is not actually a Lotus Exige (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
veira) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
marigoldflame2011-11-02 03:01 pm
veira) wrote in marigoldflame2011-11-02 03:01 pm
Entry tags:
cutlass
World: MSPA; Homestuck; Alternian AU
Characters: Bro, Dave
Wordcount: 1727
Summary: They always end up coming back with more than they meant to get at the market.
Note: Sort-of-sequel to this.
Culture Clash
The port is humid and sticky, hot as hell, clogged with the reek of high summer sweat and rotten wood, rotten food, fish and fruit turning slowly in the sun-baked heat of the constant cloud layer overhead. Everything stinks of sulfur and brimstone this time of sweep and Bro breathes in damp salty air, his hat pulled low and his bare feet sticking to the gross dirty planks of the boardwalk.
Sopor's gone up since he bought it last. Way up. And his wallet is hurting from keeping Dave in shoes alone, not to even mention the atmospheric skyrocket of pricing the bright season always brings around. He can't keep paying this much. He snarls at the greenblood salesgirl and passes over the beetle carapace bills anyway, blue and green and purple iridescent in the ambient lava-hot glow of the overhead clouds.
It's when he turns away, pick-up ticket for the sopor barrels in hand, that he realizes Dave's not glued to his hip like he's supposed to be.
Shit.
His heart cranks up to speedcore BPMs, breakbeats hammering away into paranoid agony like they're going to bust right out of his highblood ribcage as some demonspawn alien baby. He breathes too fast, eyes flicking everywhere—right left up down back forward—knees twitching to run and find him, protect him, guard him before some cull-happy asshole sees the color of his mutant gills and slices him open thigh to throat in one smooth motion.
"Dave!" he snaps out, calm, shaded, none of the panic in his voice.
And then five buildings down, right at the corner of the intersection, a hand with a broken sword shoots up in the air, rock solid like a beacon for Bro to follow.
He's standing there on the threshold between the filthy broken cobblestones of the port town proper and the creaking, rotting boardwalk that sits between this tiny little settlement and the sea. The royal purple hipster trash scarf is still snuggled up to his ears, mouth swallowed in the thin knit that's stifling in the heat like this. He hates it, but it's necessary. Bro steps up next to him, the smooth cobblestones gritty but warm under his webbed toes.
"You're supposed to stick with me, kiddo," be mutters low, quiet enough that it's almost swallowed by the crowd. He shouldn't be angry but he is, protective fear burning like a hot little coal in his chest that never goes out. If they were home he'd lob a smuppet at Dave's head.
Bringing Dave out in public always stirs up the raw paranoia in him.
Dave just shrugs though, not looking up, not phased in the least. His free arm is occupied by dirty plastic bags full of clothes and explosives and special land-grown vegetables for his special diet. He nods ahead, into town, his shades reflecting all red from the clouds above. "What's that?"
Bro steps around him and looks. Almost immediately he winces. The plaza is crammed with trolls of every hemotype, a rickety plywood stage set up in the middle of them where a blueblood hawker perches on a pole at one corner, rattling off prices in auction jargon and grinning like a tax collector all the while. On stage an orangeblood holds the wrist shackles of a pale skinned alien with big big eyes and gills that tremble acid green along its naked sides.
"Slave auction," Bro says. It comes out more hollow than he'd intended.
"Yeah, I can see that. What are they? Where do they get them?"
"We own like a hundred solar systems up there. Sometimes the Empress sends a bunch of the conquered species back home. Fucking playthings for the kiddies." He can't help but sneer that last part, disgust turning over in his belly. There's a reason he went AWOL from the army, hitchhiked and hijacked his way back to Alternia with not a dime to his name. He can roll with most of what the universe throws his way, but if there's one thing he can't stand, it's how Her Imperious Condescension runs the show out in the black. "C'mon, Dave."
"Wait," he murmurs, rooted to the spot, broken sword clutched white-knuckled in one hand. "Shit. What do they do with them?"
