#fallout fanfiction
Here’s a hot take: villains should be relatable.
Not every villain, not every time, and certainly not to everyone at once, but there should be moments. We should, occasionally, be able to see ourselves in the bad guys, be able to understand how they got there.
Becauseit reminds us not to fucking go there.
Antis who get upset about villains having relatable qualities (often couched as being “romanticized” or “woobified”) are people who cannot bear to ever think of themselves as having the capability of being wrong.
Every human alive is capable of being a horrible person. Relatable villains remind us to keep an eye on that shit.
This is literally half of what makes me write Vulpes and Joshua so much. It’s delightful to make them into people instead of just generic “bad guys.” I want you to love them, hate them, love hating them, and hate loving them.
Fallout: Returning Home A/N Ch. 45
There’s something somehow odd, and downright difficult, about writing Vulpes in a domestic setting.
Istruggled with this chapter. Not only was there the “oh lord these introductions are taking forever, part 5 is gonna be a mile long,” but on top of that… I’ve written a huge number of scenes ahead that have more of a “this is a family” feel to them (super spoilery so I won’t get into detail). But writing him with his wife? His kids? It’s weird.
Writing the scene with Calista, Vulpes, Spes, and Corvus was an absolute breeze. That chapter pretty much wrote itself. Spes’ voice needs a little tweaking, but that’s mostly my failed attempts at making her a little BAMF wastelander with a hint of a Mexican twist. I’ll get it right eventually.
That scene though was just… It’s the family he wants. A gorgeous wife that is both into him and severely independent all at once, a son who he can be proud of and who is also respectful to him, and now he’s finally got his daughter back and she’s this wild nostalgia trip in the weirdest way for him.
But now writing him sitting down to dinner with his actual family. Eugh. A wife that is batshit insane and incredibly clingy. A son who barely respects him, a son who is going to make an excellent Frumentarius but you can never figure out what he’s up to, and one who is pretty much outright timid by Legion standards and is more a lover than a fighter. Two well broken in slaves, but they are at minimum a decade older than him, and he barely needs even one himself. (Please read “needs” in the way HE is looking at things, thank you. You all know I don’t support this horseshit, right?)
It’s a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of back-talk, a lot of “get yourself together” in four different ways. And now two of them blatantly despise his prized daughter, one who the hell knows, and one is just “ooh traveling must be fun, I want to do that.” And his one slave who can talk is just bringing up all these dreadful memories of his first wife that he’s not mentally ready to face and probably never will be.
So while he has this dream family with Spes, he also has this real family with Lavinia and it is probably more frustrating to him to have that than to not have the one with Spes. So when he’s home he’s just simmering all the goddamn time, and now he feels obligated to be home to protect his daughter suddenly.
This man has a whole spare bedroom just so that he has a place to sleep if he doesn’t want to deal with his wife.
Poor dear is a MESS.
And then there’s Calista.
Calista is pretty much feeling like a moving target in a bad part of town. Ajax wants her gone, Lavinia probably wants her dead, Janus is a wildcard but she expects the worst, Lex is a weird kid but at least he seems kinda normal, Europa is seemingly contentedwith being a slave somehow, Petrus literally had his tongue cut out by someone and is still just running around being a middle-aged errand boy, Spes is a firecracker and telling her she needs to be in some man’s shadow or she’s never going to be safe, and Corvus clearly has some daddy issues and Cal’s got enough of those to cover the whole damn army.
So all through this her brain is just singing this little chorus of
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble,
And if I stay it will be double,
So come on and let me know!
Poor dear is ALSO A MESS.
Does she stick it out and try to learn more about her biological father? Does she run back to Joshua at Dead Horse Point? Does she flee to New Vegas and hope Awkward Science Daddy can help her sort her shit out?
No idea. This has evolved from fight VS flight to outright freeze.
Now, freeze is one I can understand. I am a long-time sufferer of freeze. Shitty job? I CAN’T LEAVE, I WON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. Shit living situation? I CAN’T LEAVE, WHERE WILL I EVEN GO? Shit abusive guy? I CAN’T LEAVE, IF I DON’T KEEP HIM HAPPY HE WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING. Hell I had all of that happen in the first six months of 2021 alone. So on the one hand, writing it in Cal is easy.
