#and if i have to resize them to make the line weights match and suddenly one of them is HUGE compared to the other?? i HATE that

[silverislander]

not to toot my own horn but i really do think the new theme is cute toot toot bitches

[ravenvsfox]

the spy au that @philosophium ordered !!

Andrew slips through a slit in the crowd, brushing through the sleek trains of expensive gowns, rich wool suits jackets catching on his own. He’s on his second flute of champagne, and the tartness keeps him focused. His attention is on the flavour and the rim of the glass and the warp of faces through it. His earpiece crackles and whispers.

He can see his mark on the opposite side of the room, surrounded by servers and liars and pretty things. One of them is all three, Andrew can tell: a waiter’s vest, a seam of over-applied foundation, and bright blue eyes.

He’s distracting, flighty, a rubber band pulled all the way back. He looks like the memory of a case file, and a name occurs to Andrew one second before Kevin hisses it into his ear.

“It’s fuckin’ Charlie Pilot. Don’t engage, Minyard, we’re not here for him.”

Andrew doesn’t make any effort to reply, just takes another pull of champagne. He’s not really watching the troupes of entertainers or the clockwork security or the velvet and silk blooming under bowing chandeliers. He’s not even watching the man he’s either going to rob or kill, who’s laughing and weedy, red in the face from the alcohol. He’s stuck on Pilot --  next to his target, holding a heavily stocked tray of appetizers, his expression pleasant and empty.

He’ll be an irritant to what should be a straightforward plan, if he keeps hovering. Andrew takes a loaded step forward and the voice in his ear complains.

“Don’t even think about moving in until Pilot leaves. He’s probably doing reconnaissance for Matt. I bet he doesn’t even know about the file.”

Andrew watches Pilot’s face tick, the way he blinks like he’s on a timer, the way he’s worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth.

“I bet he does,” Andrew murmurs, and he drains the last of the champagne. He plucks his tie pin away from the fabric and drops it in the empty glass, leaving it on a passing tray.

“What— what the fuck Minyard, we’ve lost visuals. Do you hear me? Andrew? Andrew?”

Andrew weaves through the rest of the golden crowd, ignoring the buzz of Kevin’s reprimands in his ear. He finds a new spot on the outskirts of the crowd where Pilot has installed himself.

“Do you know how fucking expensive those cameras are? You’re such a piece of shit operative,” Kevin says. “When you inevitably come back without the intelligence and without our equipment, it’s costing us to keep you around, do you realize that?”

Andrew’s more focused on the way Pilot’s shoulders are turning to face him, the slim line of his tailored pants, that eyelash-thick smudge of un-blended make up.

“Shrimp?” Pilot offers, swaying the tray in his direction.

“No,” Andrew says, but he stays uncomfortably near, feeling along the edges of his boundaries without finding any seams. Pilot’s composure is still and reserved as a frost-ravaged garden.

“Have a good evening then,” Pilot says graciously, turning back towards the host that Andrew should be sizing up but hasn’t even looked at. He glances at him for a sliver of a moment, finds himself uninterested, and looks back at Pilot.

Andrew catches him suddenly by the arm, but relaxes his grip just as quickly, caught off guard by his own impulsivity. His own disguise is just an invitation and sun bleached hair; he isn’t playing a character like Pilot is. He’s neutral for a living, but Pilot is a new weight on his scale, unbalancing him so that he can’t quite settle at zero.

When their eyes meet, the polite, curious waiter snips out of existence. Charlie Pilot stares at Andrew, with eyes like the bluest part of a fire.

“There’s a conflict of interest,” he tells Andrew calmly. “And your interest will lose.”

“I’m not interested in anything,” Andrew says broadly.

“Hm,” Pilot says, unconvinced. “You’re lying.”

“I don’t lie,” Andrew says. He’s always saying it; it’s a novelty that employers enjoy and enemies challenge, amused.

Pilot raises his jaw, mouth twitching. “No, you wouldn’t, would you.” His eyes flicker to the side of Andrew’s face, where Kevin is breathing furiously through his earpiece, then down to the grip he still has on his forearm. He lowers his tray down until the rough edge is pressed to the root of Andrew’s hand threateningly. “You’ll want to let me go, Andrew, or you’re going to end up needing a longer armband.”

