WIP AMENSTY/ABANDONED FICTION DUMP #3 The one we've all been dreading.

[apiphile]

THURSDAYVERSE REMIX.

First off, these snippets are not in chronological order. There is also a huge shouty AIM conversation at the end in which J & I actually made some attempt at plotting out and behaved like arseholes, which I've *TRIED* to align with the relevent bits although not very successfully as our conversations are a touch meandery. I am not writing this because it is enormous and I cannot deal with it on my own. You are of course welcome to play.



apiphile: ... oh my brain
apiphile: It just did something quite sick
nononevermind: so WTF did we just do? There's not Andy/Gabe rift, Jepha was picked up by Gabe, Dan met FOB when he came out of prison or maybe he met like, Joe in there or something and Vicky-T is with Bert
nononevermind: this shit is amazing
apiphile: This is AWESOME. Oh, I just went "what shall I do with Bob, because this remix stuff is fun; and I thought... what if he was arrested by Travis, after the fight, and Travis decided to cut him a deal, and he became an undercover cop?"
nononevermind: COP BOB
nononevermind: ANGRY ISSUES COP BOB
nononevermind: OH MY
apiphile: HOW HOT IS THAT
nononevermind: OH MY WHY IS THAT SO VERY GOOD
nononevermind: THAT IS SO HOT
apiphile: And Travis helps keep him in line by getting him stoned. :D
nononevermind: ESPECIALLY IF/WHEN HE ARRESTS FRANK OR OR SOMETHING... AND. ANGRY. ANGRY SEX WITH CRIMINAL FRANK?
nononevermind: YESSSSSSSSS
nononevermind: Travis WOULD
apiphile: I love the way that Quinn/Bert and Frank/Bob have to survive every remix
apiphile: (I can't believe I broke up Dan/Jepha, that is so sick)
nononevermind: I'd have argued harder for Dan/Jepha b...
nononevermind: yeah, that's the only other pairing that bothers me to break, heh
apiphile: THE ALTERNATIVE IS UNBELIEVABLY HOT
nononevermind: I love this AU of our AU. This may be the most self involved, least accessible to other people thing ever, but it's fuuuun

Travis nearly chokes on his croissant when he gets the name on the board; yeah, yeah, everyone else at this paltry-salaried level of the force is a slave to Dunkin' and their fat-laden heart-attacks-in-waiting snacks, but he does not give a golden-plated fake Rolex fuck what it makes him look like. He's not switching from almond croissants and he's not going to start driving a fucking third generation Plymouth with baby puke dried into the seats when his shiny new German bitch is still insured.

He guesses this, and his continuing position as a Fucking Disgrace, is why he's been assigned Big Bob as a partner for this. New to undercover work, about as subtle as a flung fist, 'Big' Bob Bryar is under six feet tall but everyone still keeps to the nickname; Travis McCoy is six feet and three of God's own glorious inches, but Bryar still manages to loom. He does. And he doesn't exactly bandy about barrages of words - y'might call him monosyllabic, but that was more than Beat Cop Bryar ever would - just scowls those baby blues about like the universe has personally offended him by being there.

"Motherfucker," he sighs, dropping into his chair and throwing his hands over his face melodramatically. Travis is an eloquent man with long elegant hands, an expensive education, and parents of different races. He has gang tats and a fraternity ring, a grille and a real Rolex; no one knows what to make of him down here besides 'the butt of some desperately illiterate jokes'.

Oh, and Peaches in dispatch clearly wants to tap that. She knows what she'd like to make of him. Shame she's so thin. And got no tits. Ordinarily he'd go for the whole trashy dyke hair thing girls' got going on but Christ she needs to inject some MacDonald's into her bony little ass.

"Sergeant McCoy?"

And oh, how he hates hearing that rank.

Travis pulls his hands off his face. Bryar looks as uncomfortable out of uniform as he does in it, like a man who hasn't figured out how 'casual' goes, and he's all but chewing his lower lip. Travis acknowledges with the easy indifference of a man who is quite happy in his heterosexuality that if Bryar ever stopped scowling he'd have a rather beautiful face. "I am he, for my grossly exaggerated sins, and you need to stop standing there like Banquo's ghost before you give me a headache."

"Ghost?"

"Siddown, Bryar. We have much to discuss." Travis curses his own idiom. Inside the station he talks like exactly the kind of rich white asshole he'd hated in college, and he does it because the ignorant belt-straining motherfuckers with their cheap coffee and their successful-ish marriages and quiet infidelities leave him feeling like he's a germ on a Petri dish doing a minstrel show for the Man. And he wishes he were alone in his car with the contents of the evidence locker.

Bryar sits like a poorly-trained canine.

"You got the file?" Travis begins, pretending he knows where anything is on his fucking desk.

Bryar nods stiffly.

BOB: (10:14:25 PM) “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.”: He didn't get as far as killing someone
(10:14:46 PM) “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.”: he was part of a scheme to give people with iffy activities something to do
(10:15:04 PM) “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.”: was a volunteer police officer and then joined the force because someone told him he'd be good at it

apiphile: OH MY ... BUT. THINK. VICKY-T AND QUINN OH GOD.
nononevermind: VICKY-T AND QUINN SHOULD NOT BE ON THE SAME SIDE
nononevermind: IT IS
nononevermind: BAD FOR PEOPLE
nononevermind: ALL PEOPLE
apiphile: Imagine if they were both Bert's.
nononevermind: except them and their people, huh
apiphile: Imagine the damage he could do.
nononevermind: what's really weird is that I think they'd get along famously, once the rules were established
apiphile: He'd be like, sitting on the roof of a car somewhere watching them tear a fratboy into a puddle. Vicky-T smashing his ribs with a baseball bat while Quinn tears at his throat
nononevermind: rules would essentially be all related to BERT IS SACRED, AGREE OR DIE.
apiphile: and they're not careful people so occasionally they'll accidentally injure each other quite badly
apiphile: and lie around panting for weeks afterward
nononevermind: that's the truest thing I have ever heard
apiphile: Vicky-T's arm in a sling or Quinn's face all in stitches
apiphile: and she'd probably lick him and he'd punch her
nononevermind: Vicky-T isn't interested in watching where her bat goes and Quinn just plain goes blood-blind
nononevermind: and she'd laugh and spit blood in his face

The bass is like a solid force, like an earthquake, like a hand on the leg, shaking and shaking, when they get up the stairs to the dance floor. Everywhere there are faces, dumb hungry faces, looking at bodies, dumb hungry bodies. Bert scratches his armpit through the disintegrating fabric of his t-shirt and scans the room like he's looking for someone. He's not, but if he moves is head like this and like this, little snowflakes of air molecules appear in the corners of his vision, like they're dancing to the atrocious music.

