[not with a bang] into the wastes (1)
Dec. 22nd, 2011 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songbirdspeaksTitle: Into The Wastes (1)
Fandom: Johnny’s & Associates, various other Japanese celebrities
Characters: Shibutani Subaru, Karina, Ninomiya Kazunari, Nishikido Ryo, mentions of Maruyama Ryuhei and Ohno Satoshi
Pairings: Subaru/Karina, Subaru/Nino, Ryo/Yasu implied
Rating: NC-17 for sexual activity
Word count: 3760
Warnings: Post-apocalyptic dystopian AU, subtle gunplay, road head, femdom
Summary: Nino arranges for Subaru to pick someone up. Nino is going to get it when Subaru gets home, and not in a good way. Well, actually...
Notes: hilariously somehow this is not non-con? I think it's only because Subaru is excited by the concept of hot chicks telling him what to do. But. Yeah.
Subaru has learned to ride with a body in the passenger seat. Not a dead one, just a quiet one, a nervous-looking fugitive looking for passage somewhere else or a sleepy freedom fighter wanting to take a nap. The Sentries at the outposts around the city tend to stare hard at one guy in a truck, even with Subaru's ever-rotating series of hats and multitude of hairstyles. Someone in command knows him--the only thing keeping him alive is the constant fresh sentries earning their pay every month. If he slaps a new coat of paint on the truck, wears a hat, and has some pretty non-threatening thing sitting pretty in his passenger seat, they look less like smugglers and more like idiots trying to find their way past the Wastes. City Sentries don't care about idiots looking to get themselves killed.
This time, it's a girl. Subaru doesn't know where Nino found her, but she introduces herself as Karina. She's got an old-school MIDI hidden in her shirt that's supposed to go right to the guys trying to do things too big and too bold for Subaru. She funny, a little air-headed when Subaru asks her things, but sharp when she focuses, her sense of humor a softer echo of Nino's. Subaru likes her. He always tends to like the girls, but he especially likes the pretty ones--and especially the ones that remind him of Nino, of course. He's never been scared of admitting his bias.
"You think it's going to help?" he asks, watching her fiddle with the radio. "The MIDI, I mean."
She glances back over her shoulder. "No," she admits, at first, "not on its own, anyway. Which is why there are freedom fighters at all, right? but it'll help." She grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like 'it better, for all the work I did to get it', which makes Subaru snort.
They're coming up on the last outpost before the desolation of the Wastes. Subaru hunches his shoulders forward, tugging his baseball cap lower by the brim. Next to him, Karina is pulling her long light hair up into a bun, and once her hair is settled she adjusts the positioning of the MIDI in the cavern of her breasts. (Subaru prides himself on only glancing over once. Okay, twice.)
There's no line or anything, just a small cluster of trucks under a large tarp when they drive past the opening in the wall and the shoddy metal hut where the guards bunk down and attend to the radio. There's a bored-looking young man curled up in the seat at the guard tower by the second wall opening. Subaru rolls his window down as he pulls up, and then reaches for his fake ID and the border-cross pass Nino had rigged up for him that morning. Next to him, Karina takes a deep breath, and sinks back into the seat. She's quirked her lips in a way that makes her look a little less stunning, but when Subaru raises an eyebrow at her she crosses her eyes to make him snort.
"I'm gonna need ID for you both," the sentry says, "what're you folks doing out here?"
"Her truck needs some new parts, we're gonna take a look and see if we can find some replacements," Subaru explains. His apparent bald honesty makes the Sentry blink, and then nod in understanding. The Sentries know what it's like for supply runners. Subaru's palms are slick with sweat, and Karina's fingers are trembling when she passes him her ID, but Subaru holds onto his calm.
"You guys are--good--to--go," the Sentry says, after a moment of stamping and printing in his logbook. The sand this far out near the Wastes ruins fancy City machinery, so all the checking and logging has to be done by hand. Which is why fooling Sentries is usually not a problem. The Sentry passes everything back, but when he sees Karina he stares, hard, at her, for a moment. Subaru can see the faint glimmer of recognition. He re-evaluates Karina right then--she's more than a gorgeous woman.
Before the Sentry can act on his gut and ask to see their IDs again, Subaru takes off, pushing the accelerator flat against the floor and hurriedly forcing his window closed. A Wastes sand facial isn't pleasant--he knows from experience. The Sentry hasn't moved from his guard booth. Subaru threw up a prayer to whatever diety was around for the invention of laziness. Next to him, Karina has started to laugh, and Subaru glances at her. "Subaru Sanchez," she manages, her voice breathless. She holds up his ridiculous ID, and collapses into giggles again, her cheek pressed against her headrest. Subaru has to admit it's a little funny, and he grins his laughter back at her as he pulls them slowly over a ridge and into the Wastes proper.
