been fashionably late and not a lost cause yet. Feeling exposed, especially now that you are stationed between Blake and Price– the only two names in which you have committed to memory, you make for the bar. It was quieter there, less of a congregation without the swell of burning open flame from the kitchen. 

You hate wine, your cheeks already tinged pink and your hairline already tacky with sweat as you swirl the house red around in your hands. You’d ordered it because this is what ladies drink and because good tequila is expensive at good restaurants and because you’re decent and its what decent people do at these things. The glass you nursed was already warming in your hands as you swirled it around, your reluctance to take another sip feigned by the swirling motions of aeration. 

When the silt of tannins and nerves settled in the joints of your bones and melted into feigning warmth, you’d begun to partake in your one true talent: people-watching. You watched the way they orbited around each other in tight circles like atoms, memorized their tells, watched the way they navigated people in a way that you wouldn’t. 

Price and Blake were cut from the same cloth, though in entirely different flavors. Where Blake’s authority had stemmed from explosive tendencies followed by overcompensated niceties, Price’s authority was much smoother, something much deeper than rank and title. They sat side by side, and yet, had no idea how easy it made for comparison. Blake was jerky in his motions, looking for places to inject himself, looking for something, anything, to be wrong. 

Price was more fluid, more subtle. People flocked to him in a way that they did not flock to Blake. He was more at ease, more approachable. Dare you say it, your life would be marginally easier had be been your boss instead. Maybe you’d watch people less, be less alert. When his eyes met yours, kind even now, his cheeks pushed up in a haughty smirk, and he nodded in your direction. You had been doing to him what he had been doing to everyone else. 

There was a group of men congregated near him, not equal in size or stature, but ruminating with the same intensity as the other in different states of the ideal. The most unremarkable of them sips from his drink and speaks back and forth with the others, dressed in a pale blue button-up and khaki slacks. If you saw him on the street, you wouldn’t have known he was military, much less special forces. But there was something in the way he spoke, the way he held his shoulders and nodded along to the rest of the conversation. You could tell that he was probably the smartest person in the room. You made a mental note to introduce yourself later. 

The big guy wedged between them barely speaks, his arms flexed over his broad chest as he periodically scans the room. You kept your phone open on the Candy Crush welcome page for this reason. You had a feeling he was less receptive to being perceived than Price is. From beneath his dark tattoo sleeve, you can see the ridges of deep, gnarly scars. Besides that, you couldn’t quite get a read of him, and, judging by the looks of it, you weren’t sure you wanted to. 

The final man bobs excitedly in conversation, clearly some garish debate. He was a republic of voices and, unfortunately for the big one next to him, that republic had been Italy. His hands flew in different directions as he spoke. Just by the looks of him, he was a wild card with eat-you blue eyes and something a little more unhinged deeper than that. But even past the military mirage of hotness that comes with a uniform and a strict workout regime– and the fuckass haircut– he had been handsome. Indescribably so. 

But you don’t shit where you eat. 

Your refusal to date military men was not born of some whirlwind heartbreak spawned from the memory of a forbidden workplace romance, but instead from the very people-watching that you found yourself doing now. Fraternization between your company and military men was frowned upon, but considering you had worked for separate entities, it was not strictly forbidden. The way Rebecca, who was still MIA, by the way, had found herself in a state of disrepair from a late-night tryst in the barracks, followed by mid-morning heartbreak, had become indiscernible. 

You wondered if she realized how she had sounded, just as stupid as you were insufferable. 

It’s not like you were sour. Marines hungered for things other than blood and the waxy remnants of crayons. There had been advances, sure, even your own late-night rendezvous in the beginning, but even you were above the barracks. Plus, your job was complicated enough without all of the emotions involved. 

The big one’s elbow juts out, landing firmly against the bicep of the one with the mohawk, and, as suddenly as the blow had landed, there were three sets of eyes meeting yours. You damned the wine for lowering your inhibitions and damned it again for the rouge that spread across your face and neck as you scrambled for your phone– which had turned off thanks to your gawking.

That icy stare is on you quickly, broken by something muttered to the rest of the group, before it turns back. It stays on you as he approaches, even when you feign nonchalance and sacrifice one of your Candy Crush lives to hoping and praying for no confrontation. 

But confrontation is at your doorstep, a tall man with a broad chest dressed in all black, immediately in front of you. He doesn’t sit at the barstool beside you, instead wedging himself between it and you, an elbow on the counter, entirely too close. Smug glory as he crowds your space and fills your senses with him. 

Surprisingly, you are the picture of coolness, at least, you are in your own brain. But your painful self-awareness says that your eyes are too wide and your shoulders are too square and your jaw isn’t slack enough. Instead, you place the ball in his court– willfully give it up, as if he hasn’t had it all along. 

“My friend Simon says there’s been a bird watching us from the bar.” His accent is thick, even if the wine didn’t make it feel like you had cotton stuffed in your ears, you would have had to put forth effort into understanding him: “Seen any birds ‘round here, lass?” 

He must see the shuffle back from the radiating heat of his body, and he realizes he has come on too strong, at least, too strong for American girls, he thinks. He takes a step back, placing himself on the barstool beside you, but stays leaning against the counter. Less abrasive this way, yet you haven't changed, not in stature nor in indignation. 

“I don’t know about birds,” you start, “But I like to be aware.” 

“Clever lass.” He nods, back. 

There’s a stint of time shared between your eyes, battling for held gaze between two opposing forces, locked in battle between your discomfort and your unwillingness to lose to a man with a fuckass mowhawk. You attempt to deconstruct him in fragments of tells, but he is a stone before you. 

“So the big one is Simon?” You settle for light conversation instead. 

“Aye. Callsign, ‘ghost’ in the field,” he laughs, and you can understand at a base level why. If you weren’t so insufferably wine-drunk, you’d find it in your heart to be remorseful, “And the other one is Kyle. Callsign, ‘Gaz’.”

“And you?”

“Johnny.” He nods, leaning his chin against the heel of his hand, “We met this morning. In your office. You design the curriculum.”

“That I do.” You nodded, skirting over your own embarrassment at being too jaded at your own job to remember meeting the gaggle of them, “ –And what about you?” 

“Demolitions. That’s why I’m down here.” 

“Gonna teach us new ways to blow each other up?” You’d hate to get political, and this was skirting too close to it.

“Amongst other things.” He nods again, icy blue eyes finding an anchor against the wall behind you, his gaze lost somewhere between here and a far-off conversation. 

You knew better than to ask. A lot of this information was classified and way past your pay grade, but you did anyway: “Like what?” 

“I can’t say.” He smiles like he knows this, “way past your clearance.”

He stands to his full height, gazing down at you before settling himself on the stool beside you. There's something about him, beneath the icy gaze and the small dog energy. Something deeper, more unhinged and wanting beneath the sarcastic grin and the imposing nature of him. Something in the way he invades your space like it's his birthright, in the way he imposes over you in a way that wants you to make him do it again, and pushes him away all at the same time. But you don’t shit where you eat. You will not take this man home.

“Is your callsign past my clearance, too?” You ask, brow raised, wine glass rightfully cast aside, lukewarm and half empty. 

“Soap.” It rolls off his tongue in a staccato, quick, and poignant. He barks it like an order. 

“Why’s that?” 

“You like to ask a lot of questions.” 

“Isn’t that why you came over here?” 

This catches him by surprise. His hand drops to the bar top, and he sits up, spinning that stupid, uncomfortable stool around to face you. Your thighs stick as you turn to meet him and tear against the materials in a way that you tell yourself makes them burn. 

“Why’s that, now?” He mirrors your expression, brow raised, but his expression remains the same: like he knows something that you don’t. And you will die if you don’t figure out what it is. 

“To ask me questions, get the dirt, interrogate me?” 

“Something like that.” 

