“Nothing,” says Nines, so quickly that he winces at his own indiscretion. “Well, I— this is chosen, isn’t it? You do enjoy what you do?”
“—Yeah,” says Gavin. It’s an answer surprised out of him, and all the more truthful for it. “I do enjoy it, and I make enough to be comfortable. Just don’t love pompous shitheads like you coming by and turning your noses up at me just because a W-2 in the mail gets you harder than I ever could.”
“That’s not true,” says Nines.
“You’re right,” says Gavin. “I could get you pretty hard.”
The fic is finished, so here’s some fanart of @vapewraith’s art for Fata Morgana! I had a lot of fun trying to visually convey what I love so much about the way Vape draws GV500 and RK900; you too can be similarly blessed by heading on over to the AO3 link and gazing upon their glorious illustrations. What’s that? You’ve already done it? WHAT A JOY TO BE ABLE TO DO SO ONCE AGAIN
For my part, I hope that you also enjoy the accompanying filthy saga of crime, romance, Schedule I narcotics, live sex shows, and the enduring truth of how federal careers may come and go, but big dogs are forever.
Here is “A Year in the Life of Two Dirtbags (and Their Reluctant Chaperones)”, my page of comics for the @coffee-and-connections-zine! Incredible experience, 100/10 stars, would do a thousand more times ✨
I know I’ve been INCREDIBLY ABSENT around these parts (and around every part, really), I’m sorry! Wage labor continues to ruin all of our lives. But unless my job liteRALLY KILLS ME FIRST, I will be back with new stuff and an enduring love for these idiot assholes!!! I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!
Date night at Les Mignardises consists of Nines insisting that TRAINING MONTAGES are a romantic activity
RK900, absolutely considering the fractal mysteries of romanesco broccoli and ONLY CONSIDERING THE FRACTAL MYSTERIES OF ROMANESCO BROCCOLI, just that, exclusively, THANK YOU
While the restaurant takes a renovation hiatus to get a bar put in, Gavin and Nines go on the road with Little Ovens, the spinoff food truck that drives around the city blasting yacht rock and specifically parking in front of wherever Hank and Connor are at that very moment
This concludes the sketch haul for the time being, hope to pop back in soon with more comics in the near future!
This feels like a very straightforward question with a straightforward answer, right? AND IT WOULD BE, EXCEPT YOU’VE ASKED IT TO A PERSON WHO IS CONSTITUTIONALLY INCAPABLE OF PROVIDING STRAIGHTFORWARD ANSWERS TO STRAIGHTFORWARD QUESTIONS
When Nines pulls away, he lingers a moment in the space between them, searching Gavin’s face like hunting for marks he’s left. The imprint of the seal in wax. I wish I knew what you wanted me to hear. Gavin holds himself still, doesn’t chase after Nines’s mouth.
Nines’s internal monologue at this moment probably just consists of a single long wordless scream, but if you were to put words to it, OH SHIT WELL I’VE DONE IT NOW, FUCK would be more or less where you would land. ~*~Local dog dads in the infancy of their courtship, trying to figure out if physical contact can metaphorically function as a substitute for actual communication~*~
They’re just some bookish white-collar criminals, think Gavin and Nines, surely it’s fine if we get distracted for literally ONE SECOND
It’s not fine
Meanwhile: They’re just some bumbling local cops, think Arthur and Eames, surely it’s a piece of cake to leave them in the dust once we ditch these handcuffs
Little bit of a sketch dump coming your way in the next couple of days, but they’re also associated with different fics and/or AUs so I thought I’d separate them out according to category! On the docket for today is the ENDLESSLY HORNY FORMULA 1 AU (more in bits and pieces under the tag), in which race engineer RK900 knows what he wants and has no professional qualms about demanding that his dreams become reality.
“How is thIS FLAME RETARDANT,” yells Gavin.
“Gavin, you delicious fool,” says RK900. “What is beautiful cannot burn.”