"How much farther is this place?" she asks, when they've been driving in the emptiness for an hour. She's long since stopped trying to find any radio station besides Nino's mocking enka, but even the City stations have been replaced by static. The mood in the car sobers the farther they get from the City's outskirts, and Subaru reaches past his shyness to the well in him that likes Karina's smile.
"An hour, maybe, without stops," he says.
"Stops for...?"
"Oh, you know, this and that," he says, and waggles his eyebrows at her until she gets what he means. It takes her a long 1-2-3 seconds, and then she looks away, hiding laughter or a blush with her hands.
"You are terrible."
"So they tell me."
"But maybe that's not such a bad idea after all..."
"Oh ho," Subaru says, and he has the car parked off of the loose path in the Waste's dirt in a minute. Both Karina's eyes and her smile shine with mirth as she leans forward and kisses him. She's unfamiliar. Unlike Nino's easy way of sliding under his guard (and into his pants), Karina's a light touch along his collarbones and into his hair, her hands everywhere and nowhere as she tugs his lower lip between her teeth. Subaru groans, cupping her jaw in his palms and digging his fingers into her skin. She seems to like the force of it, leaning into his touch as his hands move into her hair. They kiss once, twice, a slide of tongues and lips, until Subaru pulls back, eyes dark. "Is that a gun sticking into my gut, or is there something you need to tell me about what's in your pants?" he asks, more lightly than the thudding heart beating against his ribs would suggest.
She looks down at the pistol she's pressed into his stomach. "It looks like a gun," she admits, and sounds halfway sorry.
"What'd they get you for?" he asks.
"Get me--oh, sweetie, no, I'm not City. I work for Tsunku. Those guns of Ninomiya's killed my sisters." She sounds both sad and very, very angry when she says that, her pretty eyes hard like diamonds.
"I'm very sorry to hear that," Subaru says, and means it, "but those were stolen from us. He didn't mean for the Sentries to get a hold of them."
"We know," she says, "but there's already enough big players here in the Wastes. The last thing we need is some wildcard who doesn't answer to anyone inventing things that can kill us all. Or... two wildcards, I'd bet."
Subaru grins, slow. He's nervous when he admits, "you'd be right," but he's slowly coming down off of his panic. (...not from anything else, though, if his tight pants mean anything.) He's rewarded when her gun shifts, sliding across his hips to press into his side.
"Drive," she says, her lips against his earlobe, "your friend's jammer is messing with my comm, so you need to come along."
"You are about five times hotter when you're threatening to kill me," he says, mouth suddenly dry, "and you were way hot before. Just so you know."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," she says, but her free right hand is sliding up his thigh. He glances at her, then returns his eyes to the road. He has driving to do.
Karina's hand is sure as it unravels his belt, and Subaru shifts his legs farther apart in what he hopes is a subtle way. Apparently he fails, of course--Karina half-sighs into his ear with laughter at the back of it--but he doesn't really care once her hand has snuck past his fly and cupped him through his boxers. "Fuck," he manages, coherently.
"Maybe if you're nice," she says, and strokes him again from tip to base. He bites at his lip, the pain a distraction from the urge to hump her hand, and keeps still besides a tremble in his thighs as she presses her palm to the head of his cock through the fabric. Her fingers are cold when they sneak under the waistline of his underwear and pull his cock free, but her breath is warm when her mouth closes around the head of it.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he whispers, a rhythm matching the bobbing of her head, but he doesn't cry out until she closes her lips around the base and sucks. When he does, she pulls away some, her tongue tracing figure-eight patterns over the head and across the slit, and he sucks in a long breath between his lips.
She shifts enough to roll the shoulder of the arm holding the gun to his side. The presence of the gun should make this creepy, but the danger of the woman running her tongue up the sides of his dick is making his pulse pound in both his ears and his loins. "Fuck, I'm gonna--" he stops when she pulls away to look at him.
"You're not going to do anything but drive," she orders, and shifts the pistol, "I mean it. Nothing."
"But--" Subaru holds back the whiny 'but I don't want to hold back' that wants to burst from his lips, though only because Karina's gun slides upward to knock against his lowest rib, even through the heavy material of his jacket. "Yes ma'am," he says, instead, and she laughs at the name, her eyes dark and her lips wet. The light from the fading sun plays off of the faint sheen to her lower lip, and he leans sideways to kiss her softly. She lets him, and then her body and her tongue chase him back into his own seat, his own mouth. She pulls back swiftly then, and he straightens his course.
"Nothing besides driving," she chastises again, and then she's out of his range of vision. A moment more and her mouth is working at his cock again, a slow movement of wet lips against the shaft and tongue tracing words over the skin. He can feel the heat building in the pit of his belly, sensation running up and down his trembling thighs and his lungs fluttering in roughly his esophagus.