On the other hand, having her come to decisions? Even though I already know what she’s going to do, it’s actually much harder to write her taking action than I anticipated. She needs this struggle though, to overcome it and start to become her own person here and not let everyone just keep jostling her around like a package no one wants to open.
On a final note, I just want you all to know that the “Janus Inquisition” line was totally accidental but I love it and now I just keep repeating NOBODY EXPECTS THE JANUS INQUISITION over and over in my head and it’s making me uncontrollably giggly.
Fallout Fic Writing Discord!
It’s happened! It’s here! Come check it out!
This is for all things Fallout Fic Writing, with dedicated NSFW channels available but not as default, fun faction roles, a Writing Sprint bot, places for prompts, an In Search Of channel, off-topic channels, and more!
(Reblogs and shares and such more than welcome!)
Fallout Fic Writing Discord!
It’s happened! It’s here! Come check it out!
This is for all things Fallout Fic Writing, with dedicated NSFW channels available but not as default, fun faction roles, a Writing Sprint bot, places for prompts, an In Search Of channel, off-topic channels, and more!
(Reblogs and shares and such more than welcome!)
Fallout Fic Writing Discord!
It’s happened! It’s here! Come check it out!
This is for all things Fallout Fic Writing, with dedicated NSFW channels available but not as default, fun faction roles, a Writing Sprint bot, places for prompts, an In Search Of channel, off-topic channels, and more!
Fallout Fic Discord!
I’m in the process of building a Fallout Fic Writers discord server! There have been small groups like this in the past but I would love to get something (hopefully bigger) started up now.
Currently I’m looking for anyone who might be interested in helping get this set up and rolling. Reblogs appreciated!
Please reach out to me if this is something you might want to help with.
Fallout: Returning Home A/N (Ch 42-43)
So what happens when you write half a chapter and then come back to finish it 7 years later, is that you find you have new and different ideas. In some cases, it just means you have ideas at all, where you didn’t before.
This is what happened with this chapter. I was very, very stressed about what to do to introduce all the members of the household to Calista. I knew Petrus and Europa would be first - the slaves would be up earlier than the rest of the house to ready the family for the day. Ajax had already met her the night before, so that was one more slotted into place. But then who? Lavinia? Janus? Lexarius? Spes? Corvus?
It was absolutely a daunting task. I didn’t want them all coming down the stairs like the Brady Bunch to find and meet a new person. But one by one didn’t seem like a good read either. I originally wrote what I had of it simply because it was willing to be written, at least up to that point - I was actually working on this somewhere between the posting of chapters 15 and 16 (so right around this time in 2015, actually). There were a lot of snippets I wrote “ahead” like that, simply because if I wrote those it meant I was writing SOMETHING instead of staring blankly at parts that refused to be written.
So along comes me a few days ago wanting to get this going again, and I thought. Hm. There’s a good chance Lavinia gets up before her boys do. That means she would meet Cal first. Lavinia gets violent when she’s jealous. We need to take our time introducing her, Vulpes has to talk her out of the gun safe first, so to speak. How do we get Cal out of the house for a bit?
Why would Corvus, an adult, still be living at home with his adoptive Uncle? Let’s move him out. But if we move him out, there’s no valid excuse for Vulpes to keep Spes around anymore either. Let’s move them both out, into a separate home. And then have Cal start her day there.
It ain’t rocket surgery, but it sure as hell felt like it.
This also gave me significantly more opportunities to have Cal and Spes interacting, another place Cal can spend some of her time at Fort City, and much easier ways to get her and Corvus the ability to have private conversations. Win, win, win.
The only thing it sacrifices is the scene where Vulpes explains Calista to Lavinia. We get to see its aftermath at the end of chapter 43. Unfortunately it means a lot less show and a lot more tell about how precisely “buckets o’ crazy” Lavinia really is, but I think there’s already so much going on in these chapters that adding that heavy action there would make it just overpowering.
I might still write this scene and post it in Stories for the Road. We shall see.
There are a few things that happened in the writing of these chapters that I am immensely proud of.
The biggest one, I would say, is the editing I did to the scene where Europa is meeting Calista for the first time. Initially I had Europa and Vulpes being much more familial in their interaction. Almost like a grandmother in the scene. That was how it had been written in 2015. But Europa is only a handful of years older than Vulpes himself, and is still his slave.
