Black Lagoon fic
They are the antithesis of fairy tales, the two of them. Even if you swap the princess for a man and dress him in blue and white. Even if you double and curve the knight’s sword, even if you empty the hip-flask of enchanted water and fill it with straight Bacardi.
They’re not in love and never will be. Love goes with flowers and cheap-ass jewelry, shit she’s never had and doesn’t want and wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with it if she had it.
Love goes with all the other paper-thin traditional goals, all the other ambitions he decided weren’t worth it.
Friendship isn’t a factor in their lives either. Friendship is for phone calls and holiday cards, bitching about husbands and wives, stopping by some decent restaurant for a quick beer after work. Talking each other out of a bullet, reviewing the day over the first of a dozen shots they’d both be drinking anyway, blasting the fuck out of anyone who tries to stop her from reaching him, trusting each other but never admitting it - that’s nowhere close to friendship. Comradeship might be closer, but that goes with pressed uniforms and polished buttons, clean-shaven faces and crew cuts, and some bullshit idea of a cause somewhere along the way. It’s got nothing to do with this matted, sweat-soaked existence, living bullet to bullet and bloodbath to bloodbath, not even knowing that loyalty exists until you’re surrounded by bodies and flat out of bullets and punching him in the jaw for scaring the shit out of you. That isn’t comradeship, that isn’t love, and that isn’t friendship, but it’s not bullshit either.
You couldn’t call them fuck buddies or any shit like that, though. For one thing, ‘buddies’ is just as bad as friends, stupid casual stuff that’s got nothing to do with just fitting together, but for another… Well, Revy would shoot herself in the face before she’d call it anything else, and Rock’s never called it anything but an intonation and a tilt of his head, but fucking isn’t really any more accurate than friendship. It’s too slow, too careful. Rock always acts like twitching his finger wrong across her face could turn everything into the epicenter of an explosion; Revy’s always hesitant, gruff, trying to pretend it doesn’t mean anything and failing miserably, but what matters is that the façade exists at all. Or some shit like that.
They aren’t sins, either, because that requires buying into that whole idea of right and wrong, and Revy is nothing if not clear on her opinion of that bullshit. They aren’t archetypes, because who the fuck believes that life falls into patterns. They aren’t symbols or clichés for the same reason, because the real world doesn’t work that way, with some pretty significance for a kiss or a hairstyle or a pattern of light on the ground or some fucking bird in the sky.
Really, they just pretty much are what they are. They’re a couple of people who it’s worth wasting bullets to save, at least worth it to each other. They’re a couple of people who care about each other and get through the day better if they wake up naked and tangled up and covered in sweat and they have an evening spent over a bottle of rum to look forward to. They’re a crazy-ass psycho bitch and an even crazier bastard with his head so far up his ass it’s in the clouds. They’re a beautiful, dangerous, broken tough woman, and a guy in a mile over his head and swimming on deeper. They’re them.
They’re not in love and never will be. Love goes with flowers and cheap-ass jewelry, shit she’s never had and doesn’t want and wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with it if she had it.
Love goes with all the other paper-thin traditional goals, all the other ambitions he decided weren’t worth it.
Friendship isn’t a factor in their lives either. Friendship is for phone calls and holiday cards, bitching about husbands and wives, stopping by some decent restaurant for a quick beer after work. Talking each other out of a bullet, reviewing the day over the first of a dozen shots they’d both be drinking anyway, blasting the fuck out of anyone who tries to stop her from reaching him, trusting each other but never admitting it - that’s nowhere close to friendship. Comradeship might be closer, but that goes with pressed uniforms and polished buttons, clean-shaven faces and crew cuts, and some bullshit idea of a cause somewhere along the way. It’s got nothing to do with this matted, sweat-soaked existence, living bullet to bullet and bloodbath to bloodbath, not even knowing that loyalty exists until you’re surrounded by bodies and flat out of bullets and punching him in the jaw for scaring the shit out of you. That isn’t comradeship, that isn’t love, and that isn’t friendship, but it’s not bullshit either.
You couldn’t call them fuck buddies or any shit like that, though. For one thing, ‘buddies’ is just as bad as friends, stupid casual stuff that’s got nothing to do with just fitting together, but for another… Well, Revy would shoot herself in the face before she’d call it anything else, and Rock’s never called it anything but an intonation and a tilt of his head, but fucking isn’t really any more accurate than friendship. It’s too slow, too careful. Rock always acts like twitching his finger wrong across her face could turn everything into the epicenter of an explosion; Revy’s always hesitant, gruff, trying to pretend it doesn’t mean anything and failing miserably, but what matters is that the façade exists at all. Or some shit like that.
They aren’t sins, either, because that requires buying into that whole idea of right and wrong, and Revy is nothing if not clear on her opinion of that bullshit. They aren’t archetypes, because who the fuck believes that life falls into patterns. They aren’t symbols or clichés for the same reason, because the real world doesn’t work that way, with some pretty significance for a kiss or a hairstyle or a pattern of light on the ground or some fucking bird in the sky.
Really, they just pretty much are what they are. They’re a couple of people who it’s worth wasting bullets to save, at least worth it to each other. They’re a couple of people who care about each other and get through the day better if they wake up naked and tangled up and covered in sweat and they have an evening spent over a bottle of rum to look forward to. They’re a crazy-ass psycho bitch and an even crazier bastard with his head so far up his ass it’s in the clouds. They’re a beautiful, dangerous, broken tough woman, and a guy in a mile over his head and swimming on deeper. They’re them.