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musophobic-saviour · 4 years ago

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It was almost funny, in a way. He knew he was a terrible liar, even more so when Volk was the one he was attempting to fool. Not that he lied to his wife often, but at times like this he almost wished he had been born with the ability to deceive more easily. He knew that she knew what was bothering him, but he really couldn’t bring himself to bring it up. What place did he have to force a conversation like that?

“Ah.” The sound was drawn out as he picked up the teacup, feeling the weight of the tin in his hand, enjoying the way the hot liquid heated the metal and provided some additional comfort against the chilly underground air. He liked the tea house well enough, he’d taken Volk there on several occasions and often stopped there on his way home from the market, simply to sit and enjoy the sounds of people living their lives around him.

Her light touch upon his face calmed him considerably, an almost Pavlovian response at this point. Volk touching him meant that she was safe, and if she was safe then that meant he was too. If neither of them were bleeding or crying, things would be okay in the end. He stole a glance at her as she turned away, a smile curling his lips as he raised the cup to take a sip.

He wondered sometimes what drew her to him, it was a destructive thought process that he did his best not to indulge in, but it crept into the back of his mind more often than he’d admit, even after she’d told him many a time exactly why she loved him. She could have had her pick of the metro, any man with half a brain cell and a pint of courage in his body would die for a woman like her. At least, that was his estimation, for he would gladly die for her, without hesitation. But she had picked him, and he was happy for that.

Her words almost startled him as they broke the small silence that had fallen, and his intent gaze turned back to the little ones that now played skip-rope with a length of old wire on the platform below them. His head cocked to the side and he shrugged, doing his best to hide that he was ecstatic about the idea.

“I would like that.”

musophobic-saviour‌:

He thought that he would make a good father. He was good with children, understood them in a way a lot of adults didn’t seem to. And they liked him, something that even he couldn’t place that made kids naturally comfortable with him.

Artyom knew why having children wasn’t in the stars for them. He repeated the excuses reasons to himself every time that stinging want washed over him. They’d both taken so many rads, it would interfere with their research, their apartment was too small, every reason he could find was used to beat the longing into submission.

He was broken from his thoughts by the dull clunk of a teacup being set beside his face, the Stalkers dreamy smile not leaving his face as his fingers curled around the cup, bringing it to his lips. It wasn’t VDNKh tea, no, but it would do, and he hummed his thanks to his wife as she ran her fingers through his hair.

His wife. That was an outcome he had never expected when he had first met Volk, a startled farm boy at the edge of Exhibitions borders. She was patient, and kind, but set clear boundaries. She would make a good mother.

All comfort and ease melted from him as she questioned him. Green eyes darted back to the game of tag going on below, before drifting back into his lap.

“I am fine, schatze, Thank you for the tea. Did you get around to using the new kettle we brought?”

A weak attempt to change the subject.

@bibliotechnician

Now he was being avoidant.

It caused her lips to screw up a bit in a comical expression of playfully annoyed effort. But Volk wasn’t the type to push it outright if it wasn’t necessary, even if she could have started with ‘no you’re not’ and gone from there. She didn’t want Artyom to withdraw it further into himself, she had to bring it up naturally. Which was fine.

She shrugged a little, more like a sigh of her shoulders. “Well, it’s actually from the teahouse just down the way here.” she admitted sheepishly, giving in for a moment to his diversion. “I have to boil our new one first, rinse out the decontaminate. The usual protocol. Thought you would like to help christen it later, though.”

She took note of the softer expression on his face, traced a fingertip lightly down his temple before turning around to watch the events of the game unfolding on the platform below with him. It reminded her of one reason she fell for him, really. That sharp observant gaze could fool anyone into thinking he was a hardened soldier, ready for battle, but there was a gentle sweep in him now that betrayed the much kinder person beneath it and that along with his inherent curiosity, she would have admonished herself for passing up her feelings for him.

“Want to know a secret?” she finally asked after a few seconds of spectating, Another drink of the cooling tea in her cup was taken before she continued. “I’ve always kind of wanted to play tag or draw in chalks with the local kids. Think they’d be alright if we joined them for a bit?”

It was a badly-veiled ploy to help pull him out of his funk and make him happy again, and an even worse-hidden build to what she was trying to bring up. Plus, she’d have been lying if she said she didn’t want to see him interacting with kids. A happy husband made a happy home, after all…

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musophobic-saviour · 4 years ago

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#a dreamer; a killer (artyom)#I sought and I found you (Volk)#my annoying partner; my dearest love (anna)

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musophobic-saviour · 5 years ago

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Okay so while we’re all struggling to find jobs, keep jobs, pay for food, or pay our rent, the government gave away eleventy hundred brazilian dollars of our money (OUR money) to the exact same useless trust-fund assholes who created this situation in the first place and it didn’t even do shit.