Bro stops, jaw clenched. He's rather talk about almost anything but this. "What do you think, Dave? They're slaves. They put them to work during the daytime or underwater where their owner can't go. Work them to death and buy up some more to replace them. They're cheap as shit when a new load comes in. Biomod testing. Throw them in gladiator pits with some rabid monster and watch the show. Sex slaves. They do whatever they fucking want with them, Dave. They're not people anymore once someone owns them."
He's itching to get out of here. Retreat to somewhere he doesn't have to think about the horrors he knows happen in space. He can almost hear the prices the hawker is calling out—abysmal disgusting prices masquerading for the worth of a sentient being—and it makes him want to cut the whole lot of them to shreds. He takes a step, bare feet escaping back to the boardwalk. Dave has three seconds to follow before he drags him.
But he calls, "Bro, wait," and it's got that same hesitant fear in it. His sword hand reaches back, broken steel wavering in the hot air. He takes a breath and nods his head again toward the plaza. "They brought that one out before but no one wanted her. They got really shitty prices. They said they wouldn't sell her until they got an offer that at least broke them even."
"Dave—"
He turns around and looks at Bro. He slips his shades down and looks over them, eyes hard and angry and determined and still that tiny bit scared. "The really shitty prices are for the ones that end up as sex slaves, right? Because they want the best product for everything else?"
And in that look—eyes the window to the soul—it dawns on Bro that Dave wants that girl. He wants her more than anything. He'll stop at nothing to get her out of that snake's den of monsters.
"I'm not buying you a sex slave, Dave."
"You're just gonna let some dickhead take her? Have his way with her?" The words cut like hot lead, spat like bullets.
Bro steps back over the boardwalk, legs ridged and angry as he points a finger at Dave's face. Truth always cuts worse than lies. "I have no money, Dave. None. Sopor is sky high expensive and your diet is expensive and living life is fucking expensive, and I can't afford another mouth to feed."
"I'll buy her," he snaps, still glaring at Bro over his shades.
"Your shitty comic doesn't bring in enough to care for a slave."
"I'll use that pension Redglare's been sending you every month that you always ignore like it doesn't exist."
And that scares him. He jumps the distance between them, grabbing Dave by one skinny shoulder to make him pay attention. "Because it doesn't exist. That money is a goddamn trap, Dave. She wants you to use it, and the instant you do she's got fishhooks right in your gills, yanking to make you dance like a puppet. It's not worth it for one little slave."
"Not worth it?" Dave scowls at him, pulling back in sick disgust. "What if you'd decided it wasn't worth it to scoop me out of that sea glass trap when my lusus was boiling alive? Did you count the dollar signs out right there in the surf as he screamed and suffered? Did you decide I was worth saving because of fucking monetary reasons? What the fuck, Bro?"
He rips out of Bro's grasp, pushes him a solid pace away. They lock gazes for a long minute, the slave hawker rattling off dirt-low prices in the background, before Dave tugs the hipster scarf up to his ears again and walks with rock solid certainty toward the plaza.
Bro watches him, his mouth still open in quiet ashamed astonishment. Sick nervous tension coils in his belly. He can already feel Redglare's harpoon-tipped agreement clauses hooking into his skin.
But that doesn't make Dave any less right.
Characters: Bro, Dave
Wordcount: 1727
Summary: They always end up coming back with more than they meant to get at the market.
Note: Sort-of-sequel to this.
The port is humid and sticky, hot as hell, clogged with the reek of high summer sweat and rotten wood, rotten food, fish and fruit turning slowly in the sun-baked heat of the constant cloud layer overhead. Everything stinks of sulfur and brimstone this time of sweep and Bro breathes in damp salty air, his hat pulled low and his bare feet sticking to the gross dirty planks of the boardwalk.
