c17h19no3 | [ MAD MAX AU : EYEPATCH DISASTER ]

[ MAD MAX AU : EYEPATCH DISASTER ]

The others tell him that he's shortening his already-dwindling stock of life, blowing fumes into his pipe instead of out. But the way Pip sees it, he's no different from the machines, those beautiful disasters made of mangled parts that growl with gasoline, drinks noxious fuel that churns in the heat of chrome and breathes wisps of toxins into the sky. Cigarettes are similar to that. Familiar. Cigarettes kill slowly, and Pip is fine with it, the way the War Boys are fine with drawing patterns on their corroding skin and naming their diseases with innocuous names. Hello, Tim. Hello, Greg.

Pip names his 4 disease sticks after names of people he doesn't know, and treads through sand and dust to find the only other person in this wasteland that's as stupid as he is. His journey takes him past a few old faces that look up from their aimless tasks, sifting through nothing for something, and they greet him with his given nickname— Goose— which Pip responds to with a crooked grin and an exaggerated sigh.

(it's the only thing he knows about the concept of family, that his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather were always part of the shitstorm that brought them closer and closer to hell: a long line of idiots called the Wild Geese, happily trading in their blood for gold. the grapevine's informed Pip of how his grandfather and the generation before that one died with a smile on their faces during the Big One that eventually laid waste to humanity, but if Pip ever resented the nickname that stuck with him like a bad reminder of his family's foibles, he doesn't think about it anymore.

he doesn't even know what a goose looks like. he can hardly be offended.)

Squinting his one eye against the sun, he maneuvers through dunes and dilapidation until he finds his target: a jarringly bright shock of red in a world already saturated in oranges and yellows. Badou is blindingly obvious even when he tries to be discreet.

Pip likes that about the kid.

"Hey, Badou. Got my hands on a few friends today, how 'bout it?"

He holds up one hand, tired cigarettes held between fingers in makeshift bearclaws.

"What've you got to barter for 'em, huh?"

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The anger would remind Pip of that red-cloaked hound that lurks in the spaces between horizon and mud, their 'fairy godfather' rendered in shade and blood: delighted as always by the idiocy of humans, absolutely enamored by the emergence of Immortan Joe and his warriors. 'Some things will never change.' Pip recalls that low baritone, that chuckle that tumbleweeds through the desert, that smile that paints a knowing caricature of a concerned third party.

'How will the gosling die, Mother Goose?

As a dog? A human? Or a living corpse?'

The remains of his cigarette burn a hole into baked sand, and Pip ducks into the front seat of their car, tasting charred wood on his tongue.

"Mm. She sounds thirsty, make no mistake. We're going to need to lather her up: that's rated NC-17, let's hope you can handle it."

A pat to the dashboard, eliciting a few protests of static from broken radios. Pip's fixed it some, and occasionally, it plays music— remnants of 'shows' that they pick up from satellites still beaming SOSes into the stars.

"How lucky do you feel today, mignonette?"

Badou waits until he's actually settle down before he grants Pip his audience (of 1 shitty young shounen). Wiggles in the seat to discover that familiar groove his ass usually takes up. Pops open the glove box to see how bullets are going (Bad, as Pip already said, but double checking is always a good idea). Checks his usual foothold up on the dashboard. Check.

And then, yes, he grands Pip his due. The stink eye.

"I'm an adult, of course I can handle it. Better than you can, you damn twelve year old girl. Even fix your hair like one..." Muttering, he wipes the edge of the window, sand crumbles away, paints his forearm without a care in the world.