#especially since i cant do anything interesting with a doctor uniform

[hearties-circus]

@spookylolbit yeah.. me too:] a few axels at different periods in time for you

[Axel: ze/zir, fae/faer]

[vanityloves]

Storm and ivy + medic

@septemberlove i have. no excuse for how late these are but uh. thank you for sending these in 💕.

[word count: 1.8k+ with the longest 'authors note' bc im mentally ill]

sfw, mmm comfy cozy, general sick hcs,

storm - what are cozy days in with your f/o like?

Whenever I think of cozy days, my brain immediately goes to rainy/chilly weather where we can cuddle up together and my brain short fuses. I'm gonna assume this is just like a day off or something though!

How I visual them together vs how I write them is odd because they technically don't act or accept they're 'together' until after the comics but I always write them like they're in a Steady Relationship while on base. I'm always writing a slight AU if you will. Or maybe it's after they get their jobs back at Mann co - I should highkey adjust that but No ♥️. No more thinking, just content based off my idealized universe.

There's definitely a point in their relationship where it's like 'I think I have to put in a little more work here'. I'm not saying either party is slacking but they're slacking ♥️. Neither of them really take action. Chef doesn't blame him or really complain about it because that's their nature, plus they don't know how romantic relationships really work or flow, especially with a person like him. Medic doesn't see an issue with anything and continues on with his normal business. 

What I mean by slacking is, there's not a lot of quality time being spent together which would be fine if it wasn't both of their strongest Love Languages, which could help them strengthen their relationship. It's odd because they're 'romantically involved' but they don't spend a lot of time together for either of them to consider it romantic, simply because it's on company time. 

ANYWAYS THATS JUST ME BEING CONVOLUTED. FEEL FREE TO JUST IGNORE ALL OF THIS.

Medic goes to bed pretty late and wakes up at a fairly early hour. Chef is a late sleeper and forced to be an early riser because their Actual Job is to make at least 2 or 3 meals a day (if they want something else, they're on their own but hate when anyone messes up the kitchen and will honestly, stand there and watch said person).

There's minimal time they can spend together if they want to do their own activities - for Medic, it's tinkering around with organs or in Engie's garage, for Chef, they're typically meal prepping or trying to tend to an animal or plant of some sort.

Medic is actually more direct about wanting attention and it's never been a problem because he's cautious about it. Chef is more emotionally inclined and willing to drop hints that they want more attention. 

Chef probably has one day off where it's a complete free for all, for the rest of the team, which would be the perfect time to spend with Medic - If he wanted to stop working, that is. Just don't picture it but, Chef will literally sit in the medbay for hours just to be near the guy, but it isn't bad? The drone of machinery or the scratching of his pen is relaxing, or having his doves nearby is always sweet! Plus, he's prone to talking their ear off when he finds something interesting, so they'll chime in and have some back and forth.

But, yknow - sometimes having someone's undivided attention is nice and Chef is pretty dense when it comes to that and wonders why they feel so upset.

They swallow their pride and ask Medic if they sleep in his room one night and Medic's not as dense as Chef, he understands that they'd never ask for something so out of the blue for no reason and he promises to finish up his work early so they could head to bed together. Chef had nothing planned, they literally just needed that affection and closeness - since it was their day off Medic takes the hint and puts his work aside for the time being.

They'd probably sleep in and stay in bed a while longer before getting ready together - no uniform required. Chef isn't so talkative in the mornings, Medic's noticed, but they were happily fiddling with his buttons and tie, humming in thought before answering his questions. Medic's seen them out of uniform of course, but it's always funny seeing them in just a button up and jeans like … mom on the go vibes. Medic leaves his coat behind before making his way to the kitchen with Chef. 

The kitchen usually has a couple people loitering around, grabbing their coffee or honestly, waiting around for Chef because they always make extra and these bitches are lazy. But the kitchen has now become A Medic Supremacy Zone and he has first dibs - the benefits of being w/ Chef I guess. The two would work as if the others weren't there, keeping their conversation between each other even if that means Medic tilting his head down while Chef leans in closer to reply. There's a high possibility the other have left them to their own devices, seeing as the couple was ignoring them / knows they won't be getting anything. Breakfast isn't extraordinary but it feels special since they actually get to sit across each other and share the morning today.

