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They’re still holding each other. Still connected. Onyx rests his cheek against the side of Andres’ head, warm and tired and wrung-out. Gooey and sweet like cookie dough.

Everything comes to a standstill. Onyx feels like he just took an uppercut to the jaw and his vision is shaking back into place. Sunlight refracting through a multi-paned window. Andres jars him to his core.

"You--,"

He swallows, because he's a hundred percent sure he's hallucinating, now. Or that this is a joke. It has to be a joke? Haha, funny joke. Funny end of the world joke.

One hand presses at the base of Andres' spine; the other hovers above the back of his head.

"--you can't just say that."

Distantly, he wonders how many other people he's said this to.

[attr="class","mintag"] andres buenaventura

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[attr="class","mitchel"]Onyx could listen no more in silence.

For several long minutes, he’d listened to a player at a nearby table berate their poor waitress for everything, from the strength of his drink, to the luck of his rolls.

Little did he know, the game was rigged. There was no winning-- not for him.

In order for the plan to work, though, he didn’t get to know that.

So the waitress bore the brunt of his aggressions, repeatedly. Over and over. And Onyx would be the first to say he wasn’t a decent guy-- he treated people like shit more often than not. But there was only so much he could listen to the grating, half-slurred voice of a drunk, angry, soon-to-be-broke dickbag, before his very thin film of patience ripped like a virginal hymen when met with a lusty and careless lover.

He was there, of course, to keep the peace. That was what he was paid to do. So when he reached out and grabbed a half-empty glass-- not his own, but not one currently being used-- stood and chucked it at the guy before sitting back down again, he figured that was exactly what he was doing: keeping the peace.

The glass hit the angry man in the back of the head and shattered, sending a spray of glass splattered with little droplets of blood scattering to the ground. Luckily, most of the people nearby had the same idea Onyx did, and had moved for their own peace of mind long before.

Unfortunately, the glass wasn’t nearly heavy enough to do any real damage. The blustering man stood up, even more red faced, bellowing “WHO DID THAT?!”

There was a shocked silence that followed before Onyx stuck up one pale arm and pointed to some poor schmuck sitting at the bar next to him, without turning to look.

“They did.”

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]open
mission: rigged gacha rolls

[attr="class","mitchel"]Before Onyx had gotten snapped up by Team Rocket and foisted into a life of crime he’d worked at a handful of these carnivals, taking tickets from sticky-handed children or slinging spoons of fried dough. It was easy work for little money and no background checks…

…which made him leary as he followed Andres through the crowds of this one. A rickety-looking roller coaster roared along its track and if Onyx squinted hard enough he could imagine the car full of screaming teenagers sailing out to sea. Someone bumped into him and he snapped aside, realizing he’d lost track of his companion.

All at once the crowd became an uncomfortable crush around him, and his hands twitched at his sides, where he pinned them to avoid reaching out and strangling anyone.

Where had Andres said he was going, again?!

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: rondez-view circulation

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Being close with Andres was changing him in ways he wasn’t certain he wanted to be changed in.

Then again, he wasn’t really doing a whole lot to fight it. He had long ago identified the source of the corruption and all he had to do to stem it was sever it… but he wasn’t really willing to do that. So, in a roundabout way, he decided, it couldn’t all be bad.

This led to shit like this: the pair of them traipsing through the fucking woods-- decidedly not Andres’ strong suit, something well proven and admitted to-- looking for one of Andres’ kids. He’d been weird at battle school, Andres said, and that had gotten him worried, in a weirdly paternal way that Onyx found equally as weirdly attractive (but was not about to voice out loud). Then the kid’s mom called Andres when he hadn’t come home.

One thing led to another and now, here they were, a search party of fucking two, kicking around in the dirt outside of Lilycove, where the late winter smell of molding leaves mixed with the cold salt-stink of the sea as it fought to ascertain its dominance.

Vatin shrunk through the underbrush, a purple streak in the dark, hunting for tracks or any sign of the kid. Ziadem curled through the cloudy sky above, though the thick forest worked to hinder her ability to see anything.

Onyx trailed after Andres, unable to fight the feeling of unease that prickled along his spine.

“Something’s weird, here.”

[attr="class","membot"]andres buenaventura mission: clefable in the feywilde

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