There’s a fucking pandemic happening. We have basically no infrastructure to handle such an emergency. We have to keep going to work and exposing ourselves and our loved ones and our communities to possible infection because we’re all one or two missed paychecks away from starving to death. Those of us who can’t work are facing homelessness because we can’t pay rent, i.e. we can’t afford the usurous and ever-rising fees that a guy who contributes nothing to society but happens to own a building charges us to be in a building.

Oh, but the landlord might have to pay his mortgage!!!! Bitch I wish I had a mortgage

The for-profit healthcare industry is so determined to not handle the crisis correctly that they are *seriously considering* shuffling life-saving medical equipment away from elderly and disabled people and letting critical COVID-19 patients just fucking die. There’s no fucking reason to do any of that, except that it’s more cost effective. Because that’s what The Market demands, is blood sacrifices.

And speaking of blood sacrifices for The Market, they’re also talking about lifting the state of emergency and sending everybody back to work in the middle of a fucking pandemic and just accepting all the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who would be killed by that as reasonable losses in order to make the stock market go back up. "Hey man, I’m sorry about your kids and I’m sorry about Meemaw and I’m sorry about your friends with respiratory issues, but they’re just useless eaters anyways and we just gotta get that line to point up.“

The presidential election looks like it’s gonna come down to an epic battle between one conservative rapist and another, different conservative rapist.

Meanwhile the planet is still heating up and we’re still disappearing people into camps in the desert.

Is this the world you want? Are you just going to accept this? Are you really just going to say “yes sir, thank you sir” and take this lying down and wait for shit to just go back to normal? Like a dog?

Or are you going to fight?

Because I got news, man: It’s not going back to normal. Not ever.

You need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself: Am I going to take this? Am I going to stand up and fight? Or am I going to force my grandchildren to suffer the shame of laying a coward’s bones in my grave?

https://www.socialistalternative.org/get-involved/

Get the fuck involved

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musophobic-saviour · 5 years ago

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Repost to spread. (Not really humor)

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musophobic-saviour · 5 years ago

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All comfort and ease melted from him as she questioned him. Green eyes darted back to the game of tag going on below, before drifting back into his lap.

“I am fine, schatze, Thank you for the tea. Did you get around to using the new kettle we brought?”

A weak attempt to change the subject.

@bibliotechnician

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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A little off course.

That was the understatement of the century, but Artyom wasn’t terribly worried about grilling their newest guest on her traveling habits. He nodded silently at her request for guest lodging, Dark brows raising at her use of the foreign term of thanks.

Artyom wasn’t terribly familiar with the Reich, most of what he had heard came from traders, salesmen, and caravans passing through. Supremacist and violent, not altogether concerned with the survival of humanity so much as their particular ideal of it. They spoke German, he’d heard, but it sounded natural coming out of this woman’s mouth, like she’d been meant to speak the language.

Any apprehension faded as she spoke again, and an easy, friendly smile spread across his face. “Yeah, but as you can see, I’m not really.”

He chuckled at his own joke, holding up his hands as if to showcase his clearly pale skin. It was a bad joke, one that got more rolling eyes than laughs, but he himself found it incredibly amusing, so he kept telling it.

Once he’d finished his little snicker, he continued on the path towards Sukhois office, clearly taking his sweet time in favor of talking to the newcomer. She was a source of news, after all, a Brahmin at that, surely she had some interesting tales to tell. She was pretty, he’d probably admit that had something to do with it as well.

“Exhibition?” The young man reached to scratch his neck, squinting as he accidentally looked up at the station lights as he thought. “We’ve a couple of local alliances, our tea sell well all across Metro, I can’t say we have a high opinion of the Nazis or the Reds.”

The Exhibition

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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Todd please

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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Send 💕for good night/morning kiss. [i counter with more adorbs!]

“Liebling, I am more than capable of working while-“

Volk cut herself off with a semi-frustrated sigh as her Encyclopedia was taken from her hands for the third time that day.

Artyom set the thick volume down on his desk, on the opposite side of the room from their bed. Volk was sick, low-grade fever, nothing she wouldn’t get over with hydration and bed rest, but that was the issue, the German Brahmin steadfastly refused to lay around and do nothing.