It's possible that they'd go out and run some errands today, but it's a cover to window shop and walk around. I'll be honest, they probably haven't had proper dates so it's refreshing. You could ask Chef what they liked the most and they're just like :] Yes. 

Other times, they like to curl up and catch up with some reading (well, Medic at least) while Chef rests against him and skim over the words. They're not too invested in what he's reading but likes to have some idea of what he's talking about so they don't ask too many questions. (Very 'these words are big and english/german is not my first language + I can't read as fast as you can so I got lost 7 pages ago). Medic likes to watch Chef garden and tries to help them tend to whatever they're able to grow in the goddamn desert. He overwaters a cactus and looks away if it dies. Chef talks ab how they're growing mint and how it really took off while Medic's standing there like :] Oh, lets make tea with that. Because they're Old People (read: Medic is old)

🕊🐁

ivy - how do you take care of each other when you’re sick?

Chef is easier to take care of when they're sick. They continue working until they're pretty beat but once they feel sick and a break doesn't work, they'll try to finish up what they can before turning in early. They see themselves to bed and inform whoever's near that they won't ne there at dinner and if they really cant figure it out, then come get them - other than that, they're barricading themselves in their room.

When they're sick they're REALLY sick but recovery time is usually a few days (depending on how bad it is). They basically hibernate and don't like being disturbed. They're used to not fending for themselves since they've been on their own for a while but really appreciate all the check ins Medic does w/ them, especially when they're all better. 

Medic, being...their Medic, he definitely gives them a check up when they first begin showing symptoms and he can be a stickler when it comes to drinking fluids and eating properly. Chef usually has a  finicky stomach as it is so Medic really urges them to drink soups and easy foods like bread and crackers. He checks in on them A LOT, even if that's just peeking in to see if they're asleep or not. He backs off when Chef gives him a cold stare from under the covers and minimizes his intrusions/tries to be more sneaky about it. He has colder hands and they let out a sigh when he puts his hand to their cheek or forehead to check their temperature. 

Chef doesn't hesitate to take any medication he has for them, mostly bc they aren't fully coherent but they also don't have energy to care, in fact they have the thought that if he accidentally kills them, maybe respawn will cure them. Unfortunately, Medic debunks this before they can even muster up the energy to ask.

Overall 7.5/10, very good patient. Will refuse to get up and accidently falls asleep in the shower which scares the shit out of him.

Medic on the other hand is very stubborn and doesn't like to stop working unless there's something that physically stops him (ex: vomiting, serious injuries [unlikely bc medigun], etc). If he tricked the Devil, surely the man can beat the common cold or flu! Unfortunately he gets those full body shivers and feels terrible. He can be pretty dramatic when he's sick and everyone's subjected to his bad attitude. 

It's Chefs turn to play doctor - they can tell by looks alone that he's under the weather. His face is flushed and he's a bit sloppily put together, which isn't *too uncommon* but his tie isn't tied and his glasses lamely slide down his nose. They tsk a bit while taking his temperature just to keep track of it before ushering him to his room.

He can be dragged to bed if persistent enough. Chef's firm hold on his arm is enough for him to get off his chair and have them tug him along. He doesn't have any room to argue with them as they look up at him, so he relents, stating that a short break would definitely do him good, but he'll be up and at em by tomorrow. 

Chef is doting and becomes a bit of a helicopter parent when checking on him. This mostly consists of peeking their head in but not really stepping in the room. Every so often they'll wake him up to drink water and either hand him an ice pack or offer a cold towel and move to dab at his forehead and neck.

Medic hasn't been too keen on having others taking care of him bc that's HIS job, and he often tries to shoo Chef away by saying he's more than alright now. Sometimes he's caught sitting up in bed doing work or taking notes on something bc he's a bit restless when he's sick and stationary for too long.

