#the pauls

[joz-yyh]

Love Host - Ch. 7

SUMMARY: The fugitive reporter is reunited with his jeep, but things are never that easy, not for Miles Upshur. No beta. Read at your own risk.

RATING: M (blood / gore / death / violence / swearing)

PAIRING: Walmiles (WalriderxMiles)

WORD COUNT: 3,113

READ ON AO3: Here

A/N: Hey ya'll, it's been awhile. I've had this in my WIP folder for over a year, but thanks to the kind words of tumbler users @is-gw and @drwernicke, I found the motivation to finish it. Dedicating this chapter to you both! Hope it was worth the wait.

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The white-knuckled grip Miles wrings upon the steering wheel somehow squeezes tighter, making the leather squeak, skin pinching under the strain.

He can't help it, becoming more manic, pressing further and further into the dashboard like some crazed getaway driver, laying hard onto the gas, the speedometer pushing past 80 mph.

He glances to his right, the state map he picked up from an old fashioned gas station about 10 miles back is spread out onto the passenger's seat, hastily drawn symbols and magic marker lines indicating the specific coordinates Waylon had given him.

This was it, the final stretch. A few more strips of asphalt and he'd reach his destination whether he was ready for it or not.

Up ahead, Miles finds remnants of an old car accident, winding tread marks of burnt rubber spiraling out across the road, stray pieces of metal swept into the shoulder of a bent guard rail.

He pulls off to the side next to it, the rumble of the speed strip jostling his tire shocks, his brakes screeching to a halt because he's thinking about a million other things right now, but not about how to park outside the white line.

Thankfully, no one's around to see the embarrassing stint, the secluded mountain side looking safe and serene to the unsuspecting tourist, but an investigative journalist knew better. This was the perfect place to stage an ambush.

Miles takes a few stabilizing breaths, preparing himself before he exits the car. He stands, lingering by the driver's side door, huddling around it in case he has to jump back inside, waiting for any obvious threats to make their move.

Nothing happens, just clear skies and empty roadside.

Nerves still tingling with goosebumps, the anxious reporter leaves the safety net of Trager's four-door sedan, jogging over to the trail of wreckage, old tire impressions tumbling down into the ravine below.

He can see it, there in the woods, bright red coloring hidden behind shaved pine trees, a distinct trail leading from matted reeds into dense underbrush.

As much as Miles wants to sprint down, the human host forces himself to be cautious because the last thing he needs is to do something stupid like trip and break an ankle.

Steadily, he descends the slope, retracing the wheel’s path through the overgrown grass, ducking past branches until he's under the cover of trees, the sun blotted out, everything going a shade darker and a degree cooler.

His beloved jeep remains his beacon in the shadows, running towards it’s familiar guise, climbing over fallen tree trunks and the brown crunch of decaying leaves.

He's almost frantic in his pursuit, as if the flashy hunk of metal will disappear the moment he touches it, a cruel mirage of his mind, but his jeep is real, it's here and he can feel it.

His needs a minute to settle, to accept the reality, his body no longer fixated with surprise attacks, relaxing as he runs his hand along the jeep's frame, taking note of all the various scratches and dents that he can't remember being there before.

So much had changed in just a few short days and neither of them, man or machine were quite the same as they once were.

“Hey, remember me,” Miles says to the oversized keepsake, getting a little choked up by the reunion, “I can’t believe you're still in one piece.”

His bandaged fingers slide over the sporty door frame, following the seam of interlocking parts down to the door handle, tugging it open.

The seat’s been moved, a noticeably tighter fit as he wedges his legs inside, adjusting the position so it's more comfortable to his height.

His flashy press pass is right where he left it, dangling faithfully from his rear-view mirror, burnished by a ray of light.

The reporter smiles, bittersweet, turning over the flimsy plastic in his hand, his grip on the ID growing heavy.

The emotional brunette folds himself over the steering wheel in awkward hug, a horrific memory coming back to haunt him in true PTSD fashion.

Miles wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for O'Neil – just another civilian reporter assigned to the same mission he was, caught in the crossfire, blown away by the indiscriminate bombs of war.

It could have just as easily been Miles who died that day, years ago, during his tour in Afghanistan, but it wasn't and now he's stuck reliving the event, watching the rookie from behind the viewfinder of his camera, there and then suddenly not, taken by an explosive wave of dirt and smoke, no body to be found, nothing left of him except for his rundown jeep.

He'd seen so many lost souls, innocent lives sacrificed to feed the campaign of big oil and wealthy politicians, but this young man's violent end hit differently than the rest, a razor blade of barbed wire coiled deeply around his heart.