Sopor's gone up since he bought it last. Way up. And his wallet is hurting from keeping Dave in shoes alone, not to even mention the atmospheric skyrocket of pricing the bright season always brings around. He can't keep paying this much. He snarls at the greenblood salesgirl and passes over the beetle carapace bills anyway, blue and green and purple iridescent in the ambient lava-hot glow of the overhead clouds.
It's when he turns away, pick-up ticket for the sopor barrels in hand, that he realizes Dave's not glued to his hip like he's supposed to be.
Shit.
His heart cranks up to speedcore BPMs, breakbeats hammering away into paranoid agony like they're going to bust right out of his highblood ribcage as some demonspawn alien baby. He breathes too fast, eyes flicking everywhere—right left up down back forward—knees twitching to run and find him, protect him, guard him before some cull-happy asshole sees the color of his mutant gills and slices him open thigh to throat in one smooth motion.
"Dave!" he snaps out, calm, shaded, none of the panic in his voice.
And then five buildings down, right at the corner of the intersection, a hand with a broken sword shoots up in the air, rock solid like a beacon for Bro to follow.
He's standing there on the threshold between the filthy broken cobblestones of the port town proper and the creaking, rotting boardwalk that sits between this tiny little settlement and the sea. The royal purple hipster trash scarf is still snuggled up to his ears, mouth swallowed in the thin knit that's stifling in the heat like this. He hates it, but it's necessary. Bro steps up next to him, the smooth cobblestones gritty but warm under his webbed toes.
"You're supposed to stick with me, kiddo," be mutters low, quiet enough that it's almost swallowed by the crowd. He shouldn't be angry but he is, protective fear burning like a hot little coal in his chest that never goes out. If they were home he'd lob a smuppet at Dave's head.
Bringing Dave out in public always stirs up the raw paranoia in him.
Dave just shrugs though, not looking up, not phased in the least. His free arm is occupied by dirty plastic bags full of clothes and explosives and special land-grown vegetables for his special diet. He nods ahead, into town, his shades reflecting all red from the clouds above. "What's that?"
Bro steps around him and looks. Almost immediately he winces. The plaza is crammed with trolls of every hemotype, a rickety plywood stage set up in the middle of them where a blueblood hawker perches on a pole at one corner, rattling off prices in auction jargon and grinning like a tax collector all the while. On stage an orangeblood holds the wrist shackles of a pale skinned alien with big big eyes and gills that tremble acid green along its naked sides.
"Slave auction," Bro says. It comes out more hollow than he'd intended.
"Yeah, I can see that. What are they? Where do they get them?"
"We own like a hundred solar systems up there. Sometimes the Empress sends a bunch of the conquered species back home. Fucking playthings for the kiddies." He can't help but sneer that last part, disgust turning over in his belly. There's a reason he went AWOL from the army, hitchhiked and hijacked his way back to Alternia with not a dime to his name. He can roll with most of what the universe throws his way, but if there's one thing he can't stand, it's how Her Imperious Condescension runs the show out in the black. "C'mon, Dave."
"Wait," he murmurs, rooted to the spot, broken sword clutched white-knuckled in one hand. "Shit. What do they do with them?"
Bro stops, jaw clenched. He's rather talk about almost anything but this. "What do you think, Dave? They're slaves. They put them to work during the daytime or underwater where their owner can't go. Work them to death and buy up some more to replace them. They're cheap as shit when a new load comes in. Biomod testing. Throw them in gladiator pits with some rabid monster and watch the show. Sex slaves. They do whatever they fucking want with them, Dave. They're not people anymore once someone owns them."
He's itching to get out of here. Retreat to somewhere he doesn't have to think about the horrors he knows happen in space. He can almost hear the prices the hawker is calling out—abysmal disgusting prices masquerading for the worth of a sentient being—and it makes him want to cut the whole lot of them to shreds. He takes a step, bare feet escaping back to the boardwalk. Dave has three seconds to follow before he drags him.