Now, I am writing it that he is far kinder to his slaves now than he used to be - but we have to remember that this is still the woman that before (and occasionally even while) Vulpes had Sylva he would bend over his desk or bed and take his frustrations out on. I remember one scene in particular where he’s sitting at his desk and she is on the floor, leaning against his leg with her head on his lap like a dog. He’s absolutely raped her before, he’s likely beaten her as well, and before all of that she belonged to the previous head of the Frumentarii - a man I’ve called Cerberus. And that’s the man that cut out Petrus’ tongue to keep him quiet. So it’s not exactly likely he was particularly nice to her either.
I’m trying to keep her in a balance of still having that ‘snap to it’ response without being fully afraid of Vulpes now. He has both Lavinia and Spes to sleep with, and she does what she’s told well enough that he has had no reason to want to punish her in many many years. But that does not erase the trauma she’s dealt with. So a good bit of editing made their interaction much closer to that of employer/employee than anything else. This is the dynamic I would like to maintain for Vulpes and his slaves from here on out. Maybe not anyone else’s slaves, if we see them, but definitely with his own.
He has also, to put it bluntly, run out of energy and interest in abusing them. He’s never been particularly cruel to Petrus. He’s had no reason to be. Europa though… has seen some shit.
In that editing I said to myself “I want him to be a changed man, not a different man.” And honestly being able to tell the difference is something that came from a lot of personal growth (and trauma) I’ve had in the last year or two. I’m glad it paid off somehow? If nothing else, it helped this scene a lot.
Another thing that took a lot of work was finding the lost voice of Corvus. I’ve got two scenes written that Corvus is in with Calista (for future chapters, again old writing from 2015). And I’ve written scenes with discussion of him and his behaviour as well. So I needed to make sure that when I wrote him in chapter 43 I didn’t upend all the work I’d done to build his character already. It took a good couple of hours to find all the scenes I needed to reference and then read them, but I’m pretty convinced I’ve done it.
Corvus is a character I am really fond of. He’s got that classic Inculta trait of family is everything, but also the issue that the Brothers don’t want this orphan in their family to begin with. It’s going to be a good bonding point for him and Cal - the simple fact that they’re Incultas that certain members of the Inculta family want nothing to do with. For a family so focused on family, they sure do have a lot of drama.
In going through and writing these new chapters I’m also trying to keep up with the other parts of the series. I’ve begun adding more to A Lake of Ashes (which actually has another 20 chapters, and is technically complete, but will need to be edited as the plots get modified along the way), and will only add chapters to it as the related material in RH is posted. They will stand side-by side until the end of RH.
I will also continue to post in the V6 Files, and try not to go past what’s current in RH either until V6 runs out of content. From here on out V6 will be far less smutty and far more plotty. One important thing to note however is that with V6 I am placing the chapters in chronological order by timeline, but that does not in any way mean I am writing them that way. Right now anything I write for it will get slotted in to wherever it should be in the timeline, so “new” chapters might not be the most recent one chronologically. In this case, I will update the chapter summary of the 'last’ chapter in the list to say what chapter to go to to read the new content, since I don’t think it will update correctly to show you that chapter automatically.
I will also likely be adding more Ghoul stories as we go (to Don’t Go Gentle into that Good Night).
Blessedly, at least Memoriae is a completed work. I do not plan to revisit it with the possible exception of maybe doing some editing at some point, but that is very low priority at the moment.
So all in all, we are making progress again for the moment. This story comes to me in fits and bursts, even though I have a massive outline/timeline to work from and know how the story ends. It’s the getting there that keeps changing. Only yesterday I had an idea that seriously changed how certain things will happen to reach the end of the story that made them make far more sense. So hopefully the time this is taking will be worth it!
Join the Fallout Fic Writers Discord Server!
This server has been growing and now has a large variety of offerings!
We offer writing sprint nights twice a week (at the moment), and a dedicated sprinting channel that is available for anyone to use any time they’d like.
There are dedicated discussion channels for Fallout 1&2, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. We also have dedicated NSFW channels (discussion, writing prompts, and a Kinktober channel waiting for October to roll around) to keep the rest of the server relatively clean!
For fun we have channels like off-topic, memes, a channel for discussing your OCs, and even a dedicated NSFW channel for Vulpes simping (this works for everyone - you only have to see it if you want to!) - and I am open to adding more channels as well. There are also tons of reaction roles for fun as well!