He hopes O'Neil is proud of the work he's done, that he's watching from somewhere, that he knows how close Miles is to crucifying the vile corporation that started it all.

There's a tug at the back of his mind, a treacherous dark sea, not quite his subconscious (he's learned to tell the difference), but the Walrider – it vies for his attention, warning him of a threat.

“What is it," Miles asks dazedly, looking up from his latticework of crossed arms, wiping at the melancholy sting in his eyes.

His symbiotic partner supplies him with snapshots, images of black combat boots and riot gear flickering across his eyes, a tactical team forming a perimeter around the woods.

The hairs in the back of his neck are standing on end, his nerves firing like pistons, his stomach dropping.

"Oh God," Miles whispers, nanites skirting his vision, "they’re here, aren’t they?"

The reporter is losing it, becoming a panicked, irrational mess.

“I knew they would be. I knew, and I still couldn’t stay away. What … what does that mean,” the host rambles, feeling his emotions break down into all the stages of grief.

“I am sorry for bringing you out here," Miles tells the machine, convinced that this was their last stand, that he had to make some poor amends for all his mistakes, "I am sorry for everything.”

The Walrider manifests itself, bony phalanges gripping its host's tear-stained cheeks, forcing the man to behold the eerie gleam of its eyes.

Captivated, Miles stares back, searching the abyss, the Walrider trying it's damnedest to convey an emotion that it’s not equipped to express.

“How many,” the host asks, his tone a terrified reservation.

The nanties bristle, swirling in urgent, jagged loops.

“Oh God," Miles breathes, the dread building, his voice doused with buckets of ice water, "too many."

With a painful sigh, he holds the machine in a similar embrace, stroking along the creature’s cheek, joining their heads together. It helps him think, clears away the hysteria.

“What should we do,” he asks after a beat, feeling so fucking pathetic for relying on his demonic counterpart for guidance, that he still not grown enough to handle this shit on his own.

Forget the self-depreciation. Focus. They need a plan, some means of escape.

Utilizing his jeep was a possible strategy, but that's assuming the engine still runs and he manages to Dukes-of-Hazzard his way out the woods and up the ravine.

A word flashes before the human's mind, the Walrider offering an idea.

'REVENGE.'

Miles understands the concept all too well, holding an intimate connection to the first act of vigilante justice they committed together, his partner offering him the same satisfaction again.

Miles doesn't need any more convincing. His blue eyes harden, borderline arrogant.

“Alright," the rebel declares, seeking the entity's affirmation, "you ready for this?"

The Walrider trills in his head, the nanites bursting from his veins with heady anticipation, muscles bulking with superhuman strength.

It's a good enough answer for Miles, his lips pulled back into a toothy grin.

“Lets show ‘em who they’re fucking with," Miles roars, eyes drowning in a sea of onyx, irises flaring into molten rings of gold.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t black out like he has in the past.

Maybe, it's because they've had more time to assimilate to their new way of life or maybe it's because Miles is more stable than he was before (unlikely as it is), but whatever the reason, the Walrider gives him complete control of their subplanted body.

Miles only has two eyes, but somehow his sight compounds into a crystal ball of surveillance monitors: helmets, rifles, tactile gear closing in around him, subtle clacks of movement showing a group of mercenaries laying in wait ahead.

If this was how the Walrider saw the world, why did it have to be so head-spinningly complicated?

Walmiles raises his hand, the nanites assembling along it, forming a giant stygian blade. With one effortless swipe, he slices through the armed forces, severed torsos thudding like timber, trees raining down upon the clearing, shaking the earth beneath his feet, crushing the dismembered bodies they once resided by.

Miles only has a moment to reflect on his homage to b-movie slasher flicks before he feels another psychic tug, their shared consciousness directing him towards another raid of enemy gunmen.

The freelance demigod in a jacket goes down the line, annihilates the hired hands one by one, bursting their insides like bloody fucking party balloons.

Another team approaches from his left, 9 o'clock.

He sends a swarm of nanites hurtling in their direction, burrowing into the mercenaries flesh like bullets, their death thralls echoing up into the placid blue sky, scaring away the birds.

He can feel the soldier's minds, read their blood: terror, confusion, helplessness and Miles pushes it all down, takes control of one of the surviving merc's trigger fingers and aims the rifle at what remains of his comrades in arms. Once the deed’s been done, the man-made killing machine pops his puppet's skull wide open, a signet bouquet of gorey brain matter, the lone merc's headless, lifeless body crumpling atop a growing pile of corpses.