Andrew feels genuine surprise squeeze his fingers around Pilot’s wrist. He hadn’t noticed the black fabric extending a whiff beyond his crisp white sleeve. He lets go, and Pilot tucks his shoulders back, satisfied. His hair is too dark to match his freckles, Andrew notes quietly. It is, perhaps, what the make up was meant to cover up.

“You are not going to win, Charlie,” Andrew says. “We’re the more capable team.”

Pilot smiles indulgently. “‘Charlie’,” he repeats, mouth curling around the name. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been Charlie Pilot.” He jostles his tray from one hand to another, and loosens his collar with his freed hand. “And I don’t think you understand how much farther ahead we are than you. If you’re looking for information, we already have it. If you’re trying to find the connections this place has to the Yakuza, we’re the ones undoing them.”

“Who’s we? I don’t remember seeing anything about loyalty in your case file. You’re just a runner.”

Pilot looks briefly bothered by this, and he juts his chin again. “I’m loyal to whoever’s doing the work that needs to be done.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Who are you?”

He looks down, at Andrew’s empty hands, at the hip where he’s hiding his gun. His expression is warped and sad when he looks up, like the real filling in his strange costume is finally oozing out.

“You can call me Neil,” he says, and drops the whole tray of food so that it clatters and rolls into the host’s feet. There are gasps and yelps, partygoers dodging and stooping to catch the runaway platter. Andrew looks impulsively down to track its progress, and when he looks sharply back up into the knot of activity, Neil is gone. Of course he is.

He doesn’t have time to think about where he might have disappeared to, just steps neatly into the opportunity that’s been afforded to him. He uses the distraction as a doorway directly into the offices behind the coddled host.

Kevin is asking repeatedly for updates, and Andrew fishes the earpiece out and tucks it into his breast pocket. He likes to be alone for this part, when the most important door closes behind him and everything makes as much sense as a ticking clock.

He keeps thinking of Neil’s reaction to ‘runner’, of the vulnerability trussed up in his persona. He finds himself sick to his stomach wanting to know what his real hair colour is.

He tries every door in the polished row of them, finding all of them locked. He picks the lock on the door farthest from the burble of the ballroom behind him, and cracks into what looks like a room built for business arrangements and drinking. There’s a snifter next to a half dozen tumblers on a cart along the wall, and extensive cabinets under the desk.

He feels his way along the underside of the desk, and opens each drawer, idealistically left unlocked and unprotected. He finds useless information and shady information and heaps of anonymous, unlabeled tapes.

He finds the safe in the floor, facing up patiently under a wingback chair and a panel of floorboard. He stoops so that he’s face to face with it, shrugs his jacket off like a dead skin onto the floor, and puts the heart of a stethoscope to the face of the safe.

He’s sweating, spread out surreptitiously on the floor, but the safe is flimsy. It cracks in under an hour, the party wilting two rooms over, pressure taking him by the hair. Andrew flicks the door open impatiently, unwinding the stethoscope from around his neck.

It’s filled top to bottom with paper, and he reaches for the first file, carding his fingers through the spill of sheets.

Got you, it says. Over and over again, in unassuming little typescript. And on the next page, got you.

Andrew’s fingers flex. The next file is the same, and the next. A million taunting, twirling repetitions: got you. Got this. Got here first.

The safe was already cracked. The list of names was already stolen. Neil’s face winks and swarms when he closes his eyes, furious. If you’re looking for information, we already have it.

He roots around for the bud in his pocket and pops it back into his ear. He leans back, splayed away from the spill from the safe, the stacks of failure. He enunciates clearly into the microphone sewn into his collar.

“We have to find Neil.”

______

The next time he sees him, they’re on either side of a meeting with a room full of players in Moriyama circles. Neil is bleached pale blond, and his eyes are brown behind boxy black frames. His mouth twitches when he sees Andrew, and Andrew looks at him like he hasn’t been searching for him for four months.

“We’re taking care of it,” someone says. “We’re close.”

“Close to a replacement? Or close to finding our loose end and snipping him.”