We also have a huge number of Writer’s Resource channels: general fallout/writing sources, an NSFW channel for the same, a channel to get into technique discussions, a fan art channel (and a NSFW one too), a music channel, and most recently a channel to learn Latin with (for those writing a lot of New Vegas content).
There is definitely more I have not covered, so why not come check things out! We’re trying out events, have already had an impromptu Jackbox Party night, and all around have a great time!
(If at any point the link has expired and you want to check it out, just shoot a message to me, @adira-tyree!)
Unusual Character Associations
I was tagged by @the-laridian - I’m going to do this for Calista from my Fallout: Returning Home story
SEASONING: she doesn’t know it, but salt is in her blood. Her father grew up near the Great Salt Lake, and as a child he and his brother would be a part of tribe trips going to collect salt to preserve their foods and to trade with.
WEATHER: the dark, windy moments before a thunderstorm
COLOUR: orange, like the canyon
SKY: a sunrise through the clouds
MAGICAL POWER: fire. not control of it. just fire. fire EVERYWHERE.
HOUSE PLANT: let’s be real, Cal would have an entire sunroom just full of plants. She is that lady who sees a dying plant at WalMart and says IF NOT FRIEND WHY FRIEND SHAPED and brings it home to resuscitate it
WEAPON: her axe. deadly if the aim is right, can be thrown or used up close, and once it’s out of her hands there’s nothing that can be done about it.
SUBJECT: this has got to be either history or sociology
SOCIAL MEDIA: instagram. she posts pictures of her plants and follows a bunch of ghouls and tells them they are beautiful and to know their worth.
MAKEUP PRODUCT: none. just tattoos.
CANDY:candy isn’t something that’s really in Cal’s life. She loves the sweetness of fruit though. And if she knew about maple sugar she would be all about it.
FEAR:loss.
ICE CUBE SHAPE: the really tiny ice pellets you get at places like Sonic. She is always amazed that ice exists, and wants to just play with it like a kid in a sandbox full of kinetic sand.
METHOD OF LONG-DISTANCE TRAVEL: her own two feet, thank you kindly. those gecko-taxis are cool and all but she just doesn’t feel comfortable going that fast.
ART STYLE: expressionism
MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURE: a phoenix. She is surrounded by those who should have died but burst back to life in a new way.
PIECE OF STATIONERY: moderately crumpled paper made from anything she can find or buy. She can make her own simple paper with plants and recycled scraps if it comes down to it.
THREE EMOJIS:
CELESTIAL BODY: the view of the milkyway from Zion.
…
I’m tagging @buyo-art!
regret | deacon x sole survivor
“i don’t feel the same way, charmer.” his voice was barely a whisper.
sole felt a lump grow in their throat as they tried to fight back the tears that threatened to escape. they tried to let out a simple, “okay, i understand,” but only silence filled the air.
deacon knows. he catches the tears building up in their eyes and knows their voice is silently attempting to scratch its way out.
he desperately wants to stop their pain, wipe their tears and remind them that he thinks no differently of their relationship, but something in his heart tugs as sole fights back to hide their vulnerability from him. “i’m sorry.” is all he truly lets out because in reality, his words are just as lost as soles own.
to sole, his words become a blur. their knees become weak as their vision becomes clouded with tears they refuse to let out.
‘i’ll give them time,’ he thinks but his feet struggle to find movement as he continues to stare down at sole, speechless for the first time in a long while.
before he could make a move, sole rushes out of the room, not sparing him a second glance. the sound of the door shutting behind him breaks deacon out of his trance, grounding him back to reality.
a tinge of regret pokes at his heart and he silently pushes it away, knowing that this was for the best. he didn’t have feelings for them and it was nothing but the truth.
or so he thought.