"I'm," he begins, then tries again. "I'm going to--" The gun shifts against his side. 'Nothing besides driving' He has to hold back--somehow. His heartbeat is thundering in his ears; a sob escapes through his half-shut mouth; he has to suck in the deepest breath he's ever taken and hold it for longer than he's ever managed, but he holds off until he hears his cock fall from Karina's mouth with an obscene pop.
"Good boy," she says, "how much farther?" She strokes his cock lazily.
It's hard to think with her hand on him, everything is hazy--"twenty minutes, or so," he says, finally, when her grip tightens a touch too much. The shock of pain brings him back to Earth, and he shakes his head. "Closer to fifteen," he says. She smiles, and leans back down to put her mouth on him again. It's a short affair once his cock hits the back of her throat and her cheeks hollow out, orgasm ripping through him so fast he has to hit the brakes to avoid tipping into one of the massive craters puckering the surface of the Wastes.
When she finally sits up, there's a spot of white at the corner of her mouth. Subaru lifts his hand and wipes it away, then licks it off. Her eyes are heavy on him the entire time he does it, and as she leans forward to tuck him back into his pants.
"So you lied when you said we had another hour," she comments, sitting back in her chair and adjusting the elbow of her gun hand.
"...I was averaging in time for a fuck," he admits.
She fixes him with a stare, and then she shakes her head, laughing.
They drive in silence besides the low hum of Subaru's engine and the turned-down volume of the enka channel.
They're coming up on Nino's security system; Subaru has to stop the car and get out to fiddle with the keypad. "Nothing funny," Karina says, poking his lower back with her pistol. Her dark-eyed sexy dominatrix thing is gone for the moment, replaced by the more familiar light-hearted smile, and it's just as dangerous with a gun in her hand.
He puts in the a keycode that doesn't do anything at first. "Why didn't it work?" she asks, suspicious.
"This is a double security lock," he answers, "you have to unlock the ability to unlock the door."
"Your boy is paranoid," she comments.
"It's served him well this long," Subaru points out, as they swing back into the car.
She doesn't answer that as he pulls through the wall, and doesn't speak again until they park in Nino's secluded driveway. There's a familiar motorcycle pushed flush against the wall just inside the halfway underground place where Nino makes his home, and Subaru pats hello to it. "You're gonna want to put that away," Subaru says, and points to her gun, "Ryo will kill you." He almost wants him to.
"I bet you'd love it if I didn't, wouldn't you," she says, and lifts her shirt hem to holster her weapon. She's barely done patting it down when the front door swings open and Ryo walks out. He's moving with purpose, dressed in his leather jacket and favorite jeans (or a very, very close replica) with a domed object Subaru recognizes as an old-school radio tucked under his arm. Ryo stumbles to a stop when he notices them, his gaze flicking from Karina's face to Subaru's, and he simultaneously grunts/nods his hello.
"Yasu needs a new radio," Subaru guesses, and Ryo nods.
"Ahhh, yeah, yeah, he needs parts to repair the big one we found," he explains, "he thinks it's a--a key, to all this. I don't know if I believe that, but it's Yasu. You know?"
Ryo's been at Yasu's back for as long as Subaru can remember. They'd been together for years, dancing between friends and more-than-friends and sharing a bed no matter what the decision was that particular week. Yasu had been strange since the radio broadcast that broke half of the technology in the City six months ago, asking Subaru to salvage as much radio equipment as he could, whenever he could find it.
"Yeah," Subaru says, eyeing up Ryo's resigned determination. Whatever Yasu has gotten himself into, Ryo at least seems set on supporting him. Which is better than what Subaru's managing. "See you," he says, "have a good trip. Don't fall into any craters this time?"
"Fuck you, that was once," Ryo complains, and swings over the bike's seat.
"Hi," Karina says, loudly enough to interrupt what Ryo's about to say next. "I'm Karina."
Ryo nods, slowly, his eyes flicking between Karina and Subaru quickly. "Hi," he says, eventually, "Ryo." Then he's gone, leaving them alone outside of Nino's place. The windows have long been boarded up, and the outside door is half falling off on a good day, but as soon as Subaru leads Karina through the front door and past the nondescript, never-lived-in front room to the white door in the back, he's reminded how impressive Nino's place actually is.
Impressively messy, anyway, with half-finished inventions piled one atop another on the shelves all over and chalkboards (and white painted walls) filled with equations and plans surrounding them. "Nino," Subaru calls, and hopes his first keypad message--their code for 'get out now'--worked.
"In the back," Nino calls, and Karina has her gun up to Subaru's temple before he can move a muscle.
"Can you come out here?" Subaru asks, weakly. There's the scraping sound of the back lab door opening, and then Nino's head pops out.