“Nyet, the doctor said ‘no work, and bed rest’, Schatze. The encyclopedia is work, you and I know it perfectly well. I know you must be exhausted, there’s no shame in admitting it.”

Volk tried to cross her arms over her chest and sniff in something resembling disdain, but only managed to produce a high-pitched whistling as only a tiny bit of air could enter her bright-red nose.

Artyom managed to swallow the urge to chuckle at the noise, turning into the kitchen as the kettle whistled, pouring a piping hot cup of tea and ducking back into the bedroom, fixing his wife with a stern glare as she pretended that she hadn’t just been about to get out of bed.

God, she did look abysmally bored, though. Artyom wasn’t often sick, but when he was, he knew how terrible laying around and doing nothing was. The bed springs creaked as he settled down beside her, setting the cup on the bedside table, feeling a slim hand trace from his shoulder to his jaw.

He turned his head ever-so-slightly to see her studying him intently, rolling his eyes as she felt the first brush of her thumb. She was counting his freckles, something she did often enough when they were lounging around together, and he could see her lips moving as she counted in silent German, as well as the loving sparkle in those Abyssal blues that she managed to conjure up even as miserable as she must have felt at the moment.

He opened his mouth to tell her, once again, to rest, but didn’t get beyond the first syllable before she sat up, burying her face into his shoulder with a groan.

“I’m cold, Artyom.”

He was defeated with that, the large Stalkers arms wrapping around the Brahmin, falling back down onto the mattress even as she burrowed deeper into his arms and his chest, seeking out his warmth.

“If I help keep you warm, will you sleep?”

Her answer was silent, a sweet, tender kiss before she buried her running nose back into his shirt.

Oh good, now he was going to be sick. Well, he found he didn’t mind all that much.

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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Send a Heart for a Specific Kiss!

Send ❤️ for a romantic kiss. Send 💝 for a plationic kiss. Send 💞 for a awkward kiss. Send 💓 for a heated kiss. Send 💟 for a delicate kiss. Send 💔 for a interrupted kiss. Send 💘 for a static shock kiss. Send 💗 for a repetitive lip peck kiss. Send 🖤 for a forced/harsh/firm kiss. Send 💚 for an eskimo kiss. Send 💙 for a spiderman kiss. Send 💜 for a quick kiss. Send 💛 for an air kiss. Send 💕for good night/morning kiss. Send ❣️ for a kiss to a specific spot. <insert location> Send 💑 for a first kiss. Send 😍 for a surprise kiss. Send 💋 for a random kiss. <receiver’s choice>

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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We played the fanfiction trope version of “fuck marry kill” in which the options are “slow burn/fake date/enemies to lovers” and it’s been like 30 hours and I’m STILL losing it over the concept of fake-dating Saruman the White.

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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She was tall.

It took Artyom a couple of seconds to realize that this was quite possibly the least important thing to note about a stranger approaching the cordon, but his training hadn’t exactly kicked in like it was supposed to.

Still, though, Artyom had bore the brunt of many a joke about his height, towering over a majority of Metros inhabitants, especially in a border station like VDNKh. The stranger was as much of a giant as he was, albeit perhaps not as broad.

The second thing he noticed was the tattoo of a book that adorned her temple. He’d heard one or two stories, rumors really, of the Stalkers of Polis, who valued books above all else. He could understand that sentiment, knowledge being power and all of that, and felt a pang of jealousy for this woman who got to stalk the surface, turning over the rocks of the old world in search of treasure.

But jealousy was not his job, and she was clearly not meaning any harm, so Artyom paused, brushing the pitted and tarnished trigger guard on his Bastard with his index finger as he lowered the weapon, clearing his throat as Lenka moved to stand beside him.

“Polis, huh?” The old man drawled, reaching up to scratch at the scraggly goat-scruff of his beard in apparent thought. “All the way out here? This is VDNKh, miss, Exhibition.”

The old man slapped Artyom in the chest, giving the younger a start even as he began to speak.

“Hm. Well, alright then. You look like you’ve been through hell and back. Artyom here will escort you back to the station, get you some tea and something to eat. Won’t you, Artyom?”

Artyom gave Lenka a look, one which the gray-haired veteran returned. He had a knowing look in his eye, the one that made Artyom go along with all of the questionable decisions that turned out okay in the end. He relented without argument, holding his hand out to the Brahmin.

“Artyom Chyornyj. Um, follow me, please.”