But he's right. He's very good at taking care of himself - when Chef offers him food he'll force himself to eat some of it and he's drinks plenty of fluids without needing reminders. He kinda bosses Chef around, telling them to grab certain medications from the Medbay. They trust his judgment on his own health and bring him what he asks for but Chef keeps a mental note of what he takes and when. Don't need the doctor accidentally taking too many pills today!

Overall 6.5/10. It's hard to get him into bed and becomes restless fairly easily. He is persistent that he's ok after one day of rest only to be found sneezing himself away in the Medbay. 

[kristie-rp]

Promise

Triggers: Suicide mention, drug mention, overdose mention, prostitution, gun mention, kidnapping

“I’ll take care of you,” she had promised. She can’t regret the oath, but she does regret what it drove her to, the desperate need to prove she could keep the promise.

Kara gets into prostitution because her little brother is eleven when the last of their parents vanish. She is seventeen, and she knows enough to be aware that the big motivator in Blacklight is money, and when her dad ran out, this is what happens: there’s no point trying to force a payment from a man with his head barely above water. She knows without a body being found that he is dead. Kara has her savings, her college fund, and that’s it. It’s not enough for two kids to live off, and her part-time job at a clothing store isn’t going to keep them afloat, and no one she wants her brother anywhere near is going to hire an eleven year old.

So – so she starts to prostitute herself, an amateur working cheap by Blacklight standards. She learns how much to charge without drawing complaints, she learns how to balance senior year and ‘work’, and she learns that many clients will pay more for the thrill of her being so much younger than the average whore. Enable a fetish and the cash goes up, enough to pay for school, for food, for a roof. At eighteen she gets sole custody of Lionel, legally, without complaint. She fucks the judge to get it through quick, once they get caught by the system.

She spends too long in the bathroom, driving the water bill up and up and scrubbing her skin raw in an attempt to get clean. Lionel is twelve, and she’s learned enough now to know how to draw lines, how to enforce them without losing clients. He knows what she does, he knows how much she hates it, but she doesn’t bring her work home and he can’t complain, however much he might want to.

Eighteen is when the pimp for her district finds out about her working solo, cutting into his profits. Eighteen is when  Craig gets his hands on her, and really, he’s not so bad, except taking off some of her profits. She explains to him her situation, barely thinking it’ll work but convinced it’s worth a try – and he listens. He gives her specific times to work, promises he’ll take only ten percent, a fixed rate. It’s – it’s not good, but it’s not bad, she’s got repeat clients who are sleazier than Craig.

And then Faust finds out about her.

“So you’re the infamous Caramel,” are his first words to her.

She’s standing as still as she knows how, wearing something revealing beneath a heavy, cheap coat. She’s going for allure, even though she’s just a little too far from curvy for the effect to work as she intends; this is her ‘uniform’, what she wears when she’s out during the hours Craig assigns.

“I’m whoever you need me to be, baby,” she says. Her voice is a rasp, quiet, but not subdued. There is a confidence in her tone that many whores have lost by the end of their first year – but she cannot afford to become less of a person, not with Lionel at home depending on her, not with so many people willing to take advantage of her.

Faust circles like a vulture, and she knows she is being judged. She keeps her eyes partially shut, as though heavily lidded, and watches him with pursed lips painted  in a discounted dark pink. He’s not actually that old at this point, though definitely older than her – she guesses him to be around thirty, much younger than her year-dead father. He’s not bad looking, either. It won’t be a struggle to act like she likes it when he inevitably goes down on her, even if what follows is her usual routine of scathing hot water and too-long in the shower, worrying a brother who is getting more and more withdrawn in turn.

“I’ll pay you triple,” he says at last, “to stay overnight. I get twenty-five percent of your cut from clients who aren’t me.”