“Both,” someone else says evenly.

“The butcher can’t be replaced. No one else has that kind of history, that level of loyalty.”

Neil’s eyes narrow. Andrew watches them resize back to normal, his mouth tipping up thoughtfully, dutifully jotting information down. He’s playing an intern, today, quizzical and non-threatening. Andrew can see the throb of tension in his bicep through his starchy blue shirt.

“We have plenty of butchers,” the first voice says. “It’s not a difficult job. I’m more concerned with the proficiency of whoever’s cleaning up messes than I am with who’s making them.”

“Like Lola?” someone guesses, and there’s a smattering of polite laughter.

“She was a mess herself,” the first voice drawls.

“What about Nathaniel?” Neil asks suddenly. Andrew’s attention all pours over to him, his earnest expression and relaxed hands. “Shouldn’t we be worried about him taking out more men? I heard he killed everyone in the butcher’s circle.”

There’s a ripple of trepidation, and the first speaker eyes Neil up, fingers folded in front of him.

“He’s a child throwing a tantrum,” he says slowly. “We’re not worried.”

“Hm.” Neil peels off his glasses and adjusts them on the pristine, uncrossable conference table. “Your mistake,” he says conversationally. “Andrew, if you would?”

There’s a chill of confusion. Neil doesn’t look at him, and Andrew realizes — with a shiver that eats his whole body — that he’s being given an out. Kill or leave.

Andrew retrieves his gun from his ankle holster, and shoots the man next to him in the temple without hesitation.

Neil smiles, heaving the table over so that water glasses and laptops go skidding onto the hardwood. Everyone scatters, ducking and crawling for cover, and Neil produces a gun from his jacket and just— opens fire.

The adrenaline of it takes Andrew by surprise. Everything slurs with violence, and Neil is a steady instigator, pulsing at the heart of it all. He shoots precisely, puts his free hand to his own smile until it fades into a frown. The room is full of lackeys trying to categorize murder and please monsters, and Andrew knows they deserve it. The bystanders always deserve it.

Andrew goes instinctively for the knives in his sleeve when he spots someone lunging for an alarm, and he catches them in the neck, knife shredding straight through their jugular.

“I assume you’re Nathaniel,” Andrew calls through the last of the gunfire, wiping blood from his knives onto the finely upholstered armchairs. Neil rolls his foot onto the last living person’s neck and doesn’t look up.

“You’re smart,” he says simply. “But don’t call me that.”

The smell of blood is nearly unbearable. Neil looks up at him, across the shattered glass and well of gore. His shirt is clean and his glasses are back on. He looks like his conscience is as bleached and brittle as his hair.

“You killed your father,” Andrew presses. He keeps visualizing the Wesninski nameplate connected to the Moriyama’s on a string on his board at headquarters. He remembers writing Nathaniel out on a post it note and sealing him to the butcher. “You ran away.”

“The one thing you were right about,” Neil agrees. “I’m a runner.”

Something in Andrew’s throat burns at the way he says it, like he’s been turning Andrew’s words over in his head for the past few months and now he’s trying to prove it to him.

“You’re supposed to pick fight or flight,” Andrew says pointedly, eyes falling to the victims of the impromptu brawl to the death.

“They’re both necessary,” Neil argues. “You need to pick honesty or spy work.”

“They are not mutually exclusive.”

“The spy who doesn’t lie,” Neil muses. “Seems like such a sanctimonious routine.”

“I don’t call myself that.”

“But it’s what you want,” Neil prompts, winding through the mess, watching Andrew watching his approach.

“I want to make bad people look like bad people. I have no patience for the way reputation and connections can keep anyone safe.”

Neil nods, visibly engaged, looking like he understands despite the fact that no one ever has and Andrew doesn’t really want them to.

“And me? Just another bad person, right?”

Andrew cocks his head, watching Neil quake, boundaries strangely unsettled, like maybe the guilt is finally outweighing the bravado.

“I’m a bad person too,” Andrew says, clipped. “But no one’s managed to kill me, yet.”

“And you’ve stopped trying to do it yourself?” Neil asks, nodding at Andrew’s sheathed arms. He can feel his own expression drawing up tight, and there’s a whisper of satisfaction across Neil’s face. “I’ll see you next time Andrew,” he says, dismissive, already turning.