“And yet, you haven’t asked a single question.” Never mind your previous stoicism. You crawl down from your high horse, filling your mouth with another insufferable gulp of that dry house red, “So go ahead, ask me.”

You tap the gold hardware of your rings against the rim of your wine glass in succession with your fleeting thoughts, the resonant patriarchal tenor of it all drawing Johnny’s trained eyes towards your hands at the chip of gold against glass. You swear the ting of it rings in succession with an idea in his head. 

“Why do you wear so many rings?” 

The question catches you off guard, so off guard that you stop mid-sip to peer at him over the glass rim that splits his face in two. 

“This is what you came to ask me?” 

“Is that information past my clearance?”  

“No, I just like them, that's all.” He shrugs, eyes suddenly wide and innocent. You wouldn’t but it for a second, but you would entertain him for now.  

You can’t quite seem to figure him out. If he has a prerogative other than sex, then you have no idea what it is. Johnny overcompensates with niceties just like your captain, but somehow, it's different. Flirting, sure, but there’s something else that feels familiar but foreign at the same time. Wanting, maybe. 

You fight the urge to be cynical and roll your eyes at him. You can overcompensate with niceties, too. You’re a professional, and this is a work function. 

“What's that one?” He asks again, tearing you from your labyrinth of cynicism to gesture at the stone that sits against your pinkie. 

“Tigerseye.” You look down at it, watching the light catch against the amber reflection in the center. 

“Aye, a protective talisman.” He offers, sitting back and folding his biceps over his chest.  “The Romans used it during battle.” You wonder how many other women this worked on. 

It didn’t really mean anything to you in particular. You had stolen it from your mom’s ring dish and kept it after the contact started to fizzle between you. It wasn’t of sentimental value, nor was it particularly expensive. Even though in its own kind of fucked way, it felt like a prize– Something you took and she could never have back. You lie and tell him you just think it's pretty. 

“And what about those?” He asks, pinching the solidity of your right middle finger, just beneath the knuckle where the ring sits. It’s a warm pressure against your flesh, rough and manly in all of the ways that matter. It’s a matching set conjoined at your two middle fingers. 

“This one is The Devil.” You see that flame behind his eyes, it quirks with the corner of his mouth. The spark before detonation, like this, somehow lit a fuse in his brain, “And these ones are The Lovers.” 

“Are you suggesting something about the duality of man?” It’s a question out of left field, and your pupils dart up to lock against his, where you can see that spark burning, eating at the fuse of his brain, burning, burning. Had this been the explosion? Something that propelled you into freak-of-nature territory? 

Despite the bomb sirens screaming danger in your brain, you knew this was a heavy conversation load for a first impression, but you were never one for small talk anyway. You’re caught off guard the same way. 

“No. They’re tarot cards.” You manage, keeping yourself from tailspinning into a conversation about God and the universe, and the driving forces had put you right here, right now. 

“So you’re a witch?” He asks, cocky smile tugging at his lips. You wait for detonation. Nothing happens. 

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.”

“That’s exactly something a witch would say.” There’s a solemn silence for a bleating second, you couldn’t help the smile curling at your lips. Even if he thinks you’re a freak, he’s polite enough not to cause a scene. 

“Alright, on with it then.” 

“On with what?” You ask him between poignant laughs. This, you can surrender to him. 

“They ‘afta mean somethin’” 

You tell him about them separately. The Devil and entrapment, and The Lovers and temptation. You tell him about subjectivity and listlessness and sacrifice. But it’s too much about you. Even if he didn’t understand, it skirts too close to emotional for you to relish in it. 

So you lie again, “Then maybe I am suggesting something about the duality of man.” 

You don’t tell him they’re your birth cards.

Rebecca appears from the fog of your conversation, late enough to no longer be considered fashionable. She emerges a martyr, doused in floral oil and glitter that catches every bit of the light in this room, a neckline lower than what is considered scandalous. And, really, she is very pretty, even under the horrendous glow of the fluorescents in your office. And, despite not needing someone to hide behind, you feel a wave of relief cross over you when you’re offered that sense of reprieve. 

He downs your wine. 

“Shite drink that is. Better get what you actually want next time.” 

[deadboyfriendd]

Flea! I'm so excited to see you writing for the COD fandom 🤩🤩🤩

Thank you!!! I’ve actually been slinking around in this fandom for probably over a year now and I’ve had TCBU sitting in my docs for that long 🤣

I can’t wait to light my new GI Joe action figures on fire.

[deadboyfriendd]

You Meet Soap, Twice (18+)

Part one of The Chemicals Between Us

First, there was nothing. 

And then, there was everything. 

Eden was built around Adam– then he was given Eve. You wondered if he had willingly subjected himself to the idea of that kind of mutilation before the idea had ever been thought of. Before there were people to be sick and twisted and do it for fun. You’d wondered if he would feel the chasm linger and throb with the phantom pain of ribs removed, or if he felt the creation of Eve from the nerve endings left exposed. 

You wondered if he kept bleeding from that hole in his chest from where she had risen. Did he wear it like a badge of honor or had he learned to resent her– to see her as something to be removed from him? You wondered if he would have done it again. 

Had Eve been all of the best parts of him? Something strong-willed and just as holy, but with enough of his softness, had it provided a balance for these things? Or had she been too strong-willed, too soft? Did he learn to see her as the mirror image of all of the worst things carved from that clandestine ivory piece of him? Did he wait to see if she would become something he could learn to hate with time?

Surely she had not been something other than a derivative of him. 

Was that what Adam thought about at night? When she tucked herself back against that chasm in his chest, had it felt like she was returning home or simply rubbing it in– the existence she had gotten to have without pain, with every rib in her chest, void of the solemnness that came with being the first of your kind– of never having to know what it felt like to be alone. It had been the precept of Saint Thomas placing his fingers into the lance wound of the Risen Christ. They had been there first. They had been loved by God first. They had been His children, too. 

To be a piece of someone is to never be anything but a piece. To give a piece to someone is to never be whole. You guessed that had been the purpose of it all. 

And then they were cast from the garden. You’d wondered if he learned to resent her for that too. Or if she hated herself enough for it to quell that desire to devour. 

Maybe you were reading too deep into it. 

Historically speaking, you could pinpoint the exact moments the puzzle pieces of your life will themselves into formation with far less celestial greatness than you were fathoming now. Numbers along a blanket of time sewn together to mean what? Nothing? Everything? A code for the life you lived, a slew of informalities and feigned coincidence passed off as the hand of God?

You turned numbers and dates over in your head in a flippant attempt to make sense of the algorithm that was your life. It was easier to be cynical. You were still too tired to think of a grander scheme on the throes of religion, but they still crawled over the fine pink matter of your mind like ants.  

The graphic design program was piloted in 1991, and you served as a guinea pig for the initial launch of the fully online curriculum in 2020. It felt like the guiding hand of God then, your mother’s life-long dreams of you becoming a nurse replaced by an art degree that you could propose to her as computer science. Something that made money. Something that contributed something to the world. She cut you off anyway. 

You graduated in December of 2023. And then promptly started this job a month later– after a stint as an artist that would never fully work out. It felt less like the hand of God when the senior designer of a private military contractor interviewed you via unplanned phone call, signed, sealed, and delivered over the hands-free feature in her Prius on her way out the door for the day. Her leading question was, “Are you emotionally sensitive?” 

Your swift and nimble, “no.” was what landed you this position. 

This career had been practical. A real, honest-to-God, big girl job. And, at $70,000 a year, you would have been absolutely stupid to pass it up. 

The Ford Motor Company created the Model–T in 1908. Your big gold explorer hit the market in 2018. The Model–T didn’t have plastic parts that rotted off and made you take the longer, slower route to work lest the plastic pieces of your car flew off and landed you in some sort of expensive, un-winnable lawsuit. You tried not to be too sour about it. 

The United States Marine Corps was established on November 10th, 1775. And now, in the year of our Lord, 2024, this base was crawling– more so than it usually did. 