Kara raises a brow at him. “Craig might have something to say about that.” She doesn’t say that this is a rip off, that she’s not going to jump ship from her fantastic deal just because he offers better pay to start

Faust’s smile is soft, but there’s something in his eyes that stands out to her – something dangerous. Something that tells her this man is not a nice man, as if she hadn’t guessed from an awareness of who he is. “Craig can’t say much once he’s dead.”

Her blood runs cold, but she steps closer to him. He doesn’t back down; she runs a hand up his chest and grips the gaudy tie he is wearing, something only a Blacklight local would like. She doesn’t smile, but she peers at him from beneath the fake eyelashes she is wearing only for this meeting. The effect is that she is playing coy, with any luck. “Whatever you say, boss,” she breathes, and drags him down to kiss her.

She can never pick out individual moments of her time with Faust, not in hindsight. It’s either a self-defence mechanism or a consequence of everything blurring together.

After that first meeting with her, he puts a pimp, loyal to him and more obedient than Craig proved to be, in charge of the whores. The new pimp is an asshole in every way except physically; he does not do anything that might bruise. But the verbal and psychological, the demeaning, the ripping off all of them – Kara is the only one whose cut never changes, because she is not afraid to talk money with Faust, and she talked him into writing up a contract that means he takes a profit from her, not the new pimp, and only a set amount. It’s not good, and for the first time she wonders if maybe things with Craig were better than she thought – and those drained her of everything she had.

If she believed in gods, this would be about where she’d start praying.

She comes home the day of her brothers fourteenth birthday with a little cake and a spring in her step, for once. Faust has promised her the weekend off, written it into another contract in what she knows is both a power play and a source of amusement for him; his little whore with her obsession with promises being kept. She doesn’t care that he mocks her for this, because promises are the only thing she can keep.

“Hey, Li? You home?”

The front door is locked, but not deadlocked; she knows he is. He’s good at keeping safe, good at following rules a lot of people in Blacklight take for granted or ignore. Kara smiles to herself: it’s a Friday, and she doesn’t have to do any work until Monday, and this is going to be a weekend just for her and Lionel. She’s got some money stowed away, enough that they can rent a car – dads being long since gone – and get out of Blacklight, just for the weekend. Never has she been happier her brother is a summer born child; they can go somewhere with a pool, or somewhere on the sea. They haven’t seen it since the summer before their dad was killed, and it’s finally time – in her opinion – to move on.

The house is quiet, though. She figures Lionel has earphones in, because the budget ones that came with his phone are the best sound system they have. He saved for ages to get that thing, scrounging together the change from Kara sending him grocery shopping and the neighbours paying him to pay the lawn until he could afford a Nokia and a memory card, the better to store music on. He loves his music, and his dream is to go to a concert; there aren’t any on this year that he’s interested in, or she would be taking him to it. “Boys and their toys,” she murmurs to herself, fond. She’s been busy, forced to work more lately by Faust and the twenty-five percent, and she’s been looking forward to this for ages, both for the company of Lionel, and for herself. Too much Blacklight breaks people, after all.

She sticks some candles in the little cake, lights them and heads into the further reaches of the apartment. It’s a shoebox, but she can make rent more often than not, and they each have their own rooms, for better or worse. She starts humming the timeless classic in her usual almost-croak, long since over how a husky voice does not lend itself well to singing. Still, she sings anyway, a loud “Happy birthday to you,” that cuts off as she drops the cake in the doorway.

Lionel is collapsed on the floor, and she only prevents a fire because her bare foot stamps out the candles before the ancient carpet can catch fire. Her panic blocks out the stab of pain, and she dives to her knees beside her little brother, feeling for a pulse before grasping for his phone, dropped on a stack of pamphlets, dialling emergency services because it’s that or nothing, and she can’t handle doing nothing.

The paramedics ask her more questions than she can answer. Oh, she can answer the standard lot – medical insurance, none; patients name, Lionel Darcy St Claire; patients age, fourteen; patients date of birth, today; emergency contact, Kara St Claire – but when they ask her if he’s been showing symptoms of anything, she cannot answer. “I work a lot,” she explains, but it feels feeble to her ears, and she feels judged for this more than anything else.