In the glow of the beer lights and the blacklight that's just highlighting the dandruff on everyone's shoulders, Bert McCracken already knows where everyone he needs to find is. His new friend who will tell them where to take their fighting shoes tonight is in the bathroom getting ready to try and fuck them over. His Quinnery-Quinnface is two feet behind him looking impatient and disgusted and like he slept in a dumpster because that is actually what he did. And his Vicky-T is the Pied Piper Pussy-Providing of Hamlyn and has the whole place hypnotised with lust or loathing depending, dancing on her own on a table in unstable heels in a dress she chose precisely to show that she's not wearing panties.

She's smudged her make-up to look drunk but she's not drinking tonight. Vicky-T likes to wear different masks. Bert smiles to himself as people jostle and ignore him, as girls in skirts far more revealing than Vicky-T's turn up their noses at him and their hostile little plastered faces snarl dentally-perfect rage at her.

The song the DJ is playing has apparently been written by a tone-deaf monkey and then run through an auto-tuner. The vocals have been provided by the same tone-deaf monkey, or perhaps his retarded cousin, Stupid Lemur. Bert reaches out behind him until his hand encounters something greasy and cotton and crusted with something that flakes off in his hand. Whatever it is, it's attached to Quinn.

He tugs on the belly of Quinn's t-shirt.

"Get to the fire door," Bert mutters, turning to push his teeth against Quinn's bicep. Quinn hits him on the back of the head twice, and leaves, pushing through the crowd like they're not there, like his awkward-shouldered bow-string tense streak-of-piss body is cutting through thick water that occasionally yells at him.

Quinn is perfect. Everything breaks against him, except Bert, except Vicky-T. Bert feels him go, and watches his grubby sneakers on the beer-slippery floor. Someone treads on his trailing lace and when Bert tugs they grunt at him to get the fuck out of their way; Bert pulls a ghoulish face and with a suck of saliva the motherfucker's gone. Out of his never-washed hair.

The washrooms are flooded.

He minces through on tippy-toe, because Bert loves to walk that way. It's like half-flying. Sometimes he walks on the sides of his feet, sometimes the heel. Sometimes he hangs off Quinn's neck and doesn't walk at all. Sometimes Vicky-T picks him up and carries him upside-down while he screams and laughs and screams, and tries to bite her strawberry-fresh knees, to pick the scabs from her skin with his sharp little teeth. He minces on his toes, splash, splash, splash through the discarded condoms and streams of soggy ass-paper like floating foam on a polluted river, and he skates through the piss-and-beer water leaving a wake.

Skibar is sitting on the can three doors down, staining the water pink, his face all busted up. Bert waves enthusiastically, because saying hi nice is what good boys do.

Skibar's face is like a Chinese lantern dripping blood from every slash. Cuts cross his eyelids at the corners, stinging and squeezing them half-shut, like a lop-sized harlequin, a clown with plus-signs for eyes. His shirt's an abstract painting in shades of spreading red, splattered and scattered and streaked over something his sleeves say was once white.

"I guess I'm late," Bert observes. Which isn't what he means exactly, but he also guesses Skibar won't be too interested in his excuses, explanations, or very personal and unique concept of time.

Skibar smacks the flat palm of his hand against the cubicle wall and someone back in the doorway of the washroom says uh-oh in a drunken slur. "Call an ambulance, asshole," he groans.

Bert scratches the crown of his head where the dandruff lumps up like a snowdrift compacting into ice. "Where's the fight tonight?"

"Fuck you, McCracken." It's so sweet to be recognised. Bert believes his voice is distinctive and this kinda proves it.

He starts to laugh and tugs his own hair at the roots. It feels freaky and kind of good. Maybe he'll ask Vicky-T to do that thing with the fingernails or something again later. "Tell me where the fight is, the fight tonight, the f-f-f-f-f-fiiiiight, and I'll call your angels in white, I swear. I swear." Bert doesn't actually own a cell phone, never really saw the point of them, but there's no need to tell that to the red-and-white painting on the potty. Skibar's bleeding like a burst balloon. There's probably a phone outside.

Or someone in the club will let him borrow theirs. Or let Vicky-T borrow it, anyhow. "The fight tonight, Skibar, wither est? Is it North, is it South? Is it East, is it West? A parking lot or a parking little?" Bert always loved Dr Seuss. It made more fucking sense than the people who pushed him to be a pitch-perfect pianist then persecuted him for being precisely what they wanted; it made more sense than most of his pre-meth church-filled life ever did. "Where O where is my fight tonight?"

"East 23rd, 2105, in the basement, tell them I sent you now call a fucking ambulance," Skibar croaks. Bert peers at the collar of his shirt. There's more blood on there than should be just from his face (Bert's known Vicky-T and Quinn for long enough to be able to judge quite accurately how much blood comes from which level of wounds); Bert squints.

Oh, there it is. Didn't get the jugular, or the windpipe - someone was either drunk or high or just dumb (Bert can hear Quinn's disdain echoing in his head) - but he's kinda sure his new friend's going to bleed out in not time just the same. Unlucky Skibar.

He backs out of the bathroom to an increasingly frantic background of call a fucking ambulance, and half-skips through the damp-ankled crowds to the bar.

There is trouble on the dance floor.

Bert props himself on a cigarette machine. A man in a check shirt and rapist-fit jeans (Vicky-T says they're tight enough at the crotch to give wood but loose enough at the waist and rattling fly to allow instant access to that wood) with a haircut that probably cost more than Bert got for his last night is grinding close to Vicky-T. Her face is flushed and she looks every inch drunk and easy, his hand moving like a heat-seeking missile for her thigh; unlike the rest of the punters, Bert's hypnosis is only temporary. When there's a floor show the place to be looking is the shadows.

Quinn's so electric-tensed, lurking by a kitsch-looking jukebox, that they could run the whole sound system off the rage in his shoulders, the shape of his coathanger body shrieking eloquent curses direct to the back of Bert's tongue. Bert makes heart-hands over the heads of the girls in front of him, armpits in their faces, and while they make faces Quinn flips him the bird.