But you wondered if this had been your destiny, to be this boring. 

Your phone had shattered that blissful stagnation of silence at 0500, its shrill voice the preemptive tenor to the commandeering bass crescendo of your boss– Sergeant Blake. Had it not been for the fact that he most definitely had a wife to return to at night, signified by the titanium band that he fiddled with at a near-constant, you would have sworn that he spent every night pacing a trench into the flooring of your building, a secret-clearance office located in the heart of the marine base leased out to the private contractor that currently employed you. He called with the waking reminder that WTI started promptly at 0600, despite your contracted hours not starting until 0900. Why he needed you there for at the absolute break of dawn, you didn’t know– but two extra hours of sleep was not a battle worth fighting for, and you could make up for it over the coming weekend. 

Instead, you forego breakfast for five minutes of lying there, opting to sip your weekly batch of cold brew black out of the kitchen cup and free-floating straw, which will inevitably spill out into your cupholder and make your life a sticky Hell for several hours afterward. Though thoughtfully pitted against yourself, this would be your rebellion for the week. 

On a technical level, the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course is a graduate-level training program for the U.S. Marine Corps that provides advanced training in aviation weapons and tactics. Your senior designer explained it as Top Gun for crayon-eaters. 

To you, as a curriculum developer, this was your red carpet. It was the bi-annual sun in which the renewal of your contract orbited around waiting for implosion. 

When you flash your ID and pull through the gates, you notice that this place is already crawling worse than it had been for the last week. A government-funded anthill. It's the same kid that’s posted there every morning, and he waves you through with a tired nod. 

The population of the marine base expanded to nearly triple overnight, with people from all over, enlisted from all branches, subcontracted employees, and whatever government officials could be bothered enough to show face. The population of your city swelled with the number of people flocking for training, the two-lane freeway clogged with military vehicles and trailers toting classified weaponry from the base to the bombing ranges on the city's outskirts. 

The speed limit was reduced to five miles an hour past the threshold of the base, and it feels even more like you’re crawling now. You fight to stay awake as you navigate towards your building, nestling your car as far away from anyone else in the sparse lot. 

The tension in the building is palpable, an atrocity strung more taught by Sgt. Blake pacing his typical trench on the floor of the near-empty building, despite the deliverables having been met and exceeded and run through thrice before this. You don’t call his attention, instead opting to nurse your half-empty glass of coffee while you idly spin yourself by the toe of your shoe in your chair, awaiting the rest of your team for what will promptly be the most mind-numbing impromptu morning meeting of your life. 

Your department is comprised of three people. You, a second junior designer whom you seldom speak to, your own cynicism mixed with your demanding schedule and catalyst to your lack of interaction, and Rebecca, the senior designer. She is the only other person you answer to next to Sgt. Blake– except for maybe the President of the United States or God himself. 

You didn’t mean to be this way, but your clientele had pulled this from you. Exhumed this cynicism from you like a grave. If you weren’t, then you’d be an assistant, a coffee girl, or someone to run their copies and organize their filing cabinets– for some of them, even a prospective wife. This was not what you paid thirty thousand dollars for a degree for. This was not what you spent hours slaving over exhibitions and design theory and visual communication studios for. No, you had as much of a right to be here as anyone with more incentive to leave if you felt provoked. The turnover rate for this position had been less-than-satisfactory in the past, with stints of unfilled positions for months in between. But you were tough. Or desperate for money.  

In a steady trickle, you watch people file in from the low walls of your cubicle, peering over them with unseen, watching eyes. These were not your typical patrons, captains and sergeants and employees of other private contractors who leased this offic e space. The men that strolled through these doors had a foreign air about them, strolled with a certain cockiness that only marked them as instructors– people that had been deemed the best of the best as fast as military tactics went. And, by the way they scanned this place, they had known it, too. 

Your name beckoned from the lips of your boss commanded you to rise, your body reacting faster than your brain can in the haze of the pre-contracted hours, and you make your way to where he stands.

“Gentlemen,” He nods towards the group, “My graphics team. They are responsible for the curriculum that you will be using over the next several weeks.” You can tell Blake means business, by the way he has his military voice out. He seldom uses it with you now, but it still catches you off guard. 

“For which curriculum?” One of them asks, PRICE printed in block letting over his shirt. His accent is thick and it takes you by surprise. There is an air about him, still domineering but without the strain and formality of the way Blake talks. An international unit wasn’t necessarily out of the norm for something as large as WTI but it was rare that they meandered their way into your private sector. 

Blake claps you against the shoulder, snapping you from your stupor, “All of them.” He preens– like a proud father. It wasn’t often that you received praise from him. You nodded in succession. 

Price sticks his hand out for you to grasp, and you do, shaking it once as he introduces himself, “Captain John Price, with the Task Force 141.” You nod at him as he goes down the line of introducing his other men. All equally burly with equally heavy accents. More of your team has begun to roll into the office now, all looking equally as tired and nursing similarly large coffees. You listen to them chatter back and forth, both included in the conversation and not. Something about Special Air Services and an impressive track record of deployments over the last several years. Most of them were here to test new artillery and would be doing a few demonstrations at the ranges. 

“Sweetheart,” Blake starts, pulling your attention back to him, “Why don’t you take a half day today? Captain Price has extended the invitation to dinner tonight and your presence has been requested.” He gestures towards Price, whose cheeks pull up in a friendly smile. 

You can tell the second his military voice has switched off that Blake is overcompensating niceties. The way he calls you sweetheart is meant as nothing more than endearingly. It was a tone he had learned to take on with the employees that he oversought that were not enlisted, in a robotic attempt to be more conversational. More like an employer and less like a sergeant. 

Several months ago, within your first weeks of employment here, you had made it abundantly clear to him that he would not speak to you as a subordinate, but as an employee of the subcontracted company you were contracted with. You remember, in your calm, cynical rage, the way you had threatened to walk off of the job entirely, leaving him to meet the first deliverables for this event that had been due for revisions within the week on his own. Rebecca had watched with wide eyes and her mouth agape. 

This had been when the niceties started, and, though she would never thank you openly for it, her nod of approval as he turned on his heel and left your cubicle told you everything she needed to say. 

And, while you had been both flattered and terrified at the invitation, you furrowed your brows in confusion. This dinner, traditionally, was a formality extended between higher-ranking military officials– a way for them to rub elbows and talk about whatever they talked about with each other. War machines, maybe. What did Blake talk about when it wasn’t about work? You wouldn’t receive your answer. Instead, you nodded your head with a curt thank you before taking it as an out from that conversation. 

It didn’t take a tactical specialist to feel the way the eyes scanned you in this room. You weren’t particularly introspective or anything, but if it wasn’t for the force of habit, you would have assumed the worst. 

You go home to get ready at one. 

+

Your mind is only half-there as you arrange curls in a way that you kind of hope is doing something to make you halfway presentable at whatever place they had you meeting at. You tried not to dwell too hard on the ripe, hazy lines forming beneath your eyes, or those dastardly little wisps of scraggly white at your crown. When these things started to show up, you could never pinpoint an exact answer. In the same way, you couldn’t pinpoint when you had begun to create rules for yourself. 

No looking in the mirror after a certain span of time. Yes, you can have that cocktail but only if you have half of the dressing on your salad. Sleep by 9 to be up by 5 to be at work by 9 to come home at 5 and do the entire thing over again. Sunday resets cleaned with bleach every other week and as–needed in between. 

When had you become so rigid? Had the military infiltrated you thus far, even without being enlisted? Was this what your life entailed now– meals prepped the week in advance from greasy plastic containers, rules and routines, and the same culmination of five outfits rotated between days to break up the monotony of it all? 

Something stirred in the pit of your chest at the idea of being boring, but your thirty seconds of close-up mirror inspection was over. The thought had to stop there. 