Their weekend away turns into a weekend in the hospital, and the money she has saved to make the weekend worth more than most is set aside for hospital bills. Kara spends Friday night sitting vigil at his bedside, Saturday with her head in her hands and shoulders hunched, and Sunday is when someone finally decides to tell her what’s going on. There’s an excess of something in his system – something that usually results from an overdose of opioids , of painkillers.

“There weren’t any pills anywhere near him,” she says, something nagging at the back of her mind.

The doctor gives a tight smile, sympathy heavy in his eyes. “It can take a week or longer for the overdose to show any observable effects to others, especially if he’s trying to hide them,” he informs her. “This isn’t your fault,” he says, “but his liver is shutting down. Chances are that there’s nothing you could’ve done – we’ve had a lot of suicides lately. It’s unlikely that he will last out the week.”

It’s not reassuring, not at all. She gives the doctor a look that says as much, then closes her eyes. She wants to cry, but she hasn’t done that, not in years, teardrops burning away from the inside out under scalding hot water. She hears the doctor leave, but she stays there, still, with her brother and the beeping of the machines that are, apparently, doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.

She falls asleep in the armchair beside the bed, curled in on herself as though having any more warmth will make this all go away. When her phone winks onto standby after she has fallen asleep, it closes on a Google search result, the top few links showing they’ve been clicked.

is cremation cheaper than burial blacklight usa

Lionel, it turns out, has been having a much harder time than she has been aware. She reaches out to the boy she remembers as his best friend, and it is only herself, him, his sister, and two former classmates who liked having Lionel paired with them for group work come to the pathetic service she holds. She doesn’t believe in god or gods, never has, and while Lionel liked the idea of the comfort divine answers might bring, he didn’t believe either. So she can’t bring herself to hire some religious man to preach something she doesn’t believe, even if it might make the sting any less painful.

She leads the lot of them to the roof of the shoebox apartment she doesn’t need any longer but can’t bring herself to leave, high above the second-storey place she manages to afford. It’s a hideous rooftop, but the building itself is nine storeys, and the view isn’t awful. There’s a barbecue and some cushions discarded up here, an esky that’s more often empty than not, and on afternoons when Kara didn’t have to work and he found himself in the mood, they would sit up here and talk about nothing and everything.

It’s the place most attached to him that brings the least amount of pain, now.

“Don’t you want to say something? In his memory, or something?” the friend asks, when they’re standing there with the urn that holds all that remains of her brothers body. His name is Alex; he’s the most harmless person Kara knows, now. Certainly the most naive and the most delusional. His parents are moving the family to New Brightside, on the other side of Port Lyndon to Blacklight, before the end of the year, chasing job opportunities they’re lucky to have been offered. Kara cannot resent them for their escape, because she hates this city, this city that breaks the people who least deserve it; but she can add them leaving to the list of reasons she has started to write up about

Everything Kara wants to say has been said already, to a brother trapped in a medically induced coma until his liver finally gave out, because Blacklight is no different to America and doesn’t allow euthanasia.

“I remember,” she says quietly, “the summer before mom died. Li – Lionel was four. He was turning four, four years old, can you imagine? And he was – he was so damn happy. I was ten, I thought I was so damn cool, and I really, really wasn’t.

“We went to the coast for a long weekend, I think Independence Day fell on a Monday that year. And there were these teenagers there, probably – probably as old as you guys are now. Thirteen, fourteen, not old at all. I thought they were the most amazing people I’d ever met, and I was such a jackass to Li on the first day, wanting to impress them. Then, on that night, we had this little family campfire, just the four of us, and dad gave me this lecture about not being mean to my brother, about how it was my responsibility to look after him. About how I’d regret not being nice, sooner or later.