Thank you, this is extremely sweet of you to say! I get pretty self-conscious with the dialogue sections because whereas I love writing dialogue a lot – it goes so quickly! I don’t have to throttle WordHippo to try to figure out what word is eluding my grasp! – I’m also worried about losing control over it and having it slide too far into the territory of facile banter. What if they just end up talking like an episode of Seinfeld, I think to myself. What if Connor’s in a great mood and gets carried away while greeting Gavin in the morning and just, like, gives him a hug, and then I accidentally write this:
Nines: So then what did you do? Gavin: Nothing! I did nothing! Nines: You did nothing? Gavin: Absolutely nothing. Nines: You just stood there and you let it happen to you. Gavin: Yes, I can’t believe it! I just stood there! Nines: You stood there and he embraced you. Gavin: I was embraced by him! Nines: An embracing was done. Gavin: And I did nothing about it. I just stood there.
So I’m very happy to hear that I have, thus far, managed to pull myself back somewhat from the brink of this sort of debacle. I’m doing my best! I hope you stick around for more!
WHAT A JOY TO SEE YOU, AN ANON FROM INCEPTION FANDOM! I think about Volta as a story of two people who genuinely aggravate each other for reasons that are too deep-rooted to be simple misunderstanding, and that bit as the first display of Eames being aggravating in the particular festering way that he is in that fic. In every fandom, I find myself following something of the emotional course that the Linklater Before trilogy does; the early fics start out with “we’re perfect for each other” (Before Sunrise),then they move into “if we try hard enough, we can be perfect for each other” (Before Sunset), then they settle into “well actually we’re kind of shitty together but everything is shitty anyway, let’s make something together even if what we make together is complete shit” (Before Midnight). For a lot of reasons, Volta both is and reads like a late-fandom fic (in the sense that it was near the end of my time in the fandom, not that it was near the end of the fandom!)– it’s aggravating and unhappy in that way, but still, maybe because of all of that, I hope that whatever kernel of the future can be found in it can seem at least a little truthful. v v v
THIS IS A PROBLEM I HAVE LIVED BEFORE! I know that it is not very helpful for me to lie down parallel to you and weep in sync to your crying, but in my lack of Japanese language skills, THAT’S ALL I CAN DO! I CAN ONLY EMPATHIZE WITH YOU IN ALSO HAVING WANTED EVERYONE AROUND ME TO READ THE FICS VERY DEAR TO ME IN LANGUAGES WE DID NOT SHARE!
I’ve definitely muddled my way through fics in Japanese before through a variety of online translator tools, but despite all the technological advances that have been made in that realm, conveying the stylistic nuances of a story one would read for style is… not a thing that said tools have quite achieved yet, I don’t think. My sorrowful Canadian friend, perhaps I cannot accompany you in enjoying the thing itself, but I am certainly grateful that you thought of me and Previous Anon– EVEN WHEN WE CANNOT BE ALL THAT WE WANT FROM EACH OTHER, IS IT NOT STILL MEANINGFUL THAT WE HARBOR THE DESIRE TO BRING OURSELVES CLOSER TOGETHER???
Hi, dearest kindest BEAUTIFUL SPARROW CREATURE. I really hope that you understand just how moved I am to hear from you, and that I can reflect even a tenth of the joy you have given me right back at you, because even if you deserve to have the whole of it reflected back, that would be absurd, why would I reflect the whole thing back, what am I supposed to keep for myself then, you would need to pry the love out of my cold dead heart to take it from me, I dare you to try, I’LL SEE YOU IN COURT AND THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL
It means so much to me that you enjoyed Fata Morgana; I wanted so badly to make something that could at least go some way towards answering the trust and brilliance that Vape poured into the project. And, of course, I didn’t want to let you down! (This is a disgusting understatement. I’ve spent hours staring blankly up at my ceiling as I lay fearful of all the ways that I might be letting you down.) I hope that you’ll have a good time with the next thing that Vape and I make together– I mean, you’ll definitely have a good time with Vape’s portion of it, but as for my part, I can only hope (and do some more staring up at the ceiling). I love you very much, even if you are absolutely wrong about Pedal to the Metal, which is a language crime that should be excised from existence. I LOVE YOU!