-
the next few weeks are almost a blur for him as his partner goes mia from the commonwealth. the first two weeks, he tries to let it be, convincing himself that sole might’ve needed some time to themselves to sort their feelings out, so he lets them. seeing them might be the last thing they need, so he tries to fight the urge to do so.
yet, as time goes by, the worry in his heart rapidly grows when they’re announced as missing by the minutemen. he grows unnaturally quiet upon hearing their words and feels himself grow weak at the possibilities of what could’ve happened to his partner.
searching far and wide did almost nothing for him and only flared his concern. there was little to no clues of their disappearance and the hope that he would find them sooner or later began to slowly deteriorate.
deacon takes in a deep breath, trying to soothe his mind of all the concern and regret. how could he let it get this bad? why couldn’t he at least check up on them day to day instead of running away?
deep down, he knew the truth of it all. it screamed volumes to him and no matter how much he tried to silence it, it grew louder with every passing second. he avoided sole as much as they avoided him because deacon refused to confront the truth between them both. he never provided closure because he never knew how to.
and the more he refused to face the reality of the situation, the longer the days stretched. he found himself pushing everyone away, spending countless nights with tears streaming down his face, hoping someday sole would just turn up on the railroads doorstep. he didn’t care if they forgave him or not— he just wanted to see them safe.
tonight, he found himself with a bottle in his hand, hunching over the counter as he drank the night. he silently thanked lady luck for landing him in an almost empty bar for no one to catch the state he put himself in. unbeknownst to him, a certain mercenary watched his back from the minute he’s entered the bar till the very last drop of his nth bottle.
“you know, i don’t think that’s a very healthy thing to do.” deacon looked over his shoulder, and though his vision continued to spin, he automatically recognized the annoying face that pestered him.
“let a man ‘ave fun, asshole.” he slurred, trying to push out a grin. maccready rolled his eyes and occupied the seat near deacon, folding his arms.
“i’m serious.” mac pulled the bottle away from his hands, tossing it to the bin nearby.
“hey, i was-!” before he could finish, the mercenary cut him off, not wanting to listen to a word that left his mouth. “do you wanna talk about it?”
his words cut through the facade he tried to pull off and deacon immediately fell silent upon his words. “i know we don’t meet eye to eye all that much, but i hate to see you like this.”
as much as he wanted to lie to his face, continue his said facade, he wasn’t physically able to upkeep that image anymore. it was extremely tiring, especially with everything going on. he let out a sigh and allowed his head to fall on his arms that rested on the table. “you wouldn’ understan’.”
theres a pregnant pause, but he eventually responds. “i don’t, but i could try.”
it takes him a few moments to decide whether or not to confide in someone, especially maccready of all people. to his dismay, the words leave his mouth before he could stop himself from letting it out.
“you won’t tell?” it’s a point of no return— he knows — but for some reason, he doesn’t take it back. was the consequences of actions finally getting to him? probably. he didn’t have time to think as maccready let out a small, but shocked, “of course.”
and so he lets it out— not everything — but enough for maccready to get the message. how it all lead up this point and how it contributed to their disappearance.
“i think i made a mistake.” he says, voice barely a whisper. “i made a huge fucking mistake and i don’t know what to do.”
mac looks down at agent with sympathy, detecting the pain trapped in his voice and sighs, “we all do. it’s just the human in us.”
the rest of his words grow obscured as his eyes droop, the alcohol and sleepless nights finally catching up to him. slowly, but surely, the world blacks out.
-
it’s almost dreamlike— the feeling of his hair being brushed softly and the way a familiar voice lulls him awake. he lets out a small groan as his head pounds violently from what he hoped was the night before. he thinks it’s all in his head; the soft touches and the soft voice that continued to fall upon his ears. it’s so painfully familiar, yet it couldn’t be but he felt his heart jump at the possibility of it.
“sole?” his eyes shoot open but close back in an instant as the gentle light illuminating from the window cracks filled his vision. his head dips on what seems to be their lap, trying to block it out desperately. he felt the same hand that brushed his locks rest on top of his eyes to protect it from the sunlight that only made his head throb more.
“morning sleepyhead.” upon hearing that sweet sound, tears began to form in his eyes once more. the one person he’s yearned to see for what seemed like centuries was finally within arms reach. just like that, his tears fell effortlessly, collecting in soles hand as it streamed down his cheeks.
“deacon?” before they could remove their hand to reveal the tears spilling from his eyes, he quickly places his hand on top of theirs as a silent request to keep his eyes hidden.
“i’m sorry.” he chokes out, voice cracking through each word that left his lips, “i’m fucking sorry. i-“ he gently squeezed the same hand that rested on top of theirs. sole remained silent, watching as he spoke through ragged breaths. he tried his best to muster out his apologies, thoughts — feelings — through the pounding of his mind.
“everything i said, it was a lie. it was all a fucking lie just to avoid having some kind of attachment in my life. i hurt you because i was scared of facing my fears.”