Nino's expression falls from curious to horrified, and then Karina's pistol is pointed at him. When she fires his head blows up. "What the hell?!" Karina squawks, and grunts when Subaru tackles her about the waist. Her gun goes clattering away, and Subaru pins her wrists to the floor, straddling her hips and staring down at her.
"Sorry," he says.
"Damn it," she says, "I really didn't want to have to kill you--I like you, you know?"
"Thanks," Subaru says, "I could say the same about you. But, um, I like Nino a lot and I've known him longer, so..."
"Subaru, you can get up." Subaru glances up, and sees Nino--the real Nino, he can tell from the faint scent of Subaru's own shampoo radiating off the other man--bending to pick up Karina's pistol. Subaru leans back as Nino trains the gun on the woman.
"Get the MIDI," Nino says.
"With pleasure," Subaru says, and plucks it from Karina's cleavage with a gleeful smile. Karina rolls her eyes, but lets him take it and roll off of her legs.
"Now you have two choices," Nino says, "or at least that's the way I figure it. You walk away, you never come back. You go back to Tsunku and tell him I'm dead--I'm not making weapons any more, how's he gonna know unless you tell him. Or... you die. I don't want you to die, okay? I'm not here to kill anybody. Not when we're on the same side for most of this shit."
Karina glances between Nino and Subaru. "I see why you like him so much," she tells Subaru, and uncurls from the floor. "I'll go," she says, "but I'm not just here for you. I'm here for him, too." She tosses her head toward Subaru.
"Me?" Subaru asks, and blinks.
"Tsunku thinks you'd be a good agent, if you came to work for us," she says, plainly, "and you'd have me around to give you--hands on training."
"Um," Subaru says, "that's a... generous offer. And I'm keeping it on the table. But I can't. Not while I still have work only I can do." None of this has anything to do with Nino's flat stare, of course.
Karina nods, sad-eyed. "Well then," she says, and sighs heavily. "See you. You have a crater jumper around here, or something?"
"Out back," Subaru says, at the same time Nino says "no".
"She's here to murder us!"
"Notice how nobody's dead?"
"You plied her with sexual favors, I bet."
"She forced herself on me!"
"I bet you were really shaking that off. Way to go, champ, you're a real hero," Nino snaps, rolling his eyes. "Fine," he finally snaps, "take the damn thing. And get out of here. I see you again I'll show Tsunku what my weapons do with someone who knows how to use them." Then he stalks off to the back room again.
Subaru stares at Karina for a long time. "You're just going to let him walk away," he says.
"For now," Karina answers, "there'll come a day when you're not around, or when he's run out of androids for me to shoot, or just... he's in the wrong place. And when that happens, I'll kill him. And I'll get a hold of you, too, if I'm lucky."
It's a little terrifying, when she says it aloud like that. But Subaru can see her face, and she's serious. "And if I'm lucky we'll never see each other again," Subaru answers, falsely bright as he escorts her to the back shipyard. The working crater jumper is at the end of the fence, where its mini-jets can be used to get it in and out quickly, and Karina fires them up with the ease of long practice. She looks down at him from the central harness once she's settled in, and with the sands making her cheeks pink and her long hair half-free from its bun, she's even more beautiful than she'd been.
"Have a safe trip home," Subaru says, and abruptly feels stupid. It's apparently the right thing to say anyway, as it makes her smile again.
"Go kiss your boy hello and take a look at the MIDI I stole for you," she says, and the jumper is gone.
He turns and goes to do just that.
"Nino," he says, ducking into the other man's lab, "you in here?"
"Over here," Nino says, from the very end of the place.
Subaru has to duck under a planetary model to find Nino's hideaway library tucked into the back, but when he does he freezes. A man is asleep in Nino's bed, his floppy curling hair spread across the pillow and a broken arm tied up to his chest.
"Nino," Subaru says, suspicious, "who is that?"
"His name is Maru," Nino says, "he's--he's collateral. For now."
"You--you took a person as payment for something?!" Subaru demands, "this is--it's like human trafficking! We talked about this!"
"It's temporary," Nino answers, "it's only until Oh-chan can come home and get him. He's--he's sick, with something. I don't know what. But Oh-chan carried him in here last night and offered him as payment for borrowing the extra glider. when he gets back with whatever'll cure this guy I'll take the glider and give him his friend back. Okay? Can you stop looking at me like I'm some kind of monster?!"
The last part sends Subaru reeling, and he leans forward to press his hand to Nino's forearm. "That's--I don't think that," he says, firmly. "Nino, you're not a monster. The guns were an accident. It's not your fault the lab was ransacked. It's not."
Nino looks unconvinced, but he nods, and lets Subaru squeeze his forearm in comfort. "Does your girlfriend give good head?" he asks, smirking.
