(closed) february catch-all;

[bigbaddy]

Who: Bigby (bigbaddy), Billy (notarat) and various other people.
What: Various February happenings!
When: During all of February.
Where: Around town.

Content Warnings: None so far, will add here when applicable.

( if you want to do something with either of them this month, just let me know and i'll gladly throw up a starter! contact me either through a pm to my journals or over on plurk at queeningsquare. )

Comments

cw: human sacrifice

[desperate_times_right]

[Chloe feels a stab of something - not quite a sympathy, kinship maybe - toward Hickey for that. Lazarevic had almost put her down for stealing from him, hadn't he, and it was only a day before she’d arrived here that she’d been on her knees in that awful little chamber with Asav’s gun against her forehead. If not for Nadine’s quick thinking her blood might have been drained into that aqueduct too; an old-school human sacrifice. What a joke, if Asav’s belief about Chloe descending from the king who’d stopped the practice is true.]

Yeah, I wouldn't blame him for that. No offence, but your whole crew sounds like a powder keg.

[notarat]

Considering I am not part of the powder keg, I won't have to take offense.

[ Or so he likes to believe, anyway. Whenever there's trouble being caused, it clearly is never Billy's fault. Suggesting the mutiny in the first place doesn't count, that was just being practical!

Still, there's a slight turn to Billy's eyebrows, a little like a frown, that indicates it's on his mind all the same. That he can't brush it off that easily - mostly because of his entanglement with Hickey. ]

.. things should be fine here, as long as no one does anything ridiculous. [ A pause, like he's a little more unsure whether or not to express the second part since it feels a little more personal, but.. ] I don't want my second chance at life to be ruined due to them not knowing how to behave.

[ Mostly the rest of the crew, really. Billy actually feels like Hickey has been.. relatively well behaved by his standards. Mostly. ]

[desperate_times_right]

[This is why she worries about you, Billy! It's absolutely understandable why he wants to, but walking around openly as the gay husband of a guy who is public enemy number one to a bunch of not only Victorians but guys in the British Royal Navy seems like more powder in the keg to Chloe.]

Ah. Which is why you're concerned that he might do something ridiculous.

[At least if it comes from the others and not them they can fight back a bit.]

If anyone here is going at you, you can come to me. I don't think I have much of a reputation to tank with those guys anyway.

[Not just because she's a woman, either. She wouldn't be surprised if some of these guys had served in campaigns in India.]

[notarat]

[ Chloe isn't even the first person here who's practically offered to protect him, but.. It's surprising all over again. Considering how heavily Billy relies on a world view of you only having yourself to count on when things get hairy, of believing that other people won't care, it stuns him into a momentary silence when Chloe goes right against that here.

He doesn't even know how to put into words what he feels about that. Billy isn't practised enough with it.

Maybe it's why he doesn't start on that first. Instead, after that slight pause, he looks over at her to carefully ask: ]

What would you do in that case?

[ Look, he definitely thinks Chloe is fierce. He's not even implying she couldn't do anything against people who'd harass him-- maybe he's more curious what she'd have in mind. ]

[desperate_times_right]

If they just want to talk, I know lots of ways to tell people to shut up. If they want to fight, or to punish you guys… well. I've fought stronger guys than anyone on your crew and won.

[Luckily for Billy he has no idea how many necks she's snapped just in the month before she got here.]

I don't like people messing with my friends.

[notarat]

[ .. well, that's.. touching. It's not often that someone offers something like this to him, after all. And though it's also just plain handy - which is the only thing he's internally willing to admit to - there is a part of him that is instinctively touched at it all the same. ]

I-- [ He starts, then seems to cut himself off, like he thinks better of what he was about to say.

It's hard to even find the right words, really. Billy looks like he's thinking for a moment before settling on: ]

.. thought I hope it won't have to come to that, that knowledge does make me rest more assuredly. Thank you.

[desperate_times_right]

I mean, I hope I don't have to fight either. But you guys deserve better than that, you know? And here, it's - well. We’re only as safe as we make ourselves.