Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This is Peccant Scofflaw on top of the world. Successful ‘jobs’ (you use the term loosely) have always filled him with manic energy, but never like this. He laughs so hard you’re worried he might hurt himself, and the frenzied dance he sweeps you into threatens to crack your limbs against doors and tables and a million other obstacles. Even Delinquent gets swept up, and he socks Scofflaw lightly in the shoulder to establish his current lack of animosity towards the taller Scoundrel. Scofflaw lets the shorter man go and steps back, spreading his arms wide.

“Let’s rake in our loot and then go home, boys!”

It’s a good haul, things you’ll pass along to your various contacts until the money comes out clean. Scofflaw’s enthusiasm is contagious, and you’re laughing wholeheartedly as you and your two partners beat a smooth retreat from the scene of the crime.

You get thoroughly drunk. Rarely are you able to consume enough alcohol to make you actually drunk, and the experience is so bizarrely enjoyable. Before you know it it’s dawn and you’re stumbling into a room with Scofflaw with no knowledge of the last four hours. You don’t remember where Delinquent went. You must have asked, because Scofflaw just laughs and waves a hand. You manage to translate that into ‘somewhere’. You find it hard to really care, because Peccant Scofflaw is kissing you, and you love him.

It happens many times over the next few months. In the beginning it is everything you could want, and you love him more than anything in the world. You even delude yourself into thinking he loves you back. He must, you reason, because he keeps coming to you and he keeps making you beg for him, and each time you do is sweeter than the last. You can’t pinpoint the moment it began to feel off, and maybe it was there all the time and you were blind to it. Being in his company leaves you somehow hollow, a dull ache underneath all the rest, but you don’t stop, because you don’t know how to. You are so dependant on his attention you don’t know what would happen if he ever decided to stop.

One day his touch starts hurting you, and the disgust you feel is turned completely inwards, because you begged him for it; when his attention is on you like this you know it’s on only you, and for these brief moments he’s yours and yours alone.

////Supposed to be more things here, so many scenes missing////

You sneak into his apartment in the middle of the night. The small living space is completely unlike the one you’d once shared with him, blank and empty to your once-shared clutter. You know instantly he doesn’t plan to stay here, and even that hurts, a raw ache in your chest. You doubt he would even think to give you his next address.

You don’t intend to wake him, you really don’t, but your curiosity gets the best of you as you pass the small kitchenette. You don’t expect the first cupboard you go for to be full of pans (honestly, who puts pans in a top shelf) and when you open it you give a muffled yelp as you dance out of the way of the cast iron landslide. You’re trying to stack the pans neatly on the counter top as you hear the bedroom door slam open. There’s only a second between that sound and his snarled curse as he jerks his hand to the side. The bullet only shatters the plate to your left instead of puncturing your lung and you jerk in fright, the pan in your hands clattering back to the floor.

“Innovator, what the fuck are you doing here!?” He yells at you, actual anger blazing in his eyes. You shrink back, because the gun’s still aimed at you, and even if his finger’s off the trigger you’re painfully aware of how little it would take for him to shoot you.

“I - I, I mean, I thought -” You’re stammering, unable to force your tongue to work properly. You can’t explain that you only wanted to see him, that you want things to go back to how they were.

“Fuck, Innovator, it’s too goddamn early for this bullshit. Get out, get out, I am not in the goddamn mood!” He’s using your proper name. He never does that, ever, you’ve really done it now, he never wants to see you again, you can see it, he just wants you gone. You fold into yourself, shaking, angry and heartbroken and a little lost. You don’t really hear his next words, because all you can hear is your own stammering half-managed apologies.

You’re not sure where the idea came from, really, but you find yourself leaping at him before you can react. You watch your hands clap over his ears in confusion, but then the fire leaps from your fingers with a cold rush of static and he freezes, howling in pain and raw anger. It lasts a second, then he wrenches himself away from you, hooking a foot around your ankle and hauling you against the wall as you buckle.