"I've had better," Subaru answers, and winks obnoxiously.
Fandom: Johnny’s & Associates, various other Japanese celebrities
Characters: Shibutani Subaru, Karina, Ninomiya Kazunari, Nishikido Ryo, mentions of Maruyama Ryuhei and Ohno Satoshi
Pairings: Subaru/Karina, Subaru/Nino, Ryo/Yasu implied
Rating: NC-17 for sexual activity
Word count: 3760
Warnings: Post-apocalyptic dystopian AU, subtle gunplay, road head, femdom
Summary: Nino arranges for Subaru to pick someone up. Nino is going to get it when Subaru gets home, and not in a good way. Well, actually...
Notes: hilariously somehow this is not non-con? I think it's only because Subaru is excited by the concept of hot chicks telling him what to do. But. Yeah.
Subaru has learned to ride with a body in the passenger seat. Not a dead one, just a quiet one, a nervous-looking fugitive looking for passage somewhere else or a sleepy freedom fighter wanting to take a nap. The Sentries at the outposts around the city tend to stare hard at one guy in a truck, even with Subaru's ever-rotating series of hats and multitude of hairstyles. Someone in command knows him--the only thing keeping him alive is the constant fresh sentries earning their pay every month. If he slaps a new coat of paint on the truck, wears a hat, and has some pretty non-threatening thing sitting pretty in his passenger seat, they look less like smugglers and more like idiots trying to find their way past the Wastes. City Sentries don't care about idiots looking to get themselves killed.
This time, it's a girl. Subaru doesn't know where Nino found her, but she introduces herself as Karina. She's got an old-school MIDI hidden in her shirt that's supposed to go right to the guys trying to do things too big and too bold for Subaru. She funny, a little air-headed when Subaru asks her things, but sharp when she focuses, her sense of humor a softer echo of Nino's. Subaru likes her. He always tends to like the girls, but he especially likes the pretty ones--and especially the ones that remind him of Nino, of course. He's never been scared of admitting his bias.
"You think it's going to help?" he asks, watching her fiddle with the radio. "The MIDI, I mean."
She glances back over her shoulder. "No," she admits, at first, "not on its own, anyway. Which is why there are freedom fighters at all, right? but it'll help." She grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like 'it better, for all the work I did to get it', which makes Subaru snort.
They're coming up on the last outpost before the desolation of the Wastes. Subaru hunches his shoulders forward, tugging his baseball cap lower by the brim. Next to him, Karina is pulling her long light hair up into a bun, and once her hair is settled she adjusts the positioning of the MIDI in the cavern of her breasts. (Subaru prides himself on only glancing over once. Okay, twice.)
There's no line or anything, just a small cluster of trucks under a large tarp when they drive past the opening in the wall and the shoddy metal hut where the guards bunk down and attend to the radio. There's a bored-looking young man curled up in the seat at the guard tower by the second wall opening. Subaru rolls his window down as he pulls up, and then reaches for his fake ID and the border-cross pass Nino had rigged up for him that morning. Next to him, Karina takes a deep breath, and sinks back into the seat. She's quirked her lips in a way that makes her look a little less stunning, but when Subaru raises an eyebrow at her she crosses her eyes to make him snort.
"I'm gonna need ID for you both," the sentry says, "what're you folks doing out here?"
"Her truck needs some new parts, we're gonna take a look and see if we can find some replacements," Subaru explains. His apparent bald honesty makes the Sentry blink, and then nod in understanding. The Sentries know what it's like for supply runners. Subaru's palms are slick with sweat, and Karina's fingers are trembling when she passes him her ID, but Subaru holds onto his calm.
"You guys are--good--to--go," the Sentry says, after a moment of stamping and printing in his logbook. The sand this far out near the Wastes ruins fancy City machinery, so all the checking and logging has to be done by hand. Which is why fooling Sentries is usually not a problem. The Sentry passes everything back, but when he sees Karina he stares, hard, at her, for a moment. Subaru can see the faint glimmer of recognition. He re-evaluates Karina right then--she's more than a gorgeous woman.
Before the Sentry can act on his gut and ask to see their IDs again, Subaru takes off, pushing the accelerator flat against the floor and hurriedly forcing his window closed. A Wastes sand facial isn't pleasant--he knows from experience. The Sentry hasn't moved from his guard booth. Subaru threw up a prayer to whatever diety was around for the invention of laziness. Next to him, Karina has started to laugh, and Subaru glances at her. "Subaru Sanchez," she manages, her voice breathless. She holds up his ridiculous ID, and collapses into giggles again, her cheek pressed against her headrest. Subaru has to admit it's a little funny, and he grins his laughter back at her as he pulls them slowly over a ridge and into the Wastes proper.