Yes. Mine..

nononevermind: Bert squeezing Vicky-T's tit is amazing. Like, he does that in a bar, once, and smiles and walks away, and she just watches him and then turns around and some asshole tries the same thing, because he thinks she's drunk or whatever (and maybe she is, but she'll never ever be helplessly drunk) and he ends up a greasy spot on the bartop where she busts his head open
apiphile: He totally does it to start trouble
nononevermind: and then there is a lot of gore, because his face hits a cup on the way down and her bat's like a hammer and the bar's like an anvil
nononevermind: and Quinn's somewhere around here
apiphile: and occasionally Quinn will be like, "ARE YOU TOUCHING MY GIRLFRIEND" and they'll be like you're dating this ugly fuck and they BOTH KILL HIS FACE OFF
nononevermind: but I can't even touch him with a word-pole because I am actually quite scared of him, heh
nononevermind: seriously, it is like Vicky-T: terrifying and horrifying, Quinn: no, all I'm getting is a black hole of rage which occasionally passes over people and turns them to meat
apiphile: Vicky-T scares me pissless
apiphile: I genuinely would not want her to even look at me
apiphile: Quinn I just kind of ... um.
nononevermind: ALSO. CAN HE ALWAYS REFER TO HER AS HIS GIRLFRIEND? ALWAYS ALWAYS? EVEN THOUGH OBVIOUSLY OBVIUOSSSLY THERE IS NO FUCKING
apiphile: I know him?
nononevermind: he just decides that's how it is
apiphile: YES
nononevermind: like Bert is Bert, that needs no explanation, but Vicky-T is his GIRLFRIEND
nononevermind: IF YOU LAUGH, YOU FUCKING DIE
apiphile: and Bert's the one who has sex with her
nononevermind: I think the reason Vicky-T scares me less is the same, then, because I knoooow her
apiphile: because he thinks it's funny and he's like, QUEEF, DO IT AGAIN
nononevermind: she would roll her eyes, but she'd totally have a red hot go
nononevermind: ahahaha, there's something about Vicky-T with Bert and Quinn that's like the opposite of Jepha with Gabe... she'd be freer to be herself, in a weird way
apiphile: I am also totally digging Vicky-T just being randomly in a club or something and going, "finger me" at Bert while they're by the bar.
nononevermind: I guess that's just the difference between the Cobras and Bert
nononevermind: Vicky-T wears no underwear and grinds on Bert's (... or Quinn, if she can get away with it) leg until there's a wet spot in the club, because it makes Bert laugh
nononevermind: and she gets seriously off on it
apiphile: HAHAHA and when it's BERT he just like, gets his fingers and sticks them under Quinn's nose and is like SMELL YOUR GIRLFRIEND'S PUSSY OM NOM
apiphile: (I can't stop laughing and yet somehow hot at the same time)
nononevermind: THIS IS HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS
apiphile: It's like the opposame as the Jepha/Gabe/Andy thing!
nononevermind: Bert find it AMAZINGLY FUNNY, Quinn gets twitchy as fuck and progressively more pissed off looking, because he's so turned on it actively hurts
apiphile: HOT BEYOND IMAGINING, but hilarious instead of TERRIFYING
nononevermind: Jepha/Gabe/Andy is tragicly hot, where as this is hotlarious. Er. And disturbing. I guess. When you think about the murder. And all that.
apiphile: Yeah, and then Vicky-T's like ... randomly hitting on some dude so that Quinn can beat the shit out of him with her and feel better
apiphile: I just realised that joint murder is totally their sex
nononevermind: ... and NOW we've hit the disturbing part of this
apiphile: OH, NOW? BECAUSE IT WASN'T DISTURBING WHEN JEPHA WAS GETTING SEMI-RAPED OR ANYTHING.
nononevermind: it's got all the same outcomes as sex, anyway. Breathing hard. Getting sweaty. Fluids.
nononevermind: I like to think Bert point that out, btw
apiphile: Oh he would
nononevermind: NO THAT WAS DISTURBING TOO
apiphile: and hot
nononevermind: I JUST MEANT IT'S GETTING DISTURBING IN THIS CORNER OF AUTV
apiphile: why must disturbing things be hot
apiphile: it just makes them even more disturbing
nononevermind: I... don't know
nononevermind: and hotter!
apiphile: ARGH
apiphile: WE'RE WRONG.
apiphile: We are wrong people.
nononevermind: yes, I... that' s probably true
apiphile: I bet you could give me a good hard Bert/Quinn/Vicky-Ting
apiphile: because I am telling you I could pretty easily Andy/Gabe/Jepha
nononevermind: and it's DAAAAARK as fuck, but for some reason, I can handle that because it is an AU of our AU so if people get hurt i's all AU so they're still okay in regular canon!
nononevermind: WOW MY BRAIN IS A STUPID PLACE
apiphile: hahah and our regular canon isn't canon either
apiphile: so it's doubly safe!
nononevermind: VICKY-T IS QUINN'S GIRLFRIEND
nononevermind: I JUST
nononevermind: I HAVE NOTHING
nononevermind: that's so fuckign perfect
nononevermind: it's so CHILDISH
nononevermind: it's STUPID and WONDERFUL
apiphile: It is!
nononevermind: it fits like ALSHFPAIsdpoaishdkajHD RIDICULOUS. HOW DOES THAT FIT SO WELL. IT SHOULDN'T BE.
nononevermind: I have no idea why, but it also presses a million buttons I didn't know I had
nononevermind: and also don't have names for
apiphile: And yet it does because of how we wrote them
apiphile: she's insanely ... weirdly childish too
nononevermind: she kind of is, actually
apiphile: and they totally don't even fucking hug or anything.
apiphile: They JUST fight
apiphile: and sometimes she molests him until he goes fucking crazy
apiphile: that's important, I think.
apiphile: Vicky-T would actually go for his dick just to make him angrier.
nononevermind: she would poke him like a naughty kid at a beehive
apiphile: ahahah that needs to be a line in a sex scene.
apiphile: "poked him like a naughty kid at a beehive"
nononevermind: also, she's not scared of him, and I think that's probably actually alittle bit dangerous
apiphile: it is extremely dangerous
nononevermind: I think Bert would probably SEE that there's potential for disaster there
nononevermind: but they wouldn't
nononevermind: or Quinn wouold, but only in that basic way he sees it everywhere
apiphile: yeah, to Quinn everything is a weapon, either to be used on him or by him
apiphile: he can only see the way things can be destroye
nononevermind: I think he loves her in his own way, the way he loves Jepha or Dan in canonTV (haha), which is... love's a bad word, but you know what I mean
apiphile: These Are My People.
apiphile: Thou Shalt Not Harm.
apiphile: Quinn's a guard dog.
nononevermind: I think "girlfriend" actually taps into that too
nononevermind: it's like he uses bros, in canonTV, sort of?
apiphile: yeh, that's what he means by the word, perhaps
nononevermind: it's hard with Quinn, because he doesn't know himself half the time, does he'?
apiphile: but I think it's the same word. bro. girlfriend.
nononevermind: one just happens to be more wrongly adorable from an outside perspective
apiphile: EF rgiholshdvsvah I really want this story, bebe. It's like ... it's as meaty and solid as the other one, and ... whenever I think about the Travis/Bob/Frank, the Brian/Ray, all that ... it expands.