The Exhibition

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musophobic-saviour · 6 years ago

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These were the kind of nights that Artyom enjoyed more than any other. As deep in the tunnels as rules would allow, the heat of the dinky little campfire licking at the bottoms of his feet through his boots. The air was moist and cold, the old timers stories were ringing through the tunnel, and the sound of water boiling meant that the tea was almost ready.

Lenka was telling an old story, one that Artyom had heard a hundred times. Even so, the young man leaned forward, his hands gripping the worn out stock of his Bastard as he listened with rapt attention.

The old man was a tank commander, before the war, and a masterful wordsmith after it, considering the quality of his stories his talents had been wasted in the Army. The story was of his time deployed on the border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia, of how every day on maneuvers he and an American tank commander would have a staring contest through their binoculars, how sometimes their crewmembers would tell things at each other, insults mostly.

Yes, Lenka was quite the storyteller, and as Artyom let his eyes drift shut for the barest moment, he could smell the engine oil, he could feel the snowflakes falling on his tankers hat, hear his crew mates jeering at the Americans mere meters away. God, what would it have been like? To sit in the sun, no mask, feeling the world play out around you like nothing was wrong even as two grand giants pointed nuclear spears at each other?

The story, and the consequent daydreaming, were quite rudely interrupted by the kettles whistling, though the kitchen implement was very quickly forgiven as soon as the cups were doled out, and VDNKhs lifeblood flowed from the brass vessel and into the eager hands of the guardsmen. Sure, it was an acquired taste, but they had already acquired it, so it was no issue.

Of course, teatime could never go interrupted, as the saying went, and the sound of footsteps approaching grew audible, tossing the guards into a state of semi-alarm, all being careful not to spill their tea as they grabbed their weapons and turned their lights to the tunnel, only to be met by a similar light, rolling in the three circles that indicated a friendly Stalker. Who the hell could be coming from the North?

Artyom was the first to recover from his shock, and he took his light from his helmet, mimicking the gesture and taking a tentative step forward, cringing and gravel crunched under his boot.

“Who, uh, who goes there?” He called, managing to sound as intimidating as a twenty year old mushroom farmer.

The Exhibition

@musophobic-saviour

The burning in her lungs was what woke Volk, though only her body reacted at first, her mind foggy and still with one foot into the dreamtime. All her body was capable of in that moment was twitch and spasm before any proper panic hit, hardly registering where she was or what to do next. Like a lucid dreamer, she slowly gained control of her limbs in tiny increments, forcing some instinct or another to twitch fingers and toes consciously. Even so small a sense of control could help ease the creeping terror of drowning in air because gaining enough of it again could help fix the problem easier.

It was a harrowing few seconds that felt more like hours and even when she had regained some sort of control of her limbs, she could only feel the subconscious clawing at her chest and neck, knowing she hadn’t willed it to and forcing at least one arm to do her bidding. It took a lot of will through the persisting brain fog to do so, but eventually, she managed to make it grab a new filter from the pouch at one hip. There was a few moments of fumbling with the fine motor skills to get the used filter off and replace it, after which she pulled better cleaner air into her lungs greedily. Only once she could breathe without worry did she allow herself to relax and finish coming to.

Slowly, she was able to register through the cracked faceplate the vague shapes above her as shadows and light against the roof of a surface station of the Metro, grey and gloomy in the light of either morning or evening. It was hard to tell which it was without waiting, and it was hard to tell how long she had been there. She vaguely remembered it being night when she started out, however long that had been.

Everything before right then was a blur. A dream she was grasping at to try and understand to no avail. Perhaps this was a dream that was supposed to be elusive. But that still didn’t explain what she was doing, lying on the floor of a surface lobby, contemplating the meaning of time.

While she waited for her body to start responding to her head’s commands, she thought back. She knew her name still, her age, her home station, her job. She could feel enough of her equipment to know it was still with her, nothing was stolen or missing. The only thing that was missing was a significant chunk of her time.

And her lungs, apparently.

Those were going to wheeze for a little while yet while they healed over. In order to give them a chance to do so, however, she would have to get where the air was cleaner, below ground.

It took everything in her power to roll over, awkwardly due to the larger rifle on her back. A few twists and struggles were given before she could finally push and pull herself over and up to her knees. Her vision swam, causing the earth to tilt and spin, a hand moving to properly anchor her in place while she readjusted to being upright. Her head hurt a little, though she had attributed that more or less to the light cascading through her shattered faceplate, washing the world in blinding white. That would have to be priority to replace when she got somewhere that had them in stock. Or when she returned to Polis, as she doubted whatever backwater station she had arrived at had any. It wasn’t long after she became mobile again that the hovering fog in her head dissipated. Something she was grateful for, so she could consider the next steps forward.