"How much farther is this place?" she asks, when they've been driving in the emptiness for an hour. She's long since stopped trying to find any radio station besides Nino's mocking enka, but even the City stations have been replaced by static. The mood in the car sobers the farther they get from the City's outskirts, and Subaru reaches past his shyness to the well in him that likes Karina's smile.
"An hour, maybe, without stops," he says.
"Stops for...?"
"Oh, you know, this and that," he says, and waggles his eyebrows at her until she gets what he means. It takes her a long 1-2-3 seconds, and then she looks away, hiding laughter or a blush with her hands.
"You are terrible."
"So they tell me."
"But maybe that's not such a bad idea after all..."
"Oh ho," Subaru says, and he has the car parked off of the loose path in the Waste's dirt in a minute. Both Karina's eyes and her smile shine with mirth as she leans forward and kisses him. She's unfamiliar. Unlike Nino's easy way of sliding under his guard (and into his pants), Karina's a light touch along his collarbones and into his hair, her hands everywhere and nowhere as she tugs his lower lip between her teeth. Subaru groans, cupping her jaw in his palms and digging his fingers into her skin. She seems to like the force of it, leaning into his touch as his hands move into her hair. They kiss once, twice, a slide of tongues and lips, until Subaru pulls back, eyes dark. "Is that a gun sticking into my gut, or is there something you need to tell me about what's in your pants?" he asks, more lightly than the thudding heart beating against his ribs would suggest.
She looks down at the pistol she's pressed into his stomach. "It looks like a gun," she admits, and sounds halfway sorry.
"What'd they get you for?" he asks.
"Get me--oh, sweetie, no, I'm not City. I work for Tsunku. Those guns of Ninomiya's killed my sisters." She sounds both sad and very, very angry when she says that, her pretty eyes hard like diamonds.
"I'm very sorry to hear that," Subaru says, and means it, "but those were stolen from us. He didn't mean for the Sentries to get a hold of them."
"We know," she says, "but there's already enough big players here in the Wastes. The last thing we need is some wildcard who doesn't answer to anyone inventing things that can kill us all. Or... two wildcards, I'd bet."
Subaru grins, slow. He's nervous when he admits, "you'd be right," but he's slowly coming down off of his panic. (...not from anything else, though, if his tight pants mean anything.) He's rewarded when her gun shifts, sliding across his hips to press into his side.
"Drive," she says, her lips against his earlobe, "your friend's jammer is messing with my comm, so you need to come along."
"You are about five times hotter when you're threatening to kill me," he says, mouth suddenly dry, "and you were way hot before. Just so you know."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," she says, but her free right hand is sliding up his thigh. He glances at her, then returns his eyes to the road. He has driving to do.
Karina's hand is sure as it unravels his belt, and Subaru shifts his legs farther apart in what he hopes is a subtle way. Apparently he fails, of course--Karina half-sighs into his ear with laughter at the back of it--but he doesn't really care once her hand has snuck past his fly and cupped him through his boxers. "Fuck," he manages, coherently.
"Maybe if you're nice," she says, and strokes him again from tip to base. He bites at his lip, the pain a distraction from the urge to hump her hand, and keeps still besides a tremble in his thighs as she presses her palm to the head of his cock through the fabric. Her fingers are cold when they sneak under the waistline of his underwear and pull his cock free, but her breath is warm when her mouth closes around the head of it.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he whispers, a rhythm matching the bobbing of her head, but he doesn't cry out until she closes her lips around the base and sucks. When he does, she pulls away some, her tongue tracing figure-eight patterns over the head and across the slit, and he sucks in a long breath between his lips.
She shifts enough to roll the shoulder of the arm holding the gun to his side. The presence of the gun should make this creepy, but the danger of the woman running her tongue up the sides of his dick is making his pulse pound in both his ears and his loins. "Fuck, I'm gonna--" he stops when she pulls away to look at him.
"You're not going to do anything but drive," she orders, and shifts the pistol, "I mean it. Nothing."
"But--" Subaru holds back the whiny 'but I don't want to hold back' that wants to burst from his lips, though only because Karina's gun slides upward to knock against his lowest rib, even through the heavy material of his jacket. "Yes ma'am," he says, instead, and she laughs at the name, her eyes dark and her lips wet. The light from the fading sun plays off of the faint sheen to her lower lip, and he leans sideways to kiss her softly. She lets him, and then her body and her tongue chase him back into his own seat, his own mouth. She pulls back swiftly then, and he straightens his course.
"Nothing besides driving," she chastises again, and then she's out of his range of vision. A moment more and her mouth is working at his cock again, a slow movement of wet lips against the shaft and tongue tracing words over the skin. He can feel the heat building in the pit of his belly, sensation running up and down his trembling thighs and his lungs fluttering in roughly his esophagus.