“Work for us,” Andrew says impulsively. He keeps trying to get him to stay, though it’s pointless and every possible response is a bad one.

Neil looks at him flatly, then at his watch, then at the quietly closed door they’re both to disappear out of. He doesn’t pretend to be flattered or interested. “Why?”

Andrew blinks. “You could change things.”

It’s expertly vague, but it seems to be enough for Neil to settle slowly, his nervous energy smoothing and folding itself up for storage. He reaches out for a handshake, and Andrew accepts it, but neither of them shake.

“Maybe,” he says, and squeezes Andrew’s palm very slightly. He can’t see the mess around them anymore, can’t see past the dark, amber roots wriggling past Neil’s dye job. He wants to see Neil without make up or contacts or lies or that fake chalky smile of his. It’s the only stupid thing he’s let himself want in years.

______

“Turn left.”

Neil veers right. Even in miniature on-screen, Andrew can see him taking his own pulse, two fingers slipped beneath his collar. He does it when he’s nervous, focuses on the beating against his fingers, the simple heave of blood. He’d done it the first time Andrew kissed him.

He’s grainy grey through the shitty hotel security cameras, and he’s ignoring every instruction Andrew gives him.

He winds through the empty hallway full of conference rooms and violently retro carpeting, pausing when he reaches the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“Andrew?” he murmurs. There’s crackling static for a long minute, and he watches Neil tense up and put a hand to his ear like he’s taking an important phone call. “Are you there?”

“Oh, have you found a use for me,” Andrew says, and Neil sighs.

“I need eyes on the dining hall. I can fake my way through the kitchen, but I don’t know what to expect after that.”

“Too bad. Go left.”

Neil makes an annoyed noise. “I’m killing Riko first.”

Andrew’s body rebels, and he swallows a gag, holding the headphones flush to his ears. “You are not. He’s all but irrelevant to them.”

“He’ll be relevant when he inherits the fucking— Moriyama throne. He had his own teammates abused for his entertainment, Andrew, he’s a dictator.”

“Go left,” Andrew repeats. “He’s irrelevant and you are not.”

Neil shakes his head, frustrated. Andrew grits his teeth. They sit in their disagreement, the air tight between them, wind whistling through the plated metal of the van Andrew’s hunched in.

“I’m going in,” Neil tells him hollowly, and pushes the kitchen door open, shouldering under the ropes of activity.

Andrew stays silent, fear wandering into his field of vision for the first time in a decade.

“Neil—“

He’s not even conscious of having opened his mouth, but he’s careful to close it, self aware enough to climb out of boiling water he’s in. He doesn’t have any visual for where Neil is in the din of the kitchen, all he can hear is snatches of yelled orders and sizzling and clattering dishes.

“Fine,” Neil says smoothly under his breath.

“He’s surrounded by human shields, Neil, and he will let them die.”

Neil doesn’t respond, but his breath is a constant, lopsided relief.

“He’s an athlete. He could kill you with less than half of his ability.”

“I’m an athlete too,” Neil has to say, hissed into the microphone in his bowtie. His predictability is comforting and stifling, cotton in Andrew’s throat.

He shivers back into view on the dining room camera, cutting a sharp figure against the pale wallpaper. He’s a glinting blade. He’s incredible to watch, leonine and calm as he stalks single-mindedly towards Riko’s table.

Andrew takes his headphones off, skirting panic, and his hands are freezing when they graze his own face. He watches Neil approach the raised platform of the table, and he has low ground, low speed, low numbers. Neil blurs into the shape of an unlikely statistic. He’s too close to the idea of Riko’s death. He wants it like he seems to want so many things — justice and family and rightness and touch. He’s so fast, so obsessive, he wakes in the night with his ideas lighting up the whole room, he runs when he can barely walk.

Andrew needs him alive.

“Neil, don’t. Don’t. You’re surrounded.”

Neil doesn’t stop.

“Listen to me.” He can hear the streak of panic in his own voice, like a drop of blood through clear water.