'Defiant' is about the word Gerard would pick, but he'd pick it off a list where 'beautiful' and 'awe-inspiring' had already been taken. She is slight; short as a curse and round-lipped as a comic book character, her nail polish so chipped it comes as little brightly-coloured dots of sarcastic punctuation in the centre of each nail. Whole schools could get lost swimming in her eyes. She looks like she hasn't washed her hair in a week.

After a minute of watching her on the monitors with his hands pressed half-into his too-small pockets, Gerard reminds himself that she came here with the intention of killing him.

He looks back at her face, rendered grainy by basement light and low-light specialist cameras, and thinks about the Sandman comics he loved when he was sixteen, where Death was a pretty, perky goth girl whose smile reached out through the pages and tweaked his heartstrings. Gerard wrestles the smiles off the corners of his mouth. This girl, the one taped to a metal chair that's screwed into the concrete floor, this girl is a threat to his organisation. To what's left of his family. To him. She's a bona fide terrorist.

She's got the last vestiges of fire-engine red lipstick caked in the corners of her, her, her Renee Montoya mouth. Oh, shit. Shit. Shit.

apiphile: Lyn-Z and Amanda launch an attack on one of the Ways' businesses
apiphile: Lyn-Z is captured, Gerard gets obsessed with her
nononevermind: And Ms. Ditto, because DO WANT.
apiphile: totally ignores Mikey.
apiphile: and Amanda and Beth come to rescue her
apiphile: and end up killing GERAARD
nononevermind: REVERSE WAY BROTHER DEATH
apiphile: which would not have been able to happen if Mikey had been there and if Gee hadn't been -- EXACLTY.
nononevermind: ... and wait, Mikey couldn't run the empire
nononevermind: I mean, he doesn't vene have the capacity
apiphile: So Ray steps in.
apiphile: Ray and Frank.
nononevermind: Ray getting to run the place is actually the only way I can see it continuing long into the future
apiphile: I think Mikey would be smart enough to know that's for the best.
apiphile: I also think he'd basically latch on to Frank which could be hella awkward.
nononevermind: he'd definitely give over to Ray, at lesat quietly
nononevermind: also, when Ray aquires and empire, does this mean he feels like he can relax enough to HAVE A DRINK WITH BRIAN? Unresolved ship deserves a chance
apiphile: but I like the idea that Brian basically ends up under investigation because of something Bob finds, so the Travis/Brian situation is reversed
nononevermind: Frank who would be quite a different Frank from canonTV, because Bobless, Frank's a less happy dude, I think. A Gerardless.
apiphile: maybe then Ray makes him an offer?
apiphile: And then Ray holds the cards.
apiphile: Instead of people being drawn towards the light
apiphile: they're being sucked into the darkness.
nononevermind: I feel like the Waypire, such as it is in this, has to win this time
apiphile: well, it'll be the Toropire.
nononevermind: the police station gets firebombed instead, or Brian's building
apiphile: of course, to remove evidence
nononevermind: true, Toropire it would be
apiphile: I'm sorry this is all overwhelming
apiphile: I'm afraid I now have to go back to my happy place of Bert squeezing Vicky-T's tit.
nononevermind: it's like a fucking rock in a pond. TOO MANY RIPPLES, CAN'T KEEP UP
apiphile: WHAT HAVE WE DONE.
nononevermind: everything's disappearing as I try to think it outttttt
apiphile: this is what happens when you make a world.
nononevermind: I don't know, but I LIKE IT
apiphile: *rolls around in it*
nononevermind: making a world is fun when there's no obligation to actually write the fucker, oh man
apiphile: ... *evil expression*
apiphile: Now who said that?

apiphile: I JUST SLASHED TV JEPHA AND TV GABE
apiphile: I can just seeeeeeeeeeee it. Gabe would ... wow, Gabe would totally actually put a collar on him and treat him like a genuine lapdog.
nononevermind: I just went through a NUMBER of expressions all at once
nononevermind: it was like Hooott...? Hot! HOT WAIT... no, no, bad, wrong GABE WOULD OH NOES. Except in expression form
apiphile: Gabe wouldn't kill him! Gabe would totally USE him, but he'd be like "hey, I don't even have to train this one".
nononevermind: and looks good in a collar
nononevermind: oh, I know, but he'd use him... hm. It would be both EXTREMELY HOT and kind of terribly sad
apiphile: Oh god I can't get TVG/TVJ out of my fucking head
apiphile: (and Gabe just dragged Jepha past the doorway of a room I'm "in", by the back of his jacket, Jepha's kind of scrabbling along the floor and Gabe looks like Linus with a blanket)
apiphile: (he's got this cocky, bouncy walk like he's off to make pancakes)
nononevermind: oh, god. Gabe would treat him exactly how Jepha THINKS he shoudl be treated
nononevermind: it's tragically hot
apiphile: because that's what Gabe does!
apiphile: mental image now of ... I guess this is an AU of the AU?
apiphile: Because Andy's there as well.
apiphile: He's just sitting there naked, cross-legged, on a stool, with his knife out, watching.
apiphile: Waiting for Gabe to get done
nononevermind: does it could as breaking the NO MORE WRITING TV if it's AU, for us?
nononevermind: I think it doesn't.
apiphile: But Gabe's strapped Jepha face-down to the bed
apiphile: and he's got one hand around his throat from behind
apiphile: and the other one holding his shoulder
apiphile: and he's fucking away like he's on a holiday, I swear, humming something under his breath
apiphile: And Andy's just watching and waiting.
apiphile: I can't work out if this is deeply sinister or incredibly hot and btw Ryland is so at the keyhole.
nononevermind: IT'S FUCKING BOTH
nononevermind: also, GABE WOULD
nononevermind: he would be so fuckign cool with this
apiphile: OH MY GOD HE'S SINGING BOOM DE YADA
nononevermind: he'd would be on a fucking holiday, practically, his work's basically done for him
nononevermind: this would be the laziest fuck in the world. Gabe would hurt Jepha lazily, choke him smiling and just a'sjdha AUGH
apiphile: and when Gabe had come - up Jepha's back, not in him, because he's making a point to Andy as well - he just steps aside and throws his arms open like "tadaaaaa" and smiles at Andy, all, "leave him alive"
nononevermind: also, I'm picturing him just sitting back at some point and telling Andy where to stick his knife
nononevermind: THAT TOO
apiphile: And then there is beautiful hideous knife-fucking
apiphile: totally the opposite of gabe's sing-song approach
nononevermind: Andy and Jepha should be kept at a distance from each other, seriously
apiphile: this snarling tattooed beast fucking and cutting and rubbing his face in the blood
apiphile: oh hahaha yeah
apiphile: um
apiphile: Gabe deliberately makes people physically stand between them
apiphile: like he'll put Nate on Jepha Duty or something
apiphile: ... this is like turning into an AU where Jepha ended up with the Cobras instead of Vicky-T
nononevermind: yeah, I was thinking that
nononevermind: like Gabe buffers them constantly with someone
nononevermind: and doens't leave them alone