"I'm," he begins, then tries again. "I'm going to--" The gun shifts against his side. 'Nothing besides driving' He has to hold back--somehow. His heartbeat is thundering in his ears; a sob escapes through his half-shut mouth; he has to suck in the deepest breath he's ever taken and hold it for longer than he's ever managed, but he holds off until he hears his cock fall from Karina's mouth with an obscene pop.
"Good boy," she says, "how much farther?" She strokes his cock lazily.
It's hard to think with her hand on him, everything is hazy--"twenty minutes, or so," he says, finally, when her grip tightens a touch too much. The shock of pain brings him back to Earth, and he shakes his head. "Closer to fifteen," he says. She smiles, and leans back down to put her mouth on him again. It's a short affair once his cock hits the back of her throat and her cheeks hollow out, orgasm ripping through him so fast he has to hit the brakes to avoid tipping into one of the massive craters puckering the surface of the Wastes.
When she finally sits up, there's a spot of white at the corner of her mouth. Subaru lifts his hand and wipes it away, then licks it off. Her eyes are heavy on him the entire time he does it, and as she leans forward to tuck him back into his pants.
"So you lied when you said we had another hour," she comments, sitting back in her chair and adjusting the elbow of her gun hand.
"...I was averaging in time for a fuck," he admits.
She fixes him with a stare, and then she shakes her head, laughing.
They drive in silence besides the low hum of Subaru's engine and the turned-down volume of the enka channel.
They're coming up on Nino's security system; Subaru has to stop the car and get out to fiddle with the keypad. "Nothing funny," Karina says, poking his lower back with her pistol. Her dark-eyed sexy dominatrix thing is gone for the moment, replaced by the more familiar light-hearted smile, and it's just as dangerous with a gun in her hand.
He puts in the a keycode that doesn't do anything at first. "Why didn't it work?" she asks, suspicious.
"This is a double security lock," he answers, "you have to unlock the ability to unlock the door."
"Your boy is paranoid," she comments.
"It's served him well this long," Subaru points out, as they swing back into the car.
She doesn't answer that as he pulls through the wall, and doesn't speak again until they park in Nino's secluded driveway. There's a familiar motorcycle pushed flush against the wall just inside the halfway underground place where Nino makes his home, and Subaru pats hello to it. "You're gonna want to put that away," Subaru says, and points to her gun, "Ryo will kill you." He almost wants him to.
"I bet you'd love it if I didn't, wouldn't you," she says, and lifts her shirt hem to holster her weapon. She's barely done patting it down when the front door swings open and Ryo walks out. He's moving with purpose, dressed in his leather jacket and favorite jeans (or a very, very close replica) with a domed object Subaru recognizes as an old-school radio tucked under his arm. Ryo stumbles to a stop when he notices them, his gaze flicking from Karina's face to Subaru's, and he simultaneously grunts/nods his hello.
"Yasu needs a new radio," Subaru guesses, and Ryo nods.
"Ahhh, yeah, yeah, he needs parts to repair the big one we found," he explains, "he thinks it's a--a key, to all this. I don't know if I believe that, but it's Yasu. You know?"
Ryo's been at Yasu's back for as long as Subaru can remember. They'd been together for years, dancing between friends and more-than-friends and sharing a bed no matter what the decision was that particular week. Yasu had been strange since the radio broadcast that broke half of the technology in the City six months ago, asking Subaru to salvage as much radio equipment as he could, whenever he could find it.
"Yeah," Subaru says, eyeing up Ryo's resigned determination. Whatever Yasu has gotten himself into, Ryo at least seems set on supporting him. Which is better than what Subaru's managing. "See you," he says, "have a good trip. Don't fall into any craters this time?"
"Fuck you, that was once," Ryo complains, and swings over the bike's seat.
"Hi," Karina says, loudly enough to interrupt what Ryo's about to say next. "I'm Karina."
Ryo nods, slowly, his eyes flicking between Karina and Subaru quickly. "Hi," he says, eventually, "Ryo." Then he's gone, leaving them alone outside of Nino's place. The windows have long been boarded up, and the outside door is half falling off on a good day, but as soon as Subaru leads Karina through the front door and past the nondescript, never-lived-in front room to the white door in the back, he's reminded how impressive Nino's place actually is.
Impressively messy, anyway, with half-finished inventions piled one atop another on the shelves all over and chalkboards (and white painted walls) filled with equations and plans surrounding them. "Nino," Subaru calls, and hopes his first keypad message--their code for 'get out now'--worked.
"In the back," Nino calls, and Karina has her gun up to Subaru's temple before he can move a muscle.
"Can you come out here?" Subaru asks, weakly. There's the scraping sound of the back lab door opening, and then Nino's head pops out.