“And Lionel, he just – he got up and he sat next to me and he interrupted dad, this four year old, and he says, dead serious, ‘Kara just wanted new friends’. He didn’t hold a grudge at all, it hadn’t even upset him that I was such a – a selfish person. And I know, I know kids don’t understand that at all, they’d never see it as selfish, but usually, you know, the fact that they’re four gets to them first, and they’re all ‘my way is the only way’. But Lionel,” and she laughs faintly, bitterly, fondly; “Lionel just – skipped that stage. And it didn’t change. It never started.

“Blacklight needs more people like that,” she finished, swallowing, choking on the emotion welling up in her throat.

The service ends with everyone sad, the only dry eye Kara’s, and only because she forces it. She’s still clutching the urn, though she plans on emptying it. It’s useless to her, just another thing to decorate the apartment, but it feels more important than that. After all, it’s her little brother in her arms. So she shuts down the thoughts that have been driving her crazy, the ones insisting a pot of ash shouldn’t mean anything, that an unmarked grave would be worth more to her.

But it’s Lionel. He’s all she’s had for three years now, he’s the reason she’s a lower class citizen, and she promised she’d take care of him. She swore.

I’ve never broken a promise before, she thinks, and then flinches from the thought, closes her eyes to it, refuses to acknowledge it again.

She’s got work, anyway. This – this debate can wait.

Kara is three months from her twenty-first birthday when she finds out she’s pregnant.

It isn’t much of a discovery, really. It’s actually impressive it hasn’t happened sooner – she’s heard horror stories of clients and pimps sabotaging others’ birth control, which is why she takes her prescribed pills meticulously, always made sure she has a supply even when money gets tight. That’s something that doesn’t happen much, not anymore, she’s even got savings.

And, apparently, a child on the way.

Maybe I should consider those god things again, she thinks as she wraps and dumps the test. It’d certainly explain the number of things that are fucking with me.

Still – still. She’s been alone for long enough that a bastard child sounds like a good idea, or at least one she doesn’t want to dismiss out of hand. She puts a lot of thought into the technicalities, makes lists and checks them twice.

In reality, her mind is made up the second that little plus sign shows up – the planning comes with the knowledge that a whore isn’t going to make the kind of mother she wants to be.

“You have a daughter,” is what the midwife says, smiling warmly at Kara. Kara is exhausted, feels sweat soaked and disgusting, and there are textbooks at home she is supposed to be revising, unable to take time off even for this – she’s taken advantage of the break from whoring (“Can’t very well have you giving birth in the middle of a good fuck,” he had insisted, which was crass but meant she got time off from wor) to pick up the business course she found in the pamphlets in her brothers’ room, all those years ago. “Would you like to hold her?”

“Please,” Kara says immediately, tired and almost pleading, reaching for the infant. The midwife laughs, more open and affectionate than anyone Kara has spent time with in a long time, and gently arranges the baby in her arms.

“Have you decided on a name for her, yet?”

Kara hums. She’s staring at her new child, at her family, wonder in her wide green eyes. The baby has blonde hair on her head, like Kara’s, and her eyes, for the moment, are shut as she doses. She’s a beautiful little girl, bundled into the blanket and onesie the maternity ward provides. Kara is absolutely certain she’s never going to make anything this perfect again, and immediately feels immensely guilty that she’s stuck picking up on the whoring again just as soon as Faust tires of her sabbatical. All the more reason to finish this business course, to pick up on dreams she had back in high school, that, apparently, Lionel remembered in the week before he succumbed to his suicide attempt.

(She still doesn’t know what caused it, or what she missed, if she could have stopped it. She constantly faces what-ifs and dreams and nightmares of possibilities, subconscious images so realistic she wakes up waiting to tell Lionel about it – and then the memories hit and she curls back up, chokes back the emotion, refuses the tears she still hasn’t shed. But what-ifs are useless and the past cannot be changed: Blacklight breaks people. She has known this all her life.)

“Darcy Artemis St Claire,” she answers the midwife at last, leaning down to kiss her little girls forehead. Darcy feels right, which she didn’t expect, but it just – it suits the person in her arms, belongs to her in a way Kara has heard some mothers’ say is possible, but didn’t believe. The midwife says something about paperwork and vanishes to find it, pulling the crib over so Kara can put her baby to bed, if she chooses.