Jepharee Howard is lying on his stomach on the carpet, watching Dexter's Laboratory on the big screen TV. It came with the house. The Realtor threw it in as a sweetener after Gabe smiled at her and touched her upper arm a lot, and they've been stealing cable from next door since they moved in; Jepha knows this because he held Ryland's tools while he cut and spliced the line, and ducked behind the porch every time someone passed. People in this neighbourhood do not take kindly to the way he looks.

The carpet is the colour of fresh mushrooms in white sauce, which is his favourite of the things that Alex cooks.

There is a couch, but there are rules: no dogs on the couch. The rules exist for a reason (and the reason is to give Jepha something to do) Jepharee, and Jepharees sit on the floor, Gabe insists, where they can be properly petted.

Right now Nate is sitting on the four-seater couch, picking blood from between the links of his bike chain with the precise end of a stiletto knife: Jepha has learnt all the knife names so he will always know which thing to hand to Alex. Sometimes Alex ignores him and asks Ryland and Ryland gets it wrong; he does that on purpose. Jepha understands.

Nate is using Jepha's bare inky-scarred shoulders as a foot rest for his socked feet (his socks have pictures of cakes on them), and every now and then he kicks Jepha in the back of the neck to hear the sounds he makes. Dexter is being screamed at by his sister, whose name will not stay in Jepha's head no matter how many times he watches this episode.

The front door bangs violently open and closed in one short rebound, and footsteps so long and irregular that they can only be Ryland's pound the length of the hall and vanish up the staircase, barely pausing for the corner half-way up. Jepha starts, but Nate pushes him back down, foot to spine.

"If Gabe wants you, he'll ask for you, Puppydog," Nate reminds him, and there is the rattle of a chain passing through an open palm like an underscore. "If you get up now, Dexter's Lab will go off air and never come on again."

Nate lies a lot.

Jepha folds his arms under his chin and listens carefully. Ryland has come home alone and at speed. He left with Alex, carrying things and walking quietly. The answer to this complex equation is Equals Something Wrong. Nate leans forward to tickle him behind the ear, and Jepha promptly forgets to be worried, just pushes his head into Nate's hand until Nate calls him a dirty little bastard and speculates on the presence of a boner. Jepha's dick is actually limp-flat against his thighs and the floor, caught in his track pants, but it would be rude to say so.

After maybe five minutes of antsy squirming under Nate's foot, unable to take in any of the commercials for plastic toys that shot water and flew off ledges in shoddy graphic sequences, Nate took his foot off Jepha's neck and toed him gently in the side.

Standing by the TV room doorway with his cap on the right way round and his long hands dangling by his sides, Gabe says, "Nate, we're taking the puppy."

And from the shadow on Gabe's far side, Andy Hurley (never just "Andy", always "Andy Hurley", a heartbeat on the tongue) says, "What use is he going to be? He can't even fire a gun." His glasses give Jepha the look that makes his belly hot and his bones cold; fear and an ass-widening, dick-hardening tingle. Andy Hurley's painful perfection; he hurts Jepha into the most whole he ever gets. Gabe rations him.

Gabe looks down at Jepha, on his knees half-naked in a blurred selection of scar-bumped tattoos, and shrugs, his hands flopping outwards at the end of the gesture. "He's useful to have around. A good distraction." Gabe lifts his cap and smirks back at Andy Hurley. "He distracts you, doesn't he?"

Andy Hurley gives him the finger; Jepha scrambles to his feet, starts looking for his sneakers with glasses like lasers boring into his back, into his tats. It's okay, it's just the way things are here; Andy Hurley loves him, he just doesn't like Jepha very much. It's okay.

((FALLING ON DAN IS FROM DAN'S POV))

It takes maybe a second to really focus on the room below; everything looks weird from above but there's antiseptic mint green on the walls and in Jepha's experience that means vets. The vent is like a Venetian blind over his eyes and the metal tunnel around his semi-clothed body is cold with gases, with poisons. Jepha feels giddy and the view doesn't help none, no.

Mikeyway's hair is very easy to identify; no one else in the world has hair like that. Jepha fought in fights before Gabe saved him, and Mikeyway's strange thorn bush of dyed-black hair was a frequent fixture, like the blood and the pain and the hardon and the threat of death. So that's Mikeyway, underneath him.

The person strapped to the gurney is less easy because they have no face.

But Jepha knows Alex's hands; he's watched them cook, read, and slap him upside the head for being an idiot. He's watched them outlining strings of trilingual swearwords in dances through the air, watched them prod Ryland in the chest with a weird, twisted smile on his pretty face, watched them handling knives with the grace of a master at work. He knows Alex's hands, and right now they are curled convulsively into fists; Don't Come Into My Kitchen So Dirty fists, pain fists.