Somewhere, deep within yourself, you’d clung to the idea of Rebecca being there. You weren’t particularly close, and you hadn’t ever needed someone to cling to, but, having someone there that shared your civilian status was a comforting thought that you allowed yourself to have. 

It wasn’t like anyone had been unfriendly, albeit intense, any of the men you had ever met who held an upper rank were like that. You figured if it were some sort of psychological thing. It had to be, a phenom that made men that cold and calculated, kept their spines rigid and fingers curled around each other. 

You thought about Price. Had you seen him in the street, as just another face in the crowd, you wouldn’t have thought him otherwise. Something in the way his cheeks upturned into crow's feet that pressed haughtily against the kiss of his lashes. Maybe he would have been a father– and a damned good one. Maybe he already was. He didn’t carry that poignant stare– that coldness– as some of the other higher-ups did. Maybe he was just really good at hiding it. 

You tried not to dwell on the thought too much. 

The restaurant was an upscale experience in the heart of the downtown quarter. You had never thought much of this place, first because you couldn’t afford it before this job, and now because you wouldn’t spend the money eating here alone. You had frequented the lower–scale dive bars of the downtown quarters just a year ago, and you remember the feeling of the bushes well as you skirted past them, warily. 

It was intimate, micro-dining, someone had called it. They had closed the entire place for this event for all the twenty people invited. A private bar greeted you at the front door in a horse-shoe, the mirrored mercury tiles leading you back to the restaurant portion, where flames shot towards the ceiling in an exposed kitchen with open dining. 

Suddenly, you felt underdressed. 

There wasn’t a person here that didn’t don some sort of collared, buttoning shirt. Well, save for you, now, that is. Suddenly the pleats of your black palazzos felt entirely too brittle and the soft cotton of your black shirt felt too thin. Suddenly the rings you wore felt childish and slick with sweat as you rotated them around and around.

Rebecca was missing in action, nowhere to be found. You prayed she had been fashionably late and not a lost cause yet. Feeling exposed, especially now that you are stationed between Blake and Price– the only two names in which you have committed to memory, you make for the bar. It was quieter there, less of a congregation without the swell of burning open flame from the kitchen. 

You hate wine, your cheeks already tinged pink and your hairline already tacky with sweat as you swirl the house red around in your hands. You’d ordered it because this is what ladies drink and because good tequila is expensive at good restaurants and because you’re decent and its what decent people do at these things. The glass you nursed was already warming in your hands as you swirled it around, your reluctance to take another sip feigned by the swirling motions of aeration. 

When the silt of tannins and nerves settled in the joints of your bones and melted into feigning warmth, you’d begun to partake in your one true talent: people-watching. You watched the way they orbited around each other in tight circles like atoms, memorized their tells, watched the way they navigated people in a way that you wouldn’t. 

Price and Blake were cut from the same cloth, though in entirely different flavors. Where Blake’s authority had stemmed from explosive tendencies followed by overcompensated niceties, Price’s authority was much smoother, something much deeper than rank and title. They sat side by side, and yet, had no idea how easy it made for comparison. Blake was jerky in his motions, looking for places to inject himself, looking for something, anything, to be wrong. 

Price was more fluid, more subtle. People flocked to him in a way that they did not flock to Blake. He was more at ease, more approachable. Dare you say it, your life would be marginally easier had be been your boss instead. Maybe you’d watch people less, be less alert. When his eyes met yours, kind even now, his cheeks pushed up in a haughty smirk, and he nodded in your direction. You had been doing to him what he had been doing to everyone else. 

There was a group of men congregated near him, not equal in size or stature, but ruminating with the same intensity as the other in different states of the ideal. The most unremarkable of them sips from his drink and speaks back and forth with the others, dressed in a pale blue button-up and khaki slacks. If you saw him on the street, you wouldn’t have known he was military, much less special forces. But there was something in the way he spoke, the way he held his shoulders and nodded along to the rest of the conversation. You could tell that he was probably the smartest person in the room. You made a mental note to introduce yourself later. 

The big guy wedged between them barely speaks, his arms flexed over his broad chest as he periodically scans the room. You kept your phone open on the Candy Crush welcome page for this reason. You had a feeling he was less receptive to being perceived than Price is. From beneath his dark tattoo sleeve, you can see the ridges of deep, gnarly scars. Besides that, you couldn’t quite get a read of him, and, judging by the looks of it, you weren’t sure you wanted to. 

The final man bobs excitedly in conversation, clearly some garish debate. He was a republic of voices and, unfortunately for the big one next to him, that republic had been Italy. His hands flew in different directions as he spoke. Just by the looks of him, he was a wild card with eat-you blue eyes and something a little more unhinged deeper than that. But even past the military mirage of hotness that comes with a uniform and a strict workout regime– and the fuckass haircut– he had been handsome. Indescribably so. 

But you don’t shit where you eat. 

Your refusal to date military men was not born of some whirlwind heartbreak spawned from the memory of a forbidden workplace romance, but instead from the very people-watching that you found yourself doing now. Fraternization between your company and military men was frowned upon, but considering you had worked for separate entities, it was not strictly forbidden. The way Rebecca, who was still MIA, by the way, had found herself in a state of disrepair from a late-night tryst in the barracks, followed by mid-morning heartbreak, had become indiscernible. 

You wondered if she realized how she had sounded, just as stupid as you were insufferable. 

It’s not like you were sour. Marines hungered for things other than blood and the waxy remnants of crayons. There had been advances, sure, even your own late-night rendezvous in the beginning, but even you were above the barracks. Plus, your job was complicated enough without all of the emotions involved. 

The big one’s elbow juts out, landing firmly against the bicep of the one with the mohawk, and, as suddenly as the blow had landed, there were three sets of eyes meeting yours. You damned the wine for lowering your inhibitions and damned it again for the rouge that spread across your face and neck as you scrambled for your phone– which had turned off thanks to your gawking.

That icy stare is on you quickly, broken by something muttered to the rest of the group, before it turns back. It stays on you as he approaches, even when you feign nonchalance and sacrifice one of your Candy Crush lives to hoping and praying for no confrontation. 

But confrontation is at your doorstep, a tall man with a broad chest dressed in all black, immediately in front of you. He doesn’t sit at the barstool beside you, instead wedging himself between it and you, an elbow on the counter, entirely too close. Smug glory as he crowds your space and fills your senses with him. 

Surprisingly, you are the picture of coolness, at least, you are in your own brain. But your painful self-awareness says that your eyes are too wide and your shoulders are too square and your jaw isn’t slack enough. Instead, you place the ball in his court– willfully give it up, as if he hasn’t had it all along. 

“My friend Simon says there’s been a bird watching us from the bar.” His accent is thick, even if the wine didn’t make it feel like you had cotton stuffed in your ears, you would have had to put forth effort into understanding him: “Seen any birds ‘round here, lass?” 

He must see the shuffle back from the radiating heat of his body, and he realizes he has come on too strong, at least, too strong for American girls, he thinks. He takes a step back, placing himself on the barstool beside you, but stays leaning against the counter. Less abrasive this way, yet you haven't changed, not in stature nor in indignation. 

“I don’t know about birds,” you start, “But I like to be aware.” 

“Clever lass.” He nods, back. 

There’s a stint of time shared between your eyes, battling for held gaze between two opposing forces, locked in battle between your discomfort and your unwillingness to lose to a man with a fuckass mowhawk. You attempt to deconstruct him in fragments of tells, but he is a stone before you. 

“So the big one is Simon?” You settle for light conversation instead. 

“Aye. Callsign, ‘ghost’ in the field,” he laughs, and you can understand at a base level why. If you weren’t so insufferably wine-drunk, you’d find it in your heart to be remorseful, “And the other one is Kyle. Callsign, ‘Gaz’.”

“And you?”

“Johnny.” He nods, leaning his chin against the heel of his hand, “We met this morning. In your office. You design the curriculum.”