It's quiet. It almost feels like it's over, but it's just the calm before the storm.

A ricochet bullet whizzes past the jeep's hood, shattering one of the headlights.

The sound distracts the murderous brunette, having narrowly dodged a bullet one or twice before, more war flashbacks coming to flood his psyche with devastating consequences.

A second shot rings out, the bullet hitting it's mark, Miles pierced through the chest by the precise aim of a sniper.

Suddenly, his confidence plummets, their synchronization interrupted because Miles is caught in an erroneous loop of relieving his own death, terrified that he'd failed his mission not once, but twice.

“Am I … are we …?”

‘Dead’ is what he wants to ask, but all he can do is look down at his hands, watch as they tremble, his vision fading at the edges, going blurry.

The Walrider takes over, becoming the dominant personality, sailing through the air in a swarm of nanite clouds, tracking the bullet's trajectory back to it's source.

The soldier attempts to shoot the dark angel down, but it becomes exceedingly apparent that he can’t, abandoning his post to run.

The Walrider catches its prey, squeezes the life out of the foolish villain that dared to injure it's precious host, crushing the vile human's neck under its claws.

Another shot, gouging Walmiles through the shoulder, from behind. Just how many snipers did Murkoff pull in for this job?

The Walrider gladly applies the same tactics to silence this menace as well, nanites beating like giant wings.

Miles recovers, insists on wrestling back control, “Stop, we need him alive.”

The Walrider remains skeptical of it's host's judgment, holding the second sniper by the collar, bringing him towards an intimidating stare of cracked, oozing flesh.

“I want you to do something for me," says the warbled voice, the Walrider and Miles speaking together as one singular being, "Tell the ones who hired you, I am coming for them. Tell them, I am going to burn their lives to the ground, that there will be nothing left after I am done because they'll all be dead.”

Miles pauses in his speech, staring into the young marksman's eyes, assessing how human they are, “You got all that?”

The soldier is too scared to speak, merely nodding his compliance.

"Good. Off you go, then,” Miles instructs, letting the man drop, shoving him towards his objective, “And be sure to leave the gun.”

The sniper stumbles, regaining his balance, still coming to terms with what the fuck just happened, running off to deliver his message.

SHHHWWOOOOOOMMM!!!

The booming speed of a jet sails overhead, poised for an airstrike.

"You gotta to be fucking kidding me with this shit,” the host snarls, annoyed that Murkoff would send in goddman fighter jet of all things just to take him out.

Mitigating damage indeed.

Miles runs, jumps as far away as he can, an explosive missile detonating a few hundred feet away, setting the woods ablaze, a shield of nanobots protecting him from the conflagration.

He lies flat onto his stomach, hands laced behind his head, waits for the danger to pass before he makes another move.

“Christ, almighty, please tell me my jeep is OK,” Miles pleads into the surrounding hollow of dirt.

He's never been the religious type, but it doesn't stop him from praying that his beloved bucket of bolts is still intact, spared from the destruction.

He sorts through the disaster of dancing flames to find it, a whorl of nanobots snuffing out a path and thank God it's still standing, left unharmed (for the most part).

He pats the vehicle free of the surrounding orange embers, laments over the burn marks bubbling the paint, but that was purely cosmetic amenity in the grand scheme of things.

“Holy shit,” Miles pants in relief, leaning against the hood, allowing himself a well deserved reprieve.

He's hobbling as he maneuvers, feeling just a bit achy and sore from his new set of matching gunshot wounds, stifled by the heat of the forest fire still rampaging on around them, sweat mixing with the blood and ash on his face.

“Now what,” he asks out into the open air, having no clue where to go from here.

The Walrider’s conscience swipes across his mind again, another suggestion that could just as easily be mistaken for his own thought process.

The machine searches his memory bank, shows him a grainy reel of a strong man lifting a barbell.

“Can you really lift something like this?”

Another old movie clip of a floating car, minus the futuristic wings.

“Have we done this before?"

If they have, he has no recollection of it, the Walrider demonstrating its strength, nanites wrapping around the automobile, transporting it back up onto the road.

As he watches the superhuman display, tires gently resting back upon the black turf of the highway, Miles almost doesn't have words, (the keyword there being almost).

"Oh, well, that was easy.”

The machine can't appreciate his excellent comedic timing, but that's OK, he can laugh at his own joke.

“Lemme just go grab my stuff," Miles tells his chivalrous paralysis demon, clambering up the hill the old fashioned way despite having the ability to “fly” above it instead.