Neil takes two leisurely steps, leans into the table like an inquiring member of the wait staff, and then the person next to him collapses. He looks at the bodyguard crumpling to the floor as if he’s as surprised as everyone else, and then he lunges for a wineglass, breaks it, and drives it into Riko’s face.

It’s the sloppiest thing he’s ever done — the sort of dirty move that should finish a fight, not start it. Andrew stands up, weightless. He feels like he’s in the middle of a failed bike trick, and he’s just waiting to land wrong.

He’s holding the mouthpiece but he doesn’t speak. He watches someone wrench Neil’s arm back like they’re trying to remove it. Riko’s spasming and then he’s flipping, kicking, crawling for Neil, and Andrew knows that he’s lost all hope of dying quickly.

Dinner guests start pointing and darting like they’re waiting for someone to kill a cockroach, and Neil fights his way out of two chokeholds before he comes face to bloody face with Riko. He punches him, which is stupid, and then tries to get up, which is impossible. Gunfire flashes, and Andrew grabs for his headphones.

“Don’t fucking die.”

Neil’s pinned, shoulders at odd angles, legs kicking. Andrew watches the fight flicker, and Riko climbs on top of him, the expensive knees of his pants pressed into the curve of Neil’s waist.

“Can you hear me? Neil. Can you hear me, yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil chokes instantly. “Yes. Drew.” He makes a bloody, gurgling sound, and Andrew watches his face get smeared into the carpet for exactly one full second before he’s kicking his way out of the van and into the spray of evening rain.

He barely closes the door. He barely registers the slap of the storm or the oncoming traffic or the way the air seems to get thinner the closer he gets to the hotel.

The dining room is just off of the glistening amber foyer, a private affair behind a flimsy door that Andrew splinters open. There’s a mob of runners, and smoke and rust in the air. Someone’s screaming, and when he breaks through the clot of bodies he sees that it’s Riko, a dinner knife in his gut, hands around Neil’s throat.

“He’s mine,” he keeps saying. “He’s mine, don’t touch him, he’s mine.”

Anonymous Yakuza members in suits watch Riko like he’s a puppy learning to fight. Bodyguards watch each other for action. Dinner guests clutch each other and whimper like children.

“He’s not yours,” Andrew says, and it’s the last thing Riko ever hears. Neil bares his teeth and twists the knife with the last of his energy, yanking it up through a break in his ribcage. Riko’s hands drop, and Neil sags down onto his chest like they’re locked in a grotesque hug.

Andrew cracks his neck, shoots the two closest targets that he recognizes from all of their stillborn planning, and drags Neil off of Riko’s body. He hears him fail to repress a pained little noise when Andrew wrestles him over broken glass and behind overturned tables. The rush of action trips around and over them, and Andrew pulls Neil into his chest, holding his bloody face upright.

“You made this,” he says, turning his face towards the chaos. It gets a sleepy smile out of Neil, and Andrew shakes him, lifts him, and struggles to carry two people’s weight on one set of legs.

“Riko was getting on my nerves,” Neil slurs, swaying nearly out of Andrew’s arms. The fight is beyond them, a brawl over Riko’s body and property damage and which direction Neil went.

“You are getting on mine.”

A gunshot slings into the doorframe beside them, and Andrew cups Neil’s face protectively. Neil is reckless and murderous and furious for what he thinks is right, and Andrew needs him for everything in his life to breathe and sleep and live like it’s supposed to.

He remembers looking at old photographs of Charlie Pilot and thinking that he sounded like a terrible spy. He remembers finding Neil and then finding him again, blood under his nails, taking his contacts out in the bathroom outside of the slaughterhouse he created.

He remembers the first time they were partnered together for recon, and they kissed over the scope of a sniper rifle on a rooftop in California.

Neil can’t let things go, and it’s like he’s taught Andrew to do the same thing — so now he blows covers and storms hotels and lets himself be touched and mouths at Neil’s scars and lets himself be lied to.

He reaches for Neil’s neck, the other hand still holding his gun at the ready, and they dip and fall out into the street. The rain wipes the blood from them both, the hotel staff shouts furiously after them, Neil starts laughing, delirious, and Andrew holds him up, taking his pulse.