“That I do.” You nodded, skirting over your own embarrassment at being too jaded at your own job to remember meeting the gaggle of them, “ –And what about you?” 

“Demolitions. That’s why I’m down here.” 

“Gonna teach us new ways to blow each other up?” You’d hate to get political, and this was skirting too close to it.

“Amongst other things.” He nods again, icy blue eyes finding an anchor against the wall behind you, his gaze lost somewhere between here and a far-off conversation. 

You knew better than to ask. A lot of this information was classified and way past your pay grade, but you did anyway: “Like what?” 

“I can’t say.” He smiles like he knows this, “way past your clearance.”

He stands to his full height, gazing down at you before settling himself on the stool beside you. There's something about him, beneath the icy gaze and the small dog energy. Something deeper, more unhinged and wanting beneath the sarcastic grin and the imposing nature of him. Something in the way he invades your space like it's his birthright, in the way he imposes over you in a way that wants you to make him do it again, and pushes him away all at the same time. But you don’t shit where you eat. You will not take this man home.

“Is your callsign past my clearance, too?” You ask, brow raised, wine glass rightfully cast aside, lukewarm and half empty. 

“Soap.” It rolls off his tongue in a staccato, quick, and poignant. He barks it like an order. 

“Why’s that?” 

“You like to ask a lot of questions.” 

“Isn’t that why you came over here?” 

This catches him by surprise. His hand drops to the bar top, and he sits up, spinning that stupid, uncomfortable stool around to face you. Your thighs stick as you turn to meet him and tear against the materials in a way that you tell yourself makes them burn. 

“Why’s that, now?” He mirrors your expression, brow raised, but his expression remains the same: like he knows something that you don’t. And you will die if you don’t figure out what it is. 

“To ask me questions, get the dirt, interrogate me?” 

“Something like that.” 

“And yet, you haven’t asked a single question.” Never mind your previous stoicism. You crawl down from your high horse, filling your mouth with another insufferable gulp of that dry house red, “So go ahead, ask me.”

You tap the gold hardware of your rings against the rim of your wine glass in succession with your fleeting thoughts, the resonant patriarchal tenor of it all drawing Johnny’s trained eyes towards your hands at the chip of gold against glass. You swear the ting of it rings in succession with an idea in his head. 

“Why do you wear so many rings?” 

The question catches you off guard, so off guard that you stop mid-sip to peer at him over the glass rim that splits his face in two. 

“This is what you came to ask me?” 

“Is that information past my clearance?”  

“No, I just like them, that's all.” He shrugs, eyes suddenly wide and innocent. You wouldn’t but it for a second, but you would entertain him for now.  

You can’t quite seem to figure him out. If he has a prerogative other than sex, then you have no idea what it is. Johnny overcompensates with niceties just like your captain, but somehow, it's different. Flirting, sure, but there’s something else that feels familiar but foreign at the same time. Wanting, maybe. 

You fight the urge to be cynical and roll your eyes at him. You can overcompensate with niceties, too. You’re a professional, and this is a work function. 

“What's that one?” He asks again, tearing you from your labyrinth of cynicism to gesture at the stone that sits against your pinkie. 

“Tigerseye.” You look down at it, watching the light catch against the amber reflection in the center. 

“Aye, a protective talisman.” He offers, sitting back and folding his biceps over his chest.  “The Romans used it during battle.” You wonder how many other women this worked on. 

It didn’t really mean anything to you in particular. You had stolen it from your mom’s ring dish and kept it after the contact started to fizzle between you. It wasn’t of sentimental value, nor was it particularly expensive. Even though in its own kind of fucked way, it felt like a prize– Something you took and she could never have back. You lie and tell him you just think it's pretty. 

“And what about those?” He asks, pinching the solidity of your right middle finger, just beneath the knuckle where the ring sits. It’s a warm pressure against your flesh, rough and manly in all of the ways that matter. It’s a matching set conjoined at your two middle fingers. 

“This one is The Devil.” You see that flame behind his eyes, it quirks with the corner of his mouth. The spark before detonation, like this, somehow lit a fuse in his brain, “And these ones are The Lovers.” 

“Are you suggesting something about the duality of man?” It’s a question out of left field, and your pupils dart up to lock against his, where you can see that spark burning, eating at the fuse of his brain, burning, burning. Had this been the explosion? Something that propelled you into freak-of-nature territory? 

Despite the bomb sirens screaming danger in your brain, you knew this was a heavy conversation load for a first impression, but you were never one for small talk anyway. You’re caught off guard the same way. 

“No. They’re tarot cards.” You manage, keeping yourself from tailspinning into a conversation about God and the universe, and the driving forces had put you right here, right now. 

“So you’re a witch?” He asks, cocky smile tugging at his lips. You wait for detonation. Nothing happens. 

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.”

“That’s exactly something a witch would say.” There’s a solemn silence for a bleating second, you couldn’t help the smile curling at your lips. Even if he thinks you’re a freak, he’s polite enough not to cause a scene. 

“Alright, on with it then.” 

“On with what?” You ask him between poignant laughs. This, you can surrender to him. 

“They ‘afta mean somethin’” 

You tell him about them separately. The Devil and entrapment, and The Lovers and temptation. You tell him about subjectivity and listlessness and sacrifice. But it’s too much about you. Even if he didn’t understand, it skirts too close to emotional for you to relish in it. 

So you lie again, “Then maybe I am suggesting something about the duality of man.” 

You don’t tell him they’re your birth cards.

Rebecca appears from the fog of your conversation, late enough to no longer be considered fashionable. She emerges a martyr, doused in floral oil and glitter that catches every bit of the light in this room, a neckline lower than what is considered scandalous. And, really, she is very pretty, even under the horrendous glow of the fluorescents in your office. And, despite not needing someone to hide behind, you feel a wave of relief cross over you when you’re offered that sense of reprieve. 

He downs your wine. 

“Shite drink that is. Better get what you actually want next time.” 

[deadboyfriendd]

who will say of me i kissed her!!!!!!

[deadboyfriendd]

Johnny "Soap" MacTavish

The Chemicals Between Us

[deadboyfriendd]

You Meet Soap, Twice (18+)

Part one of The Chemicals Between Us

First, there was nothing. 

And then, there was everything. 

Eden was built around Adam– then he was given Eve. You wondered if he had willingly subjected himself to the idea of that kind of mutilation before the idea had ever been thought of. Before there were people to be sick and twisted and do it for fun. You’d wondered if he would feel the chasm linger and throb with the phantom pain of ribs removed, or if he felt the creation of Eve from the nerve endings left exposed. 

You wondered if he kept bleeding from that hole in his chest from where she had risen. Did he wear it like a badge of honor or had he learned to resent her– to see her as something to be removed from him? You wondered if he would have done it again. 

Had Eve been all of the best parts of him? Something strong-willed and just as holy, but with enough of his softness, had it provided a balance for these things? Or had she been too strong-willed, too soft? Did he learn to see her as the mirror image of all of the worst things carved from that clandestine ivory piece of him? Did he wait to see if she would become something he could learn to hate with time?

Surely she had not been something other than a derivative of him. 

Was that what Adam thought about at night? When she tucked herself back against that chasm in his chest, had it felt like she was returning home or simply rubbing it in– the existence she had gotten to have without pain, with every rib in her chest, void of the solemnness that came with being the first of your kind– of never having to know what it felt like to be alone. It had been the precept of Saint Thomas placing his fingers into the lance wound of the Risen Christ. They had been there first. They had been loved by God first. They had been His children, too. 

To be a piece of someone is to never be anything but a piece. To give a piece to someone is to never be whole. You guessed that had been the purpose of it all. 

And then they were cast from the garden. You’d wondered if he learned to resent her for that too. Or if she hated herself enough for it to quell that desire to devour. 

Maybe you were reading too deep into it. 