He retrieves his duffel bags, Miles transferring them to his jeep, starting up the ignition, but of course it has one last fatal flaw: it's out of gas.

“At least it's out of the ditch,” the journalist sighs, slumping back into the driver’s seat, needing a vacation after suffering through this exhausting debacle.

It's fine. He's sure Trager's car has a dodgy siphoning hose hiding somewhere in the trunk he can use.

—---

“So, what are you thinking,” Paul Marion asks, plucking at his gums with a toothpick, having just finished his lunch, "Did we get him?”

"Hard to say,” Glick muses, leaning down to drag her fingers through the soot, grinding it between her thumb and forefinger. “Upshur certainly did some damage. It's interfering with our readings.”

“I imagine he would,” the blonde haired agent replies, watching gray smoke filter up from the charred ground, “judging by the state he left the asylum in.”

He's just glad they don't have to go rifling through the crime scene (there were other people for that), the fire now extinguished thanks to an airdrop of sand, but that meant a stark film of contamination hung over their investigation.

His female counterpart is silent, framing a scenario in her mind based on the reports. The body count, time table, and radiation readings told her it was possible Miles was dead, but her job was never that easy.

“We using the usual cover story, then,” Marion asks, leaving the toothpick to hang between his lips, shoving hands inside his pockets, taking in the great outdoors, “stupid drunk teenagers lit a campfire in the woods. Let it get out of control?”

Pauline doesn't offer an answer, an underling assisting with the clean up approaching them in light of some recent development.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the grunt agent cuts in, “a witness has come forward.”

“A witness,” she parrots with snarky red lips, her fine brows curved into speculative intrigue.

“Golly, you mean to tell me someone actually survived this mess,” Paul whistles, chuckling to himself, stepping up to his sleek-suited partner.

“One of the ground team says he has a message from Miles Upshur,” the grunt confirms.

“Oh, this keeps getting better and better,” Marion grins, radiating sarcastic anticipation, wondering what kind of juicy gossip they were about to hear.

“You'd better let me handle this,” the she-devil with a gun insists, leaving her partner in the dust.

“Not enough clearance, huh?”

“Hmm, something like that.”

“Any word on Park,” her yellow stouted partner asks, hoping to entertain himself with this nugget of info while she's gone.

“No, still in the wind,” Pauline sighs, “He’s covered up his tracks pretty well so far, but he’ll mess up. They always do.”

"Ma'am," the lowly grunt accosts, reminding Ms Glick of the lone survivor waiting to be interrogated.

"What are you gonna do with him,” Marion persists, fishing for more intel.

"Take him back to HQ for questioning,” she hisses, frustrated with Marion's pestering, “He might remember something that will give us a clue. Upshur and Park were accomplices before. Maybe one can lead us to the other.”

“Love the way you think, miss piggy,” he taunts, watching her stalk away, fists clenched.

“Don't make me shoot you in the mouth too,” Pauline scoffs.

[luvisia]

i think the most important thing y’all need to know about paul marion is that jt’s dreamcast for him is philip seymour hoffman

[zegalba]

Bed of Lettuce by Paul Octavious

[thecollectibles]

Cats painting studies by Paul Rabaud

[prokopetz]

Seeing people decide to watch Breaking Bad based on the Tumblr memes is especially funny when they do it specifically for the memes about Jesse, because... well, let's put it this way. Aaron Paul, the guy who played Jesse, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award for best supporting actor in a drama series for his work on Breaking Bad on five separate occasions, including twice in one season, and won three of those nominations. He was the first person ever to win that award three times for the same role. Like, Jesse's storyline is so viscerally unpleasant that it set industry records.

[ringo-starr-daily]

All of the Beatles dying in a glue trap

[lostonmyroad]

jessica really said “god forbid women do anything” and doomed an entire people to war by installing her twink son as a false prophet by stealing her cult’s 10,000 year old breeding program propaganda

[animusrox]

World’s Finest, Part III Superman: The Animated Series

[iced-bees]

2024 is wild as hell 4 days in

[zorosnavigator]

[divorcedtom]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022 - )

Little Birdie Lu's caught in a trap. But she's flapping her wings and getting free!

[doitforadamparrish]

when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’

[zegalba]

Jean Paul Gaultier spring/summer 1999

[thecollectibles]

Art by Paul Rabaud

[loadingmercurywithapitchfork]

hey girl i mean jude

[leclercari]

#the "oh." moment: bi bridgerton siblings™ edition