She rose to her feet shakily after three attempts before she could support her own weight plus that of the bags, tools, and arsenal she carried with her, determined to bring everything back she had started with. Once she was fairly certain she could traverse the immediate area without incident, she looked around for stairs or escalators back into the underground. She found the latter near the back of the lobby, between broken kiosks of fluttering unusable paper and decayed acrylic glass and a set of creaking turnstiles. The tracks for each of them were mostly missing, leaving the groaning unknown exposed, the light glinting off the mechanics of the engines that moved them in their glory days.

She looked around for a stairwell instead of wanting to challenge the path ahead in case she had a relapse, but found none. There was only going to be one way down, it seemed.

With a sigh and another change of the filter in her mask, she braced herself over the yawning abyss and began the descent, pushing the soles of her boots hard against the rusted metal bases of each railing on either side of the track. Carefully, she shimmied down, feeling if anything shifted or moved beneath her and stopping when it did to shift her offending foot’s position to something more stable and moving again. Though it was slow-going, she made it to the bottom of the escalators with no trouble, even through the creaking and groaning in the structure of the stress and strain of taking unfamiliar weight after so long.

The lack of one of the big airtight doors that typically sealed a station from the surface worried her. It was entirely possible the station beyond was abandoned, or the entire line was abandoned. It was going to be difficult to tell where she was at this rate.

As expected, the platform below was completely devoid of people or any sort of life, be it distant or recent past. Focusing on the emptiness of the station helped her assess that there was nothing hostile nearby, no noises or smells or hulking shapes in the dark just beyond her range of sight, which was a good thing. However, it also proved that there was virtually nothing living nearby, which was not a good thing.

Volk walked to the edge of the platform, just above the tracks, and looked left and listened and squinted into the dark. There was nothing there, she was sure, and she took a few steps closer toward the tunnel to listen closer. Quiet as a grave, as the saying went, and probably that was all it was, an ethereal path to the afterlife lit by the faint glow of radioactive mushroom clusters. She swiveled her head to look right and made her way toward the other exit. To her relief, she spotted a very faint glow further down the tunnel. The edges of a dim orange flickering against the pronounced ribbing of the walls. It was likely a fire and one for a cordon, which meant people were hopefully present.

“Better than hanging around here…” she muttered to herself, finding comfort in her own voice in the absence of anything else. Even though it was rough from disuse and inhaling irradiated air for however long above, it was still something familiar and helped settle the unease of knowing she would have to move through the metro for a time, perhaps all the way to Polis. She could only hope that the distance back wasn’t too far.

She jumped off the platform onto the rails and turned her boots toward the source of light that was considerably more inviting, balancing her equipment and armament across her body again. The tunnel itself was fairly clean of bodies and clutter, only very few carcasses of monsters and mutants strewn over the ties and along the sides. There didn’t appear to be any human corpses, though, which was a good sign to her. No human bodies was an indication the station ahead was both inhabited and likely open to accepting outsiders. It was a safe station, she hoped. Probably Hansa or close enough to The Ring to receive benefits from it.

Some ways down the path, she checked a small Geiger meter hanging from her waist and, after seeing the radiation levels having dropped enough to be safe, pulled her mask off and clipped it on her belt, pulling down the mask guard beneath with a puff of vapory breath on familiar chilled air. It was much easier to see without it now, even in the creeping dark, and she was happy to note the brain fog had all but disappeared. If she’d been suffering radiation poisoning, it would not have gone so quickly or stayed away, a good clue that she hadn’t been without a filter for too long. Now if only she could remember how she’d ended up in the station above…

The fires from the cordon were starting to get brighter now, She would have to ponder the events that lead her to wake up in that station later. Seemingly friendly or not, it was best at any point of patrol to try and show you meant no harm. Play by their rules.

A check of her papers was made, found tucked snug in a pocket on her outer vest. Her flashlight was pulled out, her approach slowing and steps growing heavier to alert anyone ahead with sound. That done, she drew her right arm across her torso to emblazon the embroidered Brahmin sigil on the upper arm of her heavy coat as well as for protection in case shots were fired.

Once she could see the actual fire licking the air, she flicked on the flashlight, rolling it in three slow circles before turning it off. The sign of friendly stalkers in the area, though she was unsure if anyone here understood that.

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