When she’s alone with Darcy, Kara presses her lips to the top of her babies’ head yet again. “You’re going to be brilliant,” she murmurs, almost silent. “You’re not going to have a life like mine. I’ll never let you feel alone, I promise. You’re never going to have to swear yourself to – to someone like Faust or Craig or anyone else. I swear, Darcy. We don’t know each other well yet, but we will, and it is going to be fantastic. I promise you.”

She should learn to keep her mouth shut.

Darcy opens her eyes more and more, and there’s something familiar in them. It’s only once Kara is forced to go back to work, cajoling the elderly neighbour into caring for Darcy for the few hours she has to be gone, that she figures it out.

She’s lying in bed with Faust, waiting for him to tell her she can get out, go home, collect her pay direct to a bank account she always transfers the money straight out of, when it comes to her. Darcy doesn’t have her eyes, but they’ve always been familiar. Kara has a lot of regulars, people she’s seen since coming back to work.

“She’s got your eyes,” she blurts without thinking, and immediately starts cursing herself out internally, more than she usually does. She promised Darcy she’d never owe herself to someone like Faust, and here she is, piquing his curiosity.

“I’m not giving you alimony. Keep your bastard child away from me,” he instructs.

She immediately wants to leap to her daughters defence, but she stops herself. She doesn’t want him in Darcy’s life, after all – she promised Darcy, and she’s never going to know that this one time, Kara didn’t defend her. “I don’t want your hush money,” she snaps, getting out from the bed he fucked her in.

She feels dirty, but that’s normal, after any time spent with Faust at all – any time spent working at all. She’s almost finished her course, though, and then she can work on starting a store, the way she wanted to as a teen.  She’s almost out. Finally.

Kara isn’t exactly counting down the days, but she is closer to relieved than she’s felt for a long time.

“What’s this I hear,” Faust says, speaking very slowly, “about you studying?”

He says it like it’s a dirty word, but it’s Kara who is alarmed. She’s got a contract with him that doesn’t say it, but everyone knows that once Faust has you, you don’t get out. The contract doesn’t say it, but everyone knows the rules: no studying, no betterment of yourself, no terminating your employment. Whores get out only once they’re too old to be appealing, businesspeople get out when they can payout more than Faust thinks they are worth, mercs don’t get out.

The exception is when they get dead.

Who told you, is the first question on her tongue, but she doesn’t ask. Even if he answers, it won’t do her any good. “It doesn’t say anything in my contract about me not being allowed to pursue other uses of my time, as long as it doesn’t impact my earnings. It hasn’t, therefore, you have no reason to be like this.” She folds her arms over her chest, the better to hide her fisted hands.

He laughs, long and loud and cruel. “Your contract means nothing. I maintain the terms because it amuses me, but if you are betraying me, Caramel, then you need to be punished. You’re nothing more than a particularly pretty slut, spreading your legs for whatever cash you can get your hands on.”

Kara hates that name, but she freezes, and cannot move. He raises a hand and two men come in, along with a woman she’s barely aware of, some other whore, one of the older ones – one of the broken ones.

“Do it,” he instructs.

The men get between the two women, but it’s the woman who catches Kara’s attention. She’s tiny and hunched and doesn’t have an ounce of confidence in her movements – and she’s walking right for the room where Darcy is sleeping.

“What are you doing?” Kara exclaims, lunging forward. One of the men grab her wrist, the better to prevent her from moving.

“You want to take one of my toys away?” Faust sneers. Kara has never wanted to attack him as much as she does now. “I will take yours. After all, she’s half mine, isn’t she? What was it you said – she has my eyes.”

In the other room, the woman must have picked up Darcy; the baby starts to cry. There are quiet shushing sounds, but they don’t work – Kara and the neighbour are the only people who can get her to be quiet, once she starts crying. Kara doesn’t know if it’s a temperament thing or what, but she doesn’t mind, not as long as she can get there to stop it. “No,” she gasps, then repeats it louder, wrenching out of the grip of the lackey, “No! Don’t you dare, don’t even think about it, I’ll – I’ll go to the police, or I’ll hire someone to get you, Faust, just watch me – get off me – don’t touch her!”