Historically speaking, you could pinpoint the exact moments the puzzle pieces of your life will themselves into formation with far less celestial greatness than you were fathoming now. Numbers along a blanket of time sewn together to mean what? Nothing? Everything? A code for the life you lived, a slew of informalities and feigned coincidence passed off as the hand of God?

You turned numbers and dates over in your head in a flippant attempt to make sense of the algorithm that was your life. It was easier to be cynical. You were still too tired to think of a grander scheme on the throes of religion, but they still crawled over the fine pink matter of your mind like ants.  

The graphic design program was piloted in 1991, and you served as a guinea pig for the initial launch of the fully online curriculum in 2020. It felt like the guiding hand of God then, your mother’s life-long dreams of you becoming a nurse replaced by an art degree that you could propose to her as computer science. Something that made money. Something that contributed something to the world. She cut you off anyway. 

You graduated in December of 2023. And then promptly started this job a month later– after a stint as an artist that would never fully work out. It felt less like the hand of God when the senior designer of a private military contractor interviewed you via unplanned phone call, signed, sealed, and delivered over the hands-free feature in her Prius on her way out the door for the day. Her leading question was, “Are you emotionally sensitive?” 

Your swift and nimble, “no.” was what landed you this position. 

This career had been practical. A real, honest-to-God, big girl job. And, at $70,000 a year, you would have been absolutely stupid to pass it up. 

The Ford Motor Company created the Model–T in 1908. Your big gold explorer hit the market in 2018. The Model–T didn’t have plastic parts that rotted off and made you take the longer, slower route to work lest the plastic pieces of your car flew off and landed you in some sort of expensive, un-winnable lawsuit. You tried not to be too sour about it. 

The United States Marine Corps was established on November 10th, 1775. And now, in the year of our Lord, 2024, this base was crawling– more so than it usually did. 

But you wondered if this had been your destiny, to be this boring. 

Your phone had shattered that blissful stagnation of silence at 0500, its shrill voice the preemptive tenor to the commandeering bass crescendo of your boss– Sergeant Blake. Had it not been for the fact that he most definitely had a wife to return to at night, signified by the titanium band that he fiddled with at a near-constant, you would have sworn that he spent every night pacing a trench into the flooring of your building, a secret-clearance office located in the heart of the marine base leased out to the private contractor that currently employed you. He called with the waking reminder that WTI started promptly at 0600, despite your contracted hours not starting until 0900. Why he needed you there for at the absolute break of dawn, you didn’t know– but two extra hours of sleep was not a battle worth fighting for, and you could make up for it over the coming weekend. 

Instead, you forego breakfast for five minutes of lying there, opting to sip your weekly batch of cold brew black out of the kitchen cup and free-floating straw, which will inevitably spill out into your cupholder and make your life a sticky Hell for several hours afterward. Though thoughtfully pitted against yourself, this would be your rebellion for the week. 

On a technical level, the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course is a graduate-level training program for the U.S. Marine Corps that provides advanced training in aviation weapons and tactics. Your senior designer explained it as Top Gun for crayon-eaters. 

To you, as a curriculum developer, this was your red carpet. It was the bi-annual sun in which the renewal of your contract orbited around waiting for implosion. 

When you flash your ID and pull through the gates, you notice that this place is already crawling worse than it had been for the last week. A government-funded anthill. It's the same kid that’s posted there every morning, and he waves you through with a tired nod. 

The population of the marine base expanded to nearly triple overnight, with people from all over, enlisted from all branches, subcontracted employees, and whatever government officials could be bothered enough to show face. The population of your city swelled with the number of people flocking for training, the two-lane freeway clogged with military vehicles and trailers toting classified weaponry from the base to the bombing ranges on the city's outskirts. 

The speed limit was reduced to five miles an hour past the threshold of the base, and it feels even more like you’re crawling now. You fight to stay awake as you navigate towards your building, nestling your car as far away from anyone else in the sparse lot. 

The tension in the building is palpable, an atrocity strung more taught by Sgt. Blake pacing his typical trench on the floor of the near-empty building, despite the deliverables having been met and exceeded and run through thrice before this. You don’t call his attention, instead opting to nurse your half-empty glass of coffee while you idly spin yourself by the toe of your shoe in your chair, awaiting the rest of your team for what will promptly be the most mind-numbing impromptu morning meeting of your life. 

Your department is comprised of three people. You, a second junior designer whom you seldom speak to, your own cynicism mixed with your demanding schedule and catalyst to your lack of interaction, and Rebecca, the senior designer. She is the only other person you answer to next to Sgt. Blake– except for maybe the President of the United States or God himself. 

You didn’t mean to be this way, but your clientele had pulled this from you. Exhumed this cynicism from you like a grave. If you weren’t, then you’d be an assistant, a coffee girl, or someone to run their copies and organize their filing cabinets– for some of them, even a prospective wife. This was not what you paid thirty thousand dollars for a degree for. This was not what you spent hours slaving over exhibitions and design theory and visual communication studios for. No, you had as much of a right to be here as anyone with more incentive to leave if you felt provoked. The turnover rate for this position had been less-than-satisfactory in the past, with stints of unfilled positions for months in between. But you were tough. Or desperate for money.  

In a steady trickle, you watch people file in from the low walls of your cubicle, peering over them with unseen, watching eyes. These were not your typical patrons, captains and sergeants and employees of other private contractors who leased this offic e space. The men that strolled through these doors had a foreign air about them, strolled with a certain cockiness that only marked them as instructors– people that had been deemed the best of the best as fast as military tactics went. And, by the way they scanned this place, they had known it, too. 

Your name beckoned from the lips of your boss commanded you to rise, your body reacting faster than your brain can in the haze of the pre-contracted hours, and you make your way to where he stands.

“Gentlemen,” He nods towards the group, “My graphics team. They are responsible for the curriculum that you will be using over the next several weeks.” You can tell Blake means business, by the way he has his military voice out. He seldom uses it with you now, but it still catches you off guard. 

“For which curriculum?” One of them asks, PRICE printed in block letting over his shirt. His accent is thick and it takes you by surprise. There is an air about him, still domineering but without the strain and formality of the way Blake talks. An international unit wasn’t necessarily out of the norm for something as large as WTI but it was rare that they meandered their way into your private sector. 

Blake claps you against the shoulder, snapping you from your stupor, “All of them.” He preens– like a proud father. It wasn’t often that you received praise from him. You nodded in succession. 

Price sticks his hand out for you to grasp, and you do, shaking it once as he introduces himself, “Captain John Price, with the Task Force 141.” You nod at him as he goes down the line of introducing his other men. All equally burly with equally heavy accents. More of your team has begun to roll into the office now, all looking equally as tired and nursing similarly large coffees. You listen to them chatter back and forth, both included in the conversation and not. Something about Special Air Services and an impressive track record of deployments over the last several years. Most of them were here to test new artillery and would be doing a few demonstrations at the ranges. 

“Sweetheart,” Blake starts, pulling your attention back to him, “Why don’t you take a half day today? Captain Price has extended the invitation to dinner tonight and your presence has been requested.” He gestures towards Price, whose cheeks pull up in a friendly smile. 

You can tell the second his military voice has switched off that Blake is overcompensating niceties. The way he calls you sweetheart is meant as nothing more than endearingly. It was a tone he had learned to take on with the employees that he oversought that were not enlisted, in a robotic attempt to be more conversational. More like an employer and less like a sergeant. 

Several months ago, within your first weeks of employment here, you had made it abundantly clear to him that he would not speak to you as a subordinate, but as an employee of the subcontracted company you were contracted with. You remember, in your calm, cynical rage, the way you had threatened to walk off of the job entirely, leaving him to meet the first deliverables for this event that had been due for revisions within the week on his own. Rebecca had watched with wide eyes and her mouth agape. 

This had been when the niceties started, and, though she would never thank you openly for it, her nod of approval as he turned on his heel and left your cubicle told you everything she needed to say. 