But he calls, "Bro, wait," and it's got that same hesitant fear in it. His sword hand reaches back, broken steel wavering in the hot air. He takes a breath and nods his head again toward the plaza. "They brought that one out before but no one wanted her. They got really shitty prices. They said they wouldn't sell her until they got an offer that at least broke them even."
"Dave—"
He turns around and looks at Bro. He slips his shades down and looks over them, eyes hard and angry and determined and still that tiny bit scared. "The really shitty prices are for the ones that end up as sex slaves, right? Because they want the best product for everything else?"
And in that look—eyes the window to the soul—it dawns on Bro that Dave wants that girl. He wants her more than anything. He'll stop at nothing to get her out of that snake's den of monsters.
"I'm not buying you a sex slave, Dave."
"You're just gonna let some dickhead take her? Have his way with her?" The words cut like hot lead, spat like bullets.
Bro steps back over the boardwalk, legs ridged and angry as he points a finger at Dave's face. Truth always cuts worse than lies. "I have no money, Dave. None. Sopor is sky high expensive and your diet is expensive and living life is fucking expensive, and I can't afford another mouth to feed."
"I'll buy her," he snaps, still glaring at Bro over his shades.
"Your shitty comic doesn't bring in enough to care for a slave."
"I'll use that pension Redglare's been sending you every month that you always ignore like it doesn't exist."
And that scares him. He jumps the distance between them, grabbing Dave by one skinny shoulder to make him pay attention. "Because it doesn't exist. That money is a goddamn trap, Dave. She wants you to use it, and the instant you do she's got fishhooks right in your gills, yanking to make you dance like a puppet. It's not worth it for one little slave."
"Not worth it?" Dave scowls at him, pulling back in sick disgust. "What if you'd decided it wasn't worth it to scoop me out of that sea glass trap when my lusus was boiling alive? Did you count the dollar signs out right there in the surf as he screamed and suffered? Did you decide I was worth saving because of fucking monetary reasons? What the fuck, Bro?"
He rips out of Bro's grasp, pushes him a solid pace away. They lock gazes for a long minute, the slave hawker rattling off dirt-low prices in the background, before Dave tugs the hipster scarf up to his ears again and walks with rock solid certainty toward the plaza.
Bro watches him, his mouth still open in quiet ashamed astonishment. Sick nervous tension coils in his belly. He can already feel Redglare's harpoon-tipped agreement clauses hooking into his skin.
But that doesn't make Dave any less right.
Back on the boardwalk, snuggled up right at the edge of the dock, their three barrels of sopor sit on a loading pallet next to a sheer steel box with four quarter-sized holes punched in the top. The door is held closed with three titanium padlocks. Bro stands there watching as Dave fits brass keys into each of them, one at a time, twisting the locks open and tossing them over the edge of the dock into the lapping waves.
The door screams with rust. The inside of the cage stinks of alien sweat and cold fear. Huddled up in the far corner, careful not to press up against any of the baking-hot walls, the girl sits with her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around herself. She looks at them, eyes squinting and untrustworthy through thick glasses. She's thin, bruised and battered, but just by the look on her face, Bro knows there's a fire in her that's raging, angry, determined not to fall apart even though she's been thrust unwillingly into this alien world. There's no way she's breaking. She's made of diamond and steel.
"Hey," Dave says, voice softer than normal, hands held up to show he's unarmed. "Uh, I guess I'm the one that bought you. But fuck that," he says, shrugging, watching her. "I don't really want a slave. I'm Dave. You got a name?"
She stares at him through those soda-bottle lenses, mouth curved down and calculating. She's had her entire life betrayed and destroyed. There's no reason for her to risk her trust again. She says nothing for a long long time.
Dave doesn't falter. He stands there rock solid, waiting, letting her give the information in her own time and on her own terms.
Finally she licks her split lips and says, "Terezi."
"Terezi. Cool." Dave nods. He toes one of the bags at his feet in her direction. "Nice to meet you, Terezi. There's some clothes in here. If you get dressed we can leave this shitheap behind."