The last shout comes from the older whore showing the wailing infant to Faust. And – yes, okay, he’s the source of the sperm that made Darcy possible, but he’s not her father, and he looks at the baby as though she is some new plaything. Figures, Kara will think later, but for now, she is too panicked, too defensive, too amped up to do anything. “Stop that,” he tells Darcy, but if anything it only makes her cry louder. He rolls his eyes and dismisses both the whore and the baby with a wave of his hand, and Kara is reminded again of how offended she was, when she realised who made her daughter possible. “You, too. Stop it,” he orders, not even looking at the crying child. “The police won’t act against me, and no one you could find would dare go against me. I own this city, I own you, and now, I own your daughter.”

“Fuck you, Faust,” she spits, tugging ineffectually against the grip of the merc. One of them shifts behind her, not that she can see it, and lifts something. Faust nods in front of her, and she opens her mouth to keep protesting, to keep yelling, to talk sense into the man who is kidnapping a baby he wanted nothing to do with less than a year ago.

Only something soft goes over her mouth and nose, muffling her shouts, and when she inhales the air is sickly sweet. Her eyes go wider, and she’s at once disgusted and horrified and incensed, but it doesn’t mean anything. After all – she isn’t immune to chloroform.

His words are a premonition:

The police do nothing. He has half a claim on a child, and if she can’t keep it safe from one little home invader, clearly she isn’t fit for custody, and less than a tenth of the police force in Blacklight aren’t in Faust’s pocket –

She can’t hire anyone to help. She doesn’t have the money, and she doesn’t trust the sort of people she could hire, and one in maybe every two hundred residents of Blacklight would maybe consider doing something that will piss off Faust –

There’s no one who will volunteer to help. She knows people who might not like Faust’s methods, but they are quiet and constrained and won’t act against him, and she couldn’t ask them to anyway, not without becoming as bad as him (which, honestly, wouldn’t be that bad, if she got her baby back) –

His words are a challenge:

He says he owns her, but she refuses to be owned by someone who no longer has anything over her. He took her daughter, and she’s not powerful enough to right the wrong, not yet –

But he can’t do anything worse to her now, so why should she listen to a word he says?

“Y’know,” X says. He’s a hulking figure, leaning against the glass cabinet she’s  fixing the display of, completely at home in the meticulously kept almost-open store. “when we met, I didn’t think you’d end up at this point.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, common whore – no offence – to the owner of a gun store? It’s almost a 180.”

Kara snorts, because that’s the best she can offer while she’s got her hands on an engraved Colt. She rests it gently on the cushion and slides the drawer shut, locking it tight before she looks up at him. “Says the guy who gave me the idea in the first place.”

“You were at a gun show, of course that’s why I thought you were there. It’s that or you’re a gun bunny.”

“That’s not a thing,” she says drily, because he’s been trying to make it a thing at least as long as she’s known him. He hasn’t succeeded, not yet. She’s not going to let him – at least, not around her. Not on her corner of this cesspool.

“It’s totally a thing.”

She scoffs hard enough that her throat feels raw, and almost chokes on nothing. He pushes the bottle of water on the counter towards her, raises a brow at her. “Thanks,” she says, once she’s got it down without coughing anything up.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. Then it’s his turn to laugh, and roll his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re thanking me for.”

There are a lot of things. She met X at a dark point in her life, and while things haven’t gotten any lighter, she still constantly feels as though she owes him. “Closing your shop to come help me open, obviously,” she says, but it’s only one of a much longer list.

He knows. The smile he gives her is soft, and he leans across the counter to tap her nose. “You’re going to figure it all out,” he says, “I know it.”

She manages a smile back at him. It’s hard to believe – but it means the world that he does already. Apparently, it’s just what friends do – and she’s been missing out.