Black spots swim in your vision and white spots join the frenzied swarm as Scofflaw sinks his teeth into your shoulder. When did your shirt come off? You struggle with the passage of time, buffeted by Scofflaw’s anger and his attention, his hands and lips on you, every nerve on fire. You are floating in a sea of sensation, and it’s hard to breath, not just because of his hand around your throat when did that happen, when, and his lips on yours. You taste your own blood and strangely sugar for a brief moment before your eyes roll back in your head and you black out, overwhelmed by what he’s doing to you.

Wakefulness comes like a slap in the face, exactly like a slap in the face. Your vision swims and you see Scofflaw raise his hand, and you manage to stumble your way over no before he cracks his knuckles across your face again. He drops his hand and stands, a blurry shape of dark in the dim room.

You see your blood on his lips before you register the cold, distant look in his eyes. You stare at him from the bed, dazed, more than a little broken and aching from somewhere beyond your body. He just stares down at you, pulling on his jacket. He radiates cold fury in the doorway, a palpable sense of anger that washes you over like a tide, pulls you under the seething black water. You struggle to rise, but your can’t seem to work your arms at all, searing pain crawling up your side as you shift. A cracked rib, you think dazedly, maybe worse. You can’t feel enough of yourself to really catalogue your injuries. You can feel cooling pools of blood on you, settling in the hollow of your collarbone and oozing slowly down your sides. He leaves the room without a word, but the cold stays behind, sinking into your bones and your mind. You barely register his conversation with Delinquent, the words coming through a foot exhaustion and heartbreak. He doesn’t love you. Probably never did, you’re excruciatingly aware of his lack of proper emotional responses. He just used you, and you hate it, you want to curl up and die, want the world to swallow you up so you don’t have to deal with still wanting him.

You hear him walk past again and you silently beg him to please come back, don’t leave, but he simply walks past and lets himself out. The soft click of the door closing is like a gunshot in your head. It feels like every bone in you breaking from crushing loneliness.

TO BE FINISHED???

Chapter Text

“Do you want t’ know what it’s like?” Scofflaw’s voice is ice that runs through you, and you shudder, which has nothing to do with the chill at all. He stares at you, but you don’t know what he’s looking for, you never have and likely never will. You pull your coat tighter around you as you keep pace with him, gathering your thoughts.

“What?” Not asking him to repeat the question, no, you heard him clear enough the first time. But you need to know what he’s talking about, because he could mean a million things and always the one you never thought about. He pauses and you stop with him, and you cannot miss the way his eyes burn with some strange form of glee.

“Control.” He tells you, and you shudder again for a different reason. You don’t have a lot of control, and what you do have is so easily stripped from you. You can’t discern his reason for this conversation, he’s always been infuriatingly blank under your gaze. You twist your hands into the fabric of your coat to stop the sudden tremble that takes them.

He smiles like a snake when you nod shakily. You don’t trust yourself to speak, not at all. He reaches out and turns you with a hand on your shoulder, and you resist the urge to squirm away from him. He’s got you looking out into the crowded streets, the people you’ve been so desperately trying to ignore suddenly thrust into your field of view. You remember why you don’t go out at all during ‘regular’ business hours.

“Which one, then?” His voice is low and liquid, his usual good cheer absent, replaced by some dark longing you can’t read.

“What?” You’re suddenly out of your depth. Is ‘what’ all you can ask? You shake your head and fold into yourself, wishing you could escape Scofflaw’s hand and his gaze and his words.

“Which one, Inny? D’you want a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker? Businessman, maybe?” His words are tainted, they slide over your thoughts like liquid oil, staining everything in sight. He leans into you and his voice drops, words meant only for you. “Someone like your detective, maybe?” That hurts - the barely veiled threat and insult cuts you to the quick, and you wish desperately you could simply abscond. You cannot, because you can’t read Scofflaw’s mood, and you are absolutely uncertain of what would happen. Your overactive mind supplies various possibilities, none of them good.

“S-someone wh-who won’t be m-missed.” You stammer at him, and you feel a bittersweet pang of joy and loathing when he smiles. It’s not a good smile, not a healthy one. But you never expect anything different, these days. He pulls you into an alleyway and you are thankful to retreat from society’s watchful gaze, but not as thankful as you would be if Scofflaw wasn’t here, too. His hand is a gentle pressure on you arm as he guides you into the dark, but to you it feels like a band of frozen iron. Somewhere under your worry and fear there’s a strange sort of anticipation. You don’t want to think about it, you don’t want to think about what Scofflaw is offering to you, you don’t want to be here. You don’t. You want to be at home with your teas and books and plans. You want to be sage.