“lie? scared? deacon, what-,” their words drifted into nothingness as deacon continued on.
“no matter how much i tried to run away from it, i knew i couldn’t. i had feelings for you. feelings more than this partnership that we both agreed to do, more than the best friends we claimed to be.” at this point, his feelings poured through the cracks of his heart and he knew that he would fix it this time, even if sole no longer felt the same way. “i fell for you hard. i was in love with you and i still am, sole.”
after a deep breath, he continued on. “you don’t have to forgive me. you don’t even have to give me the chance to love you properly, i just want you to know i’m sorry. i’m sorry it had to take you to leave from my life for me realize how much this meant to me. how much you meant to me.”
for a moment, it’s still; the air seems tense at first and time seems to freeze. there’s this sense of fear that overtakes his mind for a mere second.
soon enough, time seems to continue on as sole places a soft kiss on his forehead, allowing it to linger for a few seconds. “we’ll talk about this more when you wake up, okay?” they whisper and as reassuring as it sounds, he’s still terrified. terrified that he’ll wake up alone.
“will you be here when i wake up?” he tries to let it out calmly, but there is a hint of panic and unsureness in his voice he couldn’t push away any longer. all of that seems to melt away as sole lets out a small chuckle, his heart swelling with a mix of pain and relief.
“yes.” they reassure, “i’ll be here for as long as you need me.”
he let out a relieved sigh, keeping his hand on top of the one that covered his eyes. for the first time in weeks, everything finally felt right.
“love you, charmer.” before he could hear their reply, he felt himself being pulled into slumber that quietly called his name.
Hello ghouls and ghoulettes! I took some of the prompts from this post (courtesy of @celticwildechild <3) for a few drabbles until the 2nd for anyone. I’ll do Musketeers OT3 or any of the 3 pairings, or for Fallout, Pen and Hancock, Nick and Hancock, I can try my hand at some generic F/M!SS with any of the companions, or some general banter between the Goodneighbor crew (they have a costume party ever year, no lie, Kelvin won last time).
- “Boo! Did I scare you?”
- “You call THAT scary?”
- “Halloween without pumpkins is like Christmas without trees!”
- “Worst. Carving. Ever.”
- “Why don’t we make this party a little scarier by playing truth or dare in the dark?”
- “You call that a costume? It’s like three tiny pieces of fabric!”
- “I can’t believe you’re going as the same thing! One of us is going to have to change.”
- “Come on, dress up in it, for me.”
- “Are those fake vampire teeth in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
- “We could ditch this lame party and just make out next to the skeleton.”
- “Um, I’m scared. Will you hold my hand?”
- “No way am I going in there.” / “Please go with me! I’ll hold your hand the whole time.”
- “Karaoke, anyone?”
- “Who wants to do Jell-O shots with me to celebrate?"
- "Let’s swap costumes.”
- “I’ll go as this if you go as that.”
- “Want to stay home and watch scary films?”
- “It’s the police! Quick, hide!”
- “I made pumpkin pie!… Sort of.”
- “Ofcourseit’s edible body glitter."
Someone discuss modern AUs for Fallout with me, because they’re my favourite thing to write and I can’t get my head around them for Fallout.
I can’t just ignore the whole ghoul/synth/BoSPoS thing, but I can kinda ignore the end of the world thing? So it’s just the world (as we know it~), in our timeline of 2016, but ghouls are a thing (fairly rare chemical mutation, a very groovymutation), synths are… idk, commonplace genetic engineering, and the brotherhood knock on your door on Sundays and ask if you’ve heard about their lord and saviour Arthur “to the max” Maxson?
I just want Hancock watching Sky Sports with his feet up, Piper writing her latest article in Starbucks, and Curie taking on every science module she can in every class in every college ever (also Curie in dorms because social studies and just panicking).
I want my typical tropes gdi, give me coffee shop meet-cutes and fake dating stories with texting and netflix and someone please show Deacon Snapchat.
For@inkquery who wanted half-naked rockstarDeacon up to his usual mischief in a Hallowe’en-y Goodneighbor. Featuring Pen (my F!SS from Death in a Duster), Hancock, and Fahrenheit.
Three disguises to hand: half-naked rockstar, slick vampire, and one damn good ghoul mask.