When Jepharee Howard was even smaller he lived in a trailer with his Gramma, and she had a song she liked to song in a voice like a Southern crow, and it went, "you don't need to be a doctor to know my heart is broken"; Jepha is not a doctor by anyone's count (he can first aid with the best of them and he knows the recovery position like he knows his own skin but medicine has too too many words), but Alex's heart is lying in a metal specimen tray by Mikey's elbow, and Jepha believes that means he is too late.

He holds his breath and puts his hands over his mouth in the cramped darkness as Mikey reaches over his surgical tools for something else. Jepha swallows and flattens himself against the metal floor. He follows the movement with his eyes; Mikey's bare bloody hand passes over two silver circles joined by a bent bar on its way to fondle the handle of a scalpel. Handcuffs.

Handcuffs.

Sometimes Jepha's body does things and he doesn't know why. Sometimes it freaks out without telling his brain what's going on. Sometimes he sees things out of the corner of his eye and loses the ability to stand. Jepha can acknowledge with certainty that he is very, very broken on the inside.

Right now he's getting a badly-timed demonstration; his legs shake like there's a train passing under him, and a warm wetness spreads from his crotch, getting the slippery metal floor of the tunnel even more slippery, soaking into his skin, stinging the scratches on his belly. And his lungs turn to wood in his chest, and his arms tremble, and all he can do his press his hand harder against his lips, and hope.

Mikey's head turns upwards to face the vent. Jepha can see him sniff, his face blank around the flare of his nostrils; he can't tell any more if he's holding his own breath or not. He feels like his head's detaching from his body and floating away; he feels like he's drowning in a metal tunnel; he feels tiny and skinless and everything is going very badly wrong.

"Yes," Mikey says to no one in particular, reaching back. Jepha tries to slide backwards over the lubrication of his own piss, but his legs aren't cooperating any more. He wants to shut his eyes now, but they're frozen open, his hand still crushing his lips into his teeth, his snakebites painfully into his gums.

When Jepha looks down through the vent and focuses, he is looking down into Mikey Way's expressionless brown eyes, like pits. They have their own gravity. Something thumps through the plaster below the corner bend of the tunnel, by Jepha's knee, and he doesn't even have the self-control to flinch when a knife tip screeches through the steel.

It must be very strong. Mikey must be very strong. He always looked so thin.

The knife screams down the air conditioning tunnel the length of Jepha's paralysed body, screams through the galvanised steel like the scream building in Jepha's head. He has never figured out how to emit the thing, but now seems like the time, if there ever was one. Nothing comes out of his mouth; his gums are bleeding from his piercings, and his body is crushing his lungs. Perhaps he will die before Mikey Way ever lays a hand on him.

Jepha bites his own tongue. He won't let Gabe down like this. He won't. He can't. He won't. He can't.

The floor beneath him begins to shake as hard as his legs are shaking. There is another tortured noise, and a jerk downwards. The gravity of Mikey's brown pit-eyes is pulling him down, he thinks, and there is nothing he can do. The floor jerks. Drops a few inches. There is a cracking sound, a cloud of plaster-dust, and he falls.

The floor is hard and hurts, although not as much as banging his face and shoulder on the gurney as he crashes, the shielding square of vent-floor twisting out from under him to give him a gash on the stomach, but none of that matters; he's had worse, and he's about to get worse. All the worse in the world.

Mikey Way regards him with disinterest for a moment, then leans down and snaps the silver cuffs around his wrists. "Hello."

Jepha feels like he's swallowed his tongue. He can't breathe. He can't move. He feels like he can't see, but the scene is laid out in front of him, so he must be able to see, but he feels like there's a darkness coming down over his eyes and he can't breathe. He can't move. He can hear words but they don't make any sense, and when something touches the back of his neck he just makes a glurk noise and drools blood from his gums onto what may or may not be a shoe.

"Wait a minute, okay," Mikey says, and Jepha doesn't know if he's talking to him or to a phone, "I just need to finish with this guy here."

nononevermind: ... and then fuck Dan, oh noes, I just realised the bad part of this
apiphile: and Bert would wiggle down between them and randomly groppe Vicky-T's tit.
apiphile: yeah, there are quite a lot of bad parts of this if you want the truth
apiphile: but I was mentally assigning Dan to the FOBs
nononevermind: I don't, I want the amazing parts with the blood and the sex, if I'm being honestly, ha
nononevermind: okay, though, THAT makes sense
apiphile: Because of course they don't have Andy.
nononevermind: if Andy stays with Gabe
apiphile: So Dan gets stoned with Joe
nononevermind: aaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
apiphile: and has all-night talks with Pete because Pete can't sleep and Dan's afraid to.
nononevermind: er, I had no idea that Dan and Joe would give me that reaction
nononevermind: I think Dan would be in love with Patrick via Pete, because Pete would talk him into the PATRICK IS THE FUCKING LIGHT point of view
nononevermind: also for some reason, Dan and Pete are fucking. Because they would.
apiphile: *G* Okay, totally. I think Dan would basically just fuck anyone who was up for it in that situation. TV!Dan is after all a sex addict.
nononevermind: trufax. Except for some reason not Patrick, or at least very rarely
apiphile: just because Patrick doesn't feel like it, I guess
apiphile: he's more monogamous?
nononevermind: that just seems right, though I'm not sure why. I blame Pete.
nononevermind: outside, TV!Patrick appears pretty damn stable, but he's absolutely headfucked by Pete
nononevermind: and I think his focus is pretty much PetePetePete at any given moment
nononevermind: so yeah, monogamous via headbefuckery
nononevermind: Pete did to Patrick what Gabe wants to do to everyone
nononevermind: except better than Gabe ever has, probably
nononevermind: and not entirely on purpose, on Pete's behalf
apiphile: ... I imagine Gabe is ITCHING to get his hands on Pete's brain, too.
nononevermind: I think if Gabe ever REALISED, like saw past Patrick's kind of... dominant, cranky exterior, he'd probably want to both kill Pete and HAVE HIM FOR HIS OWN.
apiphile: Why do I find that adorable.

It's a cheap motel. They always are.

Well, not always. Sometimes Pete decrees that they're worthy of a palace and Patrick doesn't actually argue him out of it. But tonight it's a cheap motel, and duffel bags like dead bodies lurking in the shadowy corners of the room. Dan can't help making the comparisons; Dan can't help looking at the places the light doesn't quite reach.