You want the control Scofflaw is offering you.

You want it more than anything else in the world.

He must have sought marks amongst the homeless before, you think, because he seems to know the signs. Where to find the homeless, the shelters they seek and the places they frequent. He is a long streak of coiled intent at your side, and you think you must look so out of place beside him. You, in your too short coat and too long scarf. You’re too tall here, everyone is bent almost double under the weight of their existence. Too clean, too bright in a dark way. You try to put it out of your mind as you follow Scofflaw, who is not at all troubled by the world around him. He never has been and likely never will.

You realize he’s stopped a moment before you run into him, and you manage to turn the step you were about to take into a sort of sideways stumble. He doesn’t even look at you, too busy staring at the rundown building. He turns his head to you just slightly, just enough so you can see his smile and the way his eyes burn with intent. You haven’t stopped trembling since he asked his question and he’s been silent since then. A silent Scofflaw is not a good sign. It is never a good sign.

And yet, you stay. You’re not sure he would let you leave anyway, but something inside you twists under his gaze and you don’t know what it is. You need to know. Understand, if possible, but know. So you follow him inside when he pushes open the door.

It’s not hard to find people, of course. The homeless were everywhere, and you even helped put some there. Scofflaw moves amongst them, shaking them and slipping them money and telling them to leave. They all do. Who would argue with him? Who would argue with the look of undeniable hunger on his face, the knife in his hands, the death in his eyes? Your pulse quickens, and it’s not something you want. Not something you are prepared to deal with.

Finally, it’s just you, Scofflaw, and a man who was not involved with the exodus. He’s sleeping. You try very hard not to get a good look at him. You’re not sure you’ll be able to deal with this if you do. Perhaps it’s better not knowing the man, better not knowing who the next dead body in the river is. You flinch when the homeless man wakes, because he does so explosively, with Scofflaw’s hand trapping his hands and a knife at his neck.

You’ve seen this before, of course. Scofflaw isn’t secretive about what he does for … fun, never has been. Never saw the need to keep you in the dark about his habits. Even Delinquent knows, and it’s a major point of contention between him and Scofflaw. It makes their volatile friendship prone to snapping, sometimes, but never breaks it. You can’t help but wonder about that, sometimes. You have never been one to pry, of course, so you’ve always kept that as something you don’t ask about, don’t think about. So far, it has worked.

Dazedly, you wonder if Scofflaw’s invited Delinquent to one of his outings like he’s just done to you. You don’t think the shorter man would have been interested, you know him well enough. This sort of thing wasn’t his, hah, cup of tea. But sickeningly, it might just be yours.

Scofflaw whispers something to the man - victim, really, there’s no stopping this now - and then turns to look at you. His eyes are bright in the dark, utterly focused on you. You don’t know what to do, really, and it makes you tremble under the weight of his gaze. He expects something of you, and that is perhaps the more terrifying thing.

“Ah, yes, I forgot. You don’t like t’ get your hands dirty, do you, Inny? But that’s okay. You can be the brains, Inny, I’ll be your hands.” That alone is reason enough to pause. Scofflaw never does something for anyone else, unless there’s a clear benefit for him in it. But what could he be getting out of this exchange? You think of the smile he wears after he’s ruined someone, torn down their life and everything in it. Not just physically but mentally, emotionally, you’ve seen his handiwork. Man driven to the edge of madness by Scofflaw don’t come back unchanged. He taints everyone he touches. It’s what makes him happy (you use the term loosely), it makes him laugh.

It makes something in you smile, too.

So what if Scofflaw’s attention is sporadic at best and harmful at worst? Some part of your disconnects, and a coldness seeps into you that is familiar and comforting, even if you wish it wasn’t.

“I want to see him run.” You’re surprised at your own voice, so calm and cool, completely unlike you. It is bizarre and new