And, while you had been both flattered and terrified at the invitation, you furrowed your brows in confusion. This dinner, traditionally, was a formality extended between higher-ranking military officials– a way for them to rub elbows and talk about whatever they talked about with each other. War machines, maybe. What did Blake talk about when it wasn’t about work? You wouldn’t receive your answer. Instead, you nodded your head with a curt thank you before taking it as an out from that conversation. 

It didn’t take a tactical specialist to feel the way the eyes scanned you in this room. You weren’t particularly introspective or anything, but if it wasn’t for the force of habit, you would have assumed the worst. 

You go home to get ready at one. 

+

Your mind is only half-there as you arrange curls in a way that you kind of hope is doing something to make you halfway presentable at whatever place they had you meeting at. You tried not to dwell too hard on the ripe, hazy lines forming beneath your eyes, or those dastardly little wisps of scraggly white at your crown. When these things started to show up, you could never pinpoint an exact answer. In the same way, you couldn’t pinpoint when you had begun to create rules for yourself. 

No looking in the mirror after a certain span of time. Yes, you can have that cocktail but only if you have half of the dressing on your salad. Sleep by 9 to be up by 5 to be at work by 9 to come home at 5 and do the entire thing over again. Sunday resets cleaned with bleach every other week and as–needed in between. 

When had you become so rigid? Had the military infiltrated you thus far, even without being enlisted? Was this what your life entailed now– meals prepped the week in advance from greasy plastic containers, rules and routines, and the same culmination of five outfits rotated between days to break up the monotony of it all? 

Something stirred in the pit of your chest at the idea of being boring, but your thirty seconds of close-up mirror inspection was over. The thought had to stop there. 

Somewhere, deep within yourself, you’d clung to the idea of Rebecca being there. You weren’t particularly close, and you hadn’t ever needed someone to cling to, but, having someone there that shared your civilian status was a comforting thought that you allowed yourself to have. 

It wasn’t like anyone had been unfriendly, albeit intense, any of the men you had ever met who held an upper rank were like that. You figured if it were some sort of psychological thing. It had to be, a phenom that made men that cold and calculated, kept their spines rigid and fingers curled around each other. 

You thought about Price. Had you seen him in the street, as just another face in the crowd, you wouldn’t have thought him otherwise. Something in the way his cheeks upturned into crow's feet that pressed haughtily against the kiss of his lashes. Maybe he would have been a father– and a damned good one. Maybe he already was. He didn’t carry that poignant stare– that coldness– as some of the other higher-ups did. Maybe he was just really good at hiding it. 

You tried not to dwell on the thought too much. 

The restaurant was an upscale experience in the heart of the downtown quarter. You had never thought much of this place, first because you couldn’t afford it before this job, and now because you wouldn’t spend the money eating here alone. You had frequented the lower–scale dive bars of the downtown quarters just a year ago, and you remember the feeling of the bushes well as you skirted past them, warily. 

It was intimate, micro-dining, someone had called it. They had closed the entire place for this event for all the twenty people invited. A private bar greeted you at the front door in a horse-shoe, the mirrored mercury tiles leading you back to the restaurant portion, where flames shot towards the ceiling in an exposed kitchen with open dining. 

Suddenly, you felt underdressed. 

There wasn’t a person here that didn’t don some sort of collared, buttoning shirt. Well, save for you, now, that is. Suddenly the pleats of your black palazzos felt entirely too brittle and the soft cotton of your black shirt felt too thin. Suddenly the rings you wore felt childish and slick with sweat as you rotated them around and around.

Rebecca was missing in action, nowhere to be found. You prayed she had been fashionably late and not a lost cause yet. Feeling exposed, especially now that you are stationed between Blake and Price– the only two names in which you have committed to memory, you make for the bar. It was quieter there, less of a congregation without the swell of burning open flame from the kitchen. 

You hate wine, your cheeks already tinged pink and your hairline already tacky with sweat as you swirl the house red around in your hands. You’d ordered it because this is what ladies drink and because good tequila is expensive at good restaurants and because you’re decent and its what decent people do at these things. The glass you nursed was already warming in your hands as you swirled it around, your reluctance to take another sip feigned by the swirling motions of aeration. 

When the silt of tannins and nerves settled in the joints of your bones and melted into feigning warmth, you’d begun to partake in your one true talent: people-watching. You watched the way they orbited around each other in tight circles like atoms, memorized their tells, watched the way they navigated people in a way that you wouldn’t. 

Price and Blake were cut from the same cloth, though in entirely different flavors. Where Blake’s authority had stemmed from explosive tendencies followed by overcompensated niceties, Price’s authority was much smoother, something much deeper than rank and title. They sat side by side, and yet, had no idea how easy it made for comparison. Blake was jerky in his motions, looking for places to inject himself, looking for something, anything, to be wrong. 

Price was more fluid, more subtle. People flocked to him in a way that they did not flock to Blake. He was more at ease, more approachable. Dare you say it, your life would be marginally easier had be been your boss instead. Maybe you’d watch people less, be less alert. When his eyes met yours, kind even now, his cheeks pushed up in a haughty smirk, and he nodded in your direction. You had been doing to him what he had been doing to everyone else. 

There was a group of men congregated near him, not equal in size or stature, but ruminating with the same intensity as the other in different states of the ideal. The most unremarkable of them sips from his drink and speaks back and forth with the others, dressed in a pale blue button-up and khaki slacks. If you saw him on the street, you wouldn’t have known he was military, much less special forces. But there was something in the way he spoke, the way he held his shoulders and nodded along to the rest of the conversation. You could tell that he was probably the smartest person in the room. You made a mental note to introduce yourself later. 

The big guy wedged between them barely speaks, his arms flexed over his broad chest as he periodically scans the room. You kept your phone open on the Candy Crush welcome page for this reason. You had a feeling he was less receptive to being perceived than Price is. From beneath his dark tattoo sleeve, you can see the ridges of deep, gnarly scars. Besides that, you couldn’t quite get a read of him, and, judging by the looks of it, you weren’t sure you wanted to. 

The final man bobs excitedly in conversation, clearly some garish debate. He was a republic of voices and, unfortunately for the big one next to him, that republic had been Italy. His hands flew in different directions as he spoke. Just by the looks of him, he was a wild card with eat-you blue eyes and something a little more unhinged deeper than that. But even past the military mirage of hotness that comes with a uniform and a strict workout regime– and the fuckass haircut– he had been handsome. Indescribably so. 

But you don’t shit where you eat. 

Your refusal to date military men was not born of some whirlwind heartbreak spawned from the memory of a forbidden workplace romance, but instead from the very people-watching that you found yourself doing now. Fraternization between your company and military men was frowned upon, but considering you had worked for separate entities, it was not strictly forbidden. The way Rebecca, who was still MIA, by the way, had found herself in a state of disrepair from a late-night tryst in the barracks, followed by mid-morning heartbreak, had become indiscernible. 

You wondered if she realized how she had sounded, just as stupid as you were insufferable. 

It’s not like you were sour. Marines hungered for things other than blood and the waxy remnants of crayons. There had been advances, sure, even your own late-night rendezvous in the beginning, but even you were above the barracks. Plus, your job was complicated enough without all of the emotions involved. 

The big one’s elbow juts out, landing firmly against the bicep of the one with the mohawk, and, as suddenly as the blow had landed, there were three sets of eyes meeting yours. You damned the wine for lowering your inhibitions and damned it again for the rouge that spread across your face and neck as you scrambled for your phone– which had turned off thanks to your gawking.

That icy stare is on you quickly, broken by something muttered to the rest of the group, before it turns back. It stays on you as he approaches, even when you feign nonchalance and sacrifice one of your Candy Crush lives to hoping and praying for no confrontation. 

But confrontation is at your doorstep, a tall man with a broad chest dressed in all black, immediately in front of you. He doesn’t sit at the barstool beside you, instead wedging himself between it and you, an elbow on the counter, entirely too close. Smug glory as he crowds your space and fills your senses with him. 