"Joe--"

Joe passes him a book of matches like he read Dan's mind. Dan's pretty sure he can't read his mind, he just knows the number one thing Dan's asking for at any given time; soft green embrace of smoke.

"Thanks, man".

They're alone, because it's a new suite of rooms and that means Mommy and Daddy (it's okay to call Patrick that inside your own head, he definitely can't hear you there) have to go christen their beds. Slurp slurp slam crash. Dan's not sure what it says about him that he kind of wishes he were there too. Not sure if he means part of the action or just watching it going down, but he's not about to discuss that. He looks like a freak (Pete tells him often enough), he doesn't want to sound like one too.

It's good shit. It's always good shit (no exceptions), because Joe, well, Joe's got a good nose for good shit, and Pete might not smoke but he's a princess about things like that, and he knows people. Just how many and how many of them apparently don't want to kill him yet continues to amaze Dan. Puff, puff, pass the pot along.

Joe accepts the bowl with stoner gravity. Their own little ceremony, the touch of fingers to fingers. Dan returns his nod with the same silly not-quite-smirk.

"Maybe I should cut this," Joe is saying, his corkscrew hair stretched out like a defunct slinky between his finger and thumb, bong between his thighs, time sticky and the thumps from next door stilled.

"If you do," Dan takes the bong from him, "I win. By default. If you cut your hair, it's proof that mine is better."

Joe freezes and peers sideways at Dan like he said something deeply offensive about pork. "Is not."

Dan stretches a hunk of his own lank and limp hair - darker than Patrick's but about as excitable - out like a windsock and says, "Look at that beautiful bitch. Your stupid-ass tangles will never be as amazing and sexy as that. It's straighter than your dick."

There's a trail of smoke lying in the air between them like a landing strip. Dan's never been on a plane. He kind of regrets that he's probably never going to go on a plane either, but on the other hand he is currently pretty fucking high. Joe bounces the springy string of curls at Dan so it dances. "Look at that motherfucker bounce," Joe says sternly, spoiling it a little by snickering to himself. "It is bouncing like a teenie at an N*Sync show. Bounce, hair. Bounce. Your hair doesn't bounce."

"My hair has better taste in music," Dan points out. "My hair is cool."

"I don't know why you keep fighting about your hair," Pete is leaning in the doorway like the still from some cheesy romance novel, naked to the waist (and then a hideous jumble of red silk boxers - who let him buy those? - and one sock that matches the one still dangling from the doorhandle like a used condom), his eyeliner in streaks and his own hair in deranged spikes.

It's best not to ask, even yourself, what Pete's doing when he's not in the room. Dan was already good at blotting out the sound of sobbing when he ran into them, but then that's prison for you. Doing the federal facility hokey-pokey (in, out, in, out) already taught him to be deaf to other people's misery; Pete's eyeliner tracks are not his business.

"You're just battling for second place Dan I need to borrow you."

apiphile: my brain just supplied stoned!Dan and stoned!Joe making out really slowly and sloppily, and Pete just stomping out of his and Patrick's room and pulling Dan off Joe by the shoulders. "SORRY, JOE BABY, I NEED TO BORROW THIS."
nononevermind: OH OH. I BET DAN PATS JOE'S HEAD A LOT. Because shaved head stoned petted Joe needs to happen in every verse.
apiphile: "Dan Whitesides, human dildo," Joe picks up the bong and waves Dan goodbye, pretend-sad.
apiphile: But I also like the idea of them having hair-fights.
nononevermind: oh dear god, that just supplied, in Adam Sandler voice "NO CURLY HAIR IS BETTA." "NO, STRAIGHT HAIR IS BETTA."
apiphile: like, they get stoned and Joe's 'fro and Dan's long hair and Pete like, makes them growl at each other.
nononevermind: *rubs heads together in fighty motions*
apiphile: gets some of Joe's curls and a chunk of Dan's straightness and makes them go "GRRR" and "WOOF"
nononevermind: ahahahaha, ongoing hair battles: clearly they have them
apiphile: Yeah, but because this is still TVevenifitsAU, I figure Dan's got a problem
nononevermind: and then Pete's like "anyway, MY hair is the best." and then they turn on him, like giggling dogs (hyenas!)
apiphile: Because in TVcanon he's got Jepha who basically doesn't have limits when it comes to how long and how hard Dan can fuck him
apiphile: but who does he have now?
apiphile: Also, Pete AND Dan, both having horrible crushing black moods at once?
apiphile: Jesus.
nononevermind: Pete's mercurial as fuck, too. Yeah. That.
nononevermind: they can't be down together, that would be oppressive, oh christ
apiphile: Yeah, that'd rub off on everyone else. Pete snapping and bitching until Patrick hit him out of self-preservation, knocked him out cold.
apiphile: and Dan basically paralysed by misery
nononevermind: I think Patrick would be having to smack a bitch more then usual
nononevermind: isn't that funny, I'm now starting to see how much good Andy did for them in canonTV. Seeing the story from his POV, it's harder to see what he does for them
apiphile: *nod* And from Joe's ... well, Joe was kind of distracted for that entire story.
nononevermind: a whole lot of shit lays on Joe Troh, here, I think he spends a lot of time petting Dan in some way or another
apiphile: see that's the thing
apiphile: we've built these circuits
nononevermind: poor, shoeless clueless Joe, ILhim wandering around the hotel stoned so much still
apiphile: and those four-man circuits do not work if you remove one or more of the players.
apiphile: Poor stoned little Joebaby. I love him being petted by Travis.
apiphile: I wanted to make them get together, I really did
nononevermind: they fall down in interesting ways, some things stay up okay, but some things really fall down
nononevermind: I wanted them together tooo, ha. They were like I WOULD FIC THEM, but uh, this is the AU and alas, there is no Joe/Travis still.
apiphile: ~Like the Berttangle. It works, but it can't work for as long or as well as the original, because Vicky-T is also fire, you see?

So, where was I, at the beginning?

There's a thump, and a bang, and the eye of the camera is standing by Nate in an empty bedroom, watching Gabe bounce past the open door... on the end of his arm, scrabbling and half-dragging, there's Jepha Howard. The collar of his gold-foil sports jacket caught tight in Gabe's hand, a set of brass-knuckles acting like cuffs on his fingers now instead of a weapon.

Gabe goes bouncing on down the corridor like Jepha weighs nothing, like his jacket (a gift, a gift) isn't tearing against the uncarpeted floorboards.