He had been making the rounds all evening, picking up drinks on someone else’s tab, stealing snacks from the few traders looking to make some caps on one of Goodneighbor’s busiest nights, and even coming first andsecond place in the costume competition.
There were a couple of pumpkins around, but most of the carved fruit tended to be of the melon variety – and most of those were being used as target practice in the next street.
Overall, it was a good time, not a single person had recognised him, although he hadhad to swap masks with a very lovely young lady when a blonde attached to the mayor’s waist sent a narrow-eyed look his way.
Here, amidst the noise and the drinks and the laughter, he was invisible. He was basically the best spy in the world, he was brilliant, he was fantastic, he was invincible—
“Deacon?”
Now, Deacon had often heard his name sound like a threat, as if his very existence was an affront to some people, but then most of those people were Desdemona and she preferred a small pistol in a calf holster.
The memory of a minigun shoved against his spine made him wince.
“Fahrenheit,” he called cheerily, turning on one foot to see a scowl the size of the Glowing Sea. “Lovely to see you!”
“It’s not,” she replied flatly, chewing on a cocktail stick with some glow-in-the-dark dye in her orange hair. “Although, I’ve been meaning to have a word.”
“Huh,” Deacon replied very eloquently, and made a mental note to run for the nearest exit. “Are they of the four-letter variety?”
Fahrenheit tilted her head to the side in thought, and just when Deacon thought he was going to get away with this scot-free, she aimed a very small smirk over his shoulder that said, look who I found.
“Well, well, well, look what the kitten dragged in! Pen’s not here to save you now, Deacs,” Hancock taunted, using the nickname that Deacon would forever maintain he hated – and he did, but only when Hancock used it.
Fahrenheit gave him a smile full of teeth – and whendid she start looking so menacing? That was definitely new. Had she grown? That hardly seemed fair. “Well, seems he’s been treating himself all night.”
Hancock tutted loudly. “Bet he’s not paid a single cap either.”
Deacon took a step backwards and found that, somehow, he had been cornered, and the brick wall at his back rudely refused to let him through.
Well, shit.
If they killed him, he was going to be so angry.
Fahrenheit looked past him to raise a brow at Hancock, and Deacon read the expression as clear as day, get it.
“Get what,” Deacon asked, enjoying Hancock’s frown when he could understand their silent conversation. “What is he getting?”
“Stop doing that,” Fahrenheit muttered, glaring when he offered her a smile. Amazingly, she was completely unmoved. Crazy. “I think you’ve pulled enough tricks today, time for yours.”
Deacon managed to get the word trickout of his mouth before a bucket of destroyed pumpkins was dumped over his head. The cold, slick mess sliding down his neck and making him shiver. If that wasn’t it all, Hancock topped it off by putting half a pumpkin on top of his head.
“Make a scary face,” Hancock said, disappearing with a bark of laughter.
Deacon raised unimpressed eyes to see Fahrenheit smirking at him, and then, of all things, she chucked him on the chin and murmured, “Cute, now clear off.”
Deacon reeled back with a vaguely affronted frown when she walked off without a backwards glance, but as he dashed his pumpkin helmet to the floor, he rolled on his heels and hummed.
She definitely liked him.
It was the work of seconds to break into the State House and slip past the few on-duty guards – most of them were celebrating out front, and the others were already a few too many sheets to the wind.
Following the blueprints he had committed to memory, he’d only managed to get his soaked shirt off of his head when he heard footsteps outside the double doors of Hancock’s room, and absent-mindedly congratulated the ghoul and his shadow for having trained their people so well.
Annoyingly well.
“If you’re going to prank him, my side’s next to the wall—” Pen cut herself off with a strangled noise when she saw him, somewhere between aggrieved and amused.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
Pen wouldn’t look at him, hand shielding one side of her face. “I don’t know, seeing you like this feels like looking behind the curtain, it’s all wrong.”
Deacon snorted, wiping the rest of the pumpkin seeds from his head with a frilly shirt, and then pulled his jacket back on. “What’s funnier, me pretending to be you in your bed, or just getting into Fahrenheit’s?”
Pen opened her mouth as if to roundly deny both ideas, but then she saw him trying to get seeds out of his ears. “Both, I’ll stall Fahrenheit. Do you have a blonde wig?”
Deacon pulled his jacket open to expose ten pockets, two masks, and a fake nose. “What do you think?”