Nino's expression falls from curious to horrified, and then Karina's pistol is pointed at him. When she fires his head blows up. "What the hell?!" Karina squawks, and grunts when Subaru tackles her about the waist. Her gun goes clattering away, and Subaru pins her wrists to the floor, straddling her hips and staring down at her.
"Sorry," he says.
"Damn it," she says, "I really didn't want to have to kill you--I like you, you know?"
"Thanks," Subaru says, "I could say the same about you. But, um, I like Nino a lot and I've known him longer, so..."
"Subaru, you can get up." Subaru glances up, and sees Nino--the real Nino, he can tell from the faint scent of Subaru's own shampoo radiating off the other man--bending to pick up Karina's pistol. Subaru leans back as Nino trains the gun on the woman.
"Get the MIDI," Nino says.
"With pleasure," Subaru says, and plucks it from Karina's cleavage with a gleeful smile. Karina rolls her eyes, but lets him take it and roll off of her legs.
"Now you have two choices," Nino says, "or at least that's the way I figure it. You walk away, you never come back. You go back to Tsunku and tell him I'm dead--I'm not making weapons any more, how's he gonna know unless you tell him. Or... you die. I don't want you to die, okay? I'm not here to kill anybody. Not when we're on the same side for most of this shit."
Karina glances between Nino and Subaru. "I see why you like him so much," she tells Subaru, and uncurls from the floor. "I'll go," she says, "but I'm not just here for you. I'm here for him, too." She tosses her head toward Subaru.
"Me?" Subaru asks, and blinks.
"Tsunku thinks you'd be a good agent, if you came to work for us," she says, plainly, "and you'd have me around to give you--hands on training."
"Um," Subaru says, "that's a... generous offer. And I'm keeping it on the table. But I can't. Not while I still have work only I can do." None of this has anything to do with Nino's flat stare, of course.
Karina nods, sad-eyed. "Well then," she says, and sighs heavily. "See you. You have a crater jumper around here, or something?"
"Out back," Subaru says, at the same time Nino says "no".
"She's here to murder us!"
"Notice how nobody's dead?"
"You plied her with sexual favors, I bet."
"She forced herself on me!"
"I bet you were really shaking that off. Way to go, champ, you're a real hero," Nino snaps, rolling his eyes. "Fine," he finally snaps, "take the damn thing. And get out of here. I see you again I'll show Tsunku what my weapons do with someone who knows how to use them." Then he stalks off to the back room again.
Subaru stares at Karina for a long time. "You're just going to let him walk away," he says.
"For now," Karina answers, "there'll come a day when you're not around, or when he's run out of androids for me to shoot, or just... he's in the wrong place. And when that happens, I'll kill him. And I'll get a hold of you, too, if I'm lucky."
It's a little terrifying, when she says it aloud like that. But Subaru can see her face, and she's serious. "And if I'm lucky we'll never see each other again," Subaru answers, falsely bright as he escorts her to the back shipyard. The working crater jumper is at the end of the fence, where its mini-jets can be used to get it in and out quickly, and Karina fires them up with the ease of long practice. She looks down at him from the central harness once she's settled in, and with the sands making her cheeks pink and her long hair half-free from its bun, she's even more beautiful than she'd been.
"Have a safe trip home," Subaru says, and abruptly feels stupid. It's apparently the right thing to say anyway, as it makes her smile again.
"Go kiss your boy hello and take a look at the MIDI I stole for you," she says, and the jumper is gone.
He turns and goes to do just that.
"Nino," he says, ducking into the other man's lab, "you in here?"
"Over here," Nino says, from the very end of the place.
Subaru has to duck under a planetary model to find Nino's hideaway library tucked into the back, but when he does he freezes. A man is asleep in Nino's bed, his floppy curling hair spread across the pillow and a broken arm tied up to his chest.
"Nino," Subaru says, suspicious, "who is that?"
"His name is Maru," Nino says, "he's--he's collateral. For now."
"You--you took a person as payment for something?!" Subaru demands, "this is--it's like human trafficking! We talked about this!"
"It's temporary," Nino answers, "it's only until Oh-chan can come home and get him. He's--he's sick, with something. I don't know what. But Oh-chan carried him in here last night and offered him as payment for borrowing the extra glider. when he gets back with whatever'll cure this guy I'll take the glider and give him his friend back. Okay? Can you stop looking at me like I'm some kind of monster?!"
The last part sends Subaru reeling, and he leans forward to press his hand to Nino's forearm. "That's--I don't think that," he says, firmly. "Nino, you're not a monster. The guns were an accident. It's not your fault the lab was ransacked. It's not."
Nino looks unconvinced, but he nods, and lets Subaru squeeze his forearm in comfort. "Does your girlfriend give good head?" he asks, smirking.
"I've had better," Subaru answers, and winks obnoxiously.