And the eye of the camera follows him down a fairly dark corridor - the house was cheap because the renovation never finished, marble blocks sitting in the fireplaces, curtain rails of exquisite beauty without curtains on them - to the open golden mouth of a low-energy light-bulb-lit room with a grand double-bed pushed into one corner. Gabe slings Jepha through it like he's tossing a bag of sand, and Jepha crashes into the foot of the bed in a heap, limbs limp and languorous, you don't have to be a genius to know he's enjoying it.

Gabe kind of shuts the door. Not exactly shuts - he knows who he keeps about him, and he knows what they need to keep them contented, and he likes an audience almost as much as he likes being in control, and boy does he like being in control.

So there's some heavy breathing at the crack of the door and he ignores it, just kicks off his shoes, aiming to miss Jepha by a foot and hitting him in the knee instead (hey, nobody's perfect) and tosses his own jacket to one side like he's walking into the Groucho Club. Because everything's a fucking performance and the world is a stage and Andy had better be fucking watching him.

Andy Hurley, handsome hobgoblin with hippy hair and a hate-on for haut couture (or clothes of any kind) is waiting like the good boy Gabe made him, sitting like a kindergartener on a barstool with a pleather top - Andy Hurley, vicious criminal vegan, won't let his balls touch leather. Unless you don't tell him it's leather, of course.

Not that Gabe's done that more than once a week, but sometimes you have to let Andy know who's in charge, viz. Gabe.

He kicks up and picks up the bundle of Jepharee and tosses him onto the bed. Ties him not-too-tenderly (no point with Jepharee) to the tracks, black and white movie villain saving the princess's silly little soul, naked as the day he was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd, etc., etc.

Good Dog.

"There never was such a good dog as little Jepharee, in all the world," Gabe says, undoing his shirt, button by button. Andy snorts, Gabe flicks his fedora at him. Aims to miss. Aims not to please.

There really is no better good dog in all the world, nothing so good as a dog you don't have to train. Jeph, Jepha, Jepharee, Good Dog, Fall To Your Knees, Do As You're Told, came pre-trained and broken-in. All he needed was a figurehead to fill the spot and he was keen to wrap himself around Gabe's fingers faster than you could say ... oh look what's that in Andy's hand? Knife.

The ultimate addict. No regard for own safety. No words but Gabe's. No gods before me. Perfect and perfectly fucked up.

Gabe is long and lovely and supple and naked to the bone, crawling over what he owns like a shadow over a sundial. A hand to the throat, from behind, Jepha's contorted perforated pretty face thrust into the pillows (because even good dogs forget themselves sometimes and Gabe doesn't like being bitten thank you, bebé) and another wrapped and trapped in the hair-product nest of his best pest, his dirty little pet, the wolf who cried boy.

"Iiiiii like the broken ones, I like the bendy ones," Gabe sings, lube and laziness and no preparation (pre-broken, pre-prepared, precious little Jepharee) and his dick between buttcheeks. "I like the struggling, I like the sub-miss-iiooon," Gabe trills, and his stride is perfect and his pitch is perfect and his prick is perfect and his hips are hipper than a hipster's heart. Oh yeah.

He chokes just for the sound of Jepha's breath at his command: I say whether you live or die, I say whether you come or go, I say yes, you can't say no. Perfect. A little nursery rhyme made flesh. And he pulls back, pulls out, pours out a little blessing on Jepha's curved-in back. Oh, yes, Andy-Pandy, writhe around in that.

Gabe bounces onto the balls of his feet, his balls slapping his thigh, gives a bow for the peanut gallery, gives the go to the second wave, waves a hand to Andy, climbing down like a gorgeous gargoyle from his seat. And now, the knife.

Andy passes like someone's nightmare. Gabe strokes his back with sweat-sticky fingers as he goes; a knotted mask, unblemished muscle, a monster who thinks he has morals. Of course Gabe loves him.

And now Gabe's the director, the stage-manager, the hand that guides the blade. Watching Andy is like watching buildings burn, if buildings bled and cried and twisted bloody, bodily, beneath his knife. Between his ribs and their skin. Gabe watches the knife sweep in; Andy and the sharp thing, the wolf and the claw, the Cobra and the fang, of course. And he listens to Jepha sob like the sea on the shore and strokes his chin with sweat-wrinkled fingers as they fuck.

"Get his thigh, you're ruining the pattern," Gabe calls. Andy the moral monster doesn't see the bigger picture; always his failing. But they look so sweet together, his boys, his brilliantly brightly-coloured boys, the wolf and the wound. So sweet he could just lick them (but Gabe doesn't like the taste of blood).

Too soon the show is over, too soon the curtain falls; Gabe kicks the door open and beckons red-faced Ryland inside like the vulture to the feast. Oh, Jepharee's fine. At least, he will be with a little TLC. Leave that to the grave-beetles. To Ryland's huge hands and sundry voices.

"Clean him up and get him as pretty as you can," Gabe says, a hand in Andy's blood-tangled hair. "Jepha has to see a man about a man's decisions."

And Andy's panting breaths are like poetry in the air.

nononevermind: Ryland as the end is what made me go OH WAIT
nononevermind: GABE IS AWFUL
nononevermind: you were implying Ryland also fucked Jepha, right? Because that's how I read it
apiphile: actually it's the line "Ryland's huge hands and sundry voices" that was there specifically to fuck with you.
apiphile: Nope. ;) Although I'm sure he has.
nononevermind: the huge hands I definitely noticed
nononevermind: oooh, that makes me uncomfortable
nononevermind: I just realized I would be really unsettled and possibly upset by the possibility of Jepha and Dan meeting
apiphile: well, who else has huge hands and silly voices? Who should be fucking Jepha into a mattress?
nononevermind: oh, I so got you, don't worry
apiphile: yeah because you know what? Jepha wouldn't recognise what he recognises in canonTV. And Dan would be too distracted
apiphile: It'd be like love that never happened.
nononevermind: like I don't want them to meet because the idea that they'd meet and-- yeah, that
apiphile: Like if Quinn hadn't bothered to get up from the dumpster when Bert was being beat on.
nononevermind: that's what makes me upset (uh ohhh), the idea they'd meet each others eyes and see nothing at all
apiphile: ... god I'm such a sadist. I was like "I must make that happen now"
nononevermind: I was thinking the same thing from when I realised it made me feel all gut churningly wrong

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