Surprisingly, you are the picture of coolness, at least, you are in your own brain. But your painful self-awareness says that your eyes are too wide and your shoulders are too square and your jaw isn’t slack enough. Instead, you place the ball in his court– willfully give it up, as if he hasn’t had it all along. 

“My friend Simon says there’s been a bird watching us from the bar.” His accent is thick, even if the wine didn’t make it feel like you had cotton stuffed in your ears, you would have had to put forth effort into understanding him: “Seen any birds ‘round here, lass?” 

He must see the shuffle back from the radiating heat of his body, and he realizes he has come on too strong, at least, too strong for American girls, he thinks. He takes a step back, placing himself on the barstool beside you, but stays leaning against the counter. Less abrasive this way, yet you haven't changed, not in stature nor in indignation. 

“I don’t know about birds,” you start, “But I like to be aware.” 

“Clever lass.” He nods, back. 

There’s a stint of time shared between your eyes, battling for held gaze between two opposing forces, locked in battle between your discomfort and your unwillingness to lose to a man with a fuckass mowhawk. You attempt to deconstruct him in fragments of tells, but he is a stone before you. 

“So the big one is Simon?” You settle for light conversation instead. 

“Aye. Callsign, ‘ghost’ in the field,” he laughs, and you can understand at a base level why. If you weren’t so insufferably wine-drunk, you’d find it in your heart to be remorseful, “And the other one is Kyle. Callsign, ‘Gaz’.”

“And you?”

“Johnny.” He nods, leaning his chin against the heel of his hand, “We met this morning. In your office. You design the curriculum.”

“That I do.” You nodded, skirting over your own embarrassment at being too jaded at your own job to remember meeting the gaggle of them, “ –And what about you?” 

“Demolitions. That’s why I’m down here.” 

“Gonna teach us new ways to blow each other up?” You’d hate to get political, and this was skirting too close to it.

“Amongst other things.” He nods again, icy blue eyes finding an anchor against the wall behind you, his gaze lost somewhere between here and a far-off conversation. 

You knew better than to ask. A lot of this information was classified and way past your pay grade, but you did anyway: “Like what?” 

“I can’t say.” He smiles like he knows this, “way past your clearance.”

He stands to his full height, gazing down at you before settling himself on the stool beside you. There's something about him, beneath the icy gaze and the small dog energy. Something deeper, more unhinged and wanting beneath the sarcastic grin and the imposing nature of him. Something in the way he invades your space like it's his birthright, in the way he imposes over you in a way that wants you to make him do it again, and pushes him away all at the same time. But you don’t shit where you eat. You will not take this man home.

“Is your callsign past my clearance, too?” You ask, brow raised, wine glass rightfully cast aside, lukewarm and half empty. 

“Soap.” It rolls off his tongue in a staccato, quick, and poignant. He barks it like an order. 

“Why’s that?” 

“You like to ask a lot of questions.” 

“Isn’t that why you came over here?” 

This catches him by surprise. His hand drops to the bar top, and he sits up, spinning that stupid, uncomfortable stool around to face you. Your thighs stick as you turn to meet him and tear against the materials in a way that you tell yourself makes them burn. 

“Why’s that, now?” He mirrors your expression, brow raised, but his expression remains the same: like he knows something that you don’t. And you will die if you don’t figure out what it is. 

“To ask me questions, get the dirt, interrogate me?” 

“Something like that.” 

“And yet, you haven’t asked a single question.” Never mind your previous stoicism. You crawl down from your high horse, filling your mouth with another insufferable gulp of that dry house red, “So go ahead, ask me.”

You tap the gold hardware of your rings against the rim of your wine glass in succession with your fleeting thoughts, the resonant patriarchal tenor of it all drawing Johnny’s trained eyes towards your hands at the chip of gold against glass. You swear the ting of it rings in succession with an idea in his head. 

“Why do you wear so many rings?” 

The question catches you off guard, so off guard that you stop mid-sip to peer at him over the glass rim that splits his face in two. 

“This is what you came to ask me?” 

“Is that information past my clearance?”  

“No, I just like them, that's all.” He shrugs, eyes suddenly wide and innocent. You wouldn’t but it for a second, but you would entertain him for now.  

You can’t quite seem to figure him out. If he has a prerogative other than sex, then you have no idea what it is. Johnny overcompensates with niceties just like your captain, but somehow, it's different. Flirting, sure, but there’s something else that feels familiar but foreign at the same time. Wanting, maybe. 

You fight the urge to be cynical and roll your eyes at him. You can overcompensate with niceties, too. You’re a professional, and this is a work function. 

“What's that one?” He asks again, tearing you from your labyrinth of cynicism to gesture at the stone that sits against your pinkie. 

“Tigerseye.” You look down at it, watching the light catch against the amber reflection in the center. 

“Aye, a protective talisman.” He offers, sitting back and folding his biceps over his chest.  “The Romans used it during battle.” You wonder how many other women this worked on. 

It didn’t really mean anything to you in particular. You had stolen it from your mom’s ring dish and kept it after the contact started to fizzle between you. It wasn’t of sentimental value, nor was it particularly expensive. Even though in its own kind of fucked way, it felt like a prize– Something you took and she could never have back. You lie and tell him you just think it's pretty. 

“And what about those?” He asks, pinching the solidity of your right middle finger, just beneath the knuckle where the ring sits. It’s a warm pressure against your flesh, rough and manly in all of the ways that matter. It’s a matching set conjoined at your two middle fingers. 

“This one is The Devil.” You see that flame behind his eyes, it quirks with the corner of his mouth. The spark before detonation, like this, somehow lit a fuse in his brain, “And these ones are The Lovers.” 

“Are you suggesting something about the duality of man?” It’s a question out of left field, and your pupils dart up to lock against his, where you can see that spark burning, eating at the fuse of his brain, burning, burning. Had this been the explosion? Something that propelled you into freak-of-nature territory? 

Despite the bomb sirens screaming danger in your brain, you knew this was a heavy conversation load for a first impression, but you were never one for small talk anyway. You’re caught off guard the same way. 

“No. They’re tarot cards.” You manage, keeping yourself from tailspinning into a conversation about God and the universe, and the driving forces had put you right here, right now. 

“So you’re a witch?” He asks, cocky smile tugging at his lips. You wait for detonation. Nothing happens. 

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.”

“That’s exactly something a witch would say.” There’s a solemn silence for a bleating second, you couldn’t help the smile curling at your lips. Even if he thinks you’re a freak, he’s polite enough not to cause a scene. 

“Alright, on with it then.” 

“On with what?” You ask him between poignant laughs. This, you can surrender to him. 

“They ‘afta mean somethin’” 

You tell him about them separately. The Devil and entrapment, and The Lovers and temptation. You tell him about subjectivity and listlessness and sacrifice. But it’s too much about you. Even if he didn’t understand, it skirts too close to emotional for you to relish in it. 

So you lie again, “Then maybe I am suggesting something about the duality of man.” 

You don’t tell him they’re your birth cards.

Rebecca appears from the fog of your conversation, late enough to no longer be considered fashionable. She emerges a martyr, doused in floral oil and glitter that catches every bit of the light in this room, a neckline lower than what is considered scandalous. And, really, she is very pretty, even under the horrendous glow of the fluorescents in your office. And, despite not needing someone to hide behind, you feel a wave of relief cross over you when you’re offered that sense of reprieve. 

He downs your wine. 

“Shite drink that is. Better get what you actually want next time.” 

[deadboyfriendd]

do you think hawkeye misses loon sounds

[deadboyfriendd]

[deadboyfriendd]

[deadboyfriendd]

snoopy of the day

[deadboyfriendd]

good morny

[deadboyfriendd]

mother of pearl & abalone tile

[deadboyfriendd]

can someone write a joel miller stardew valley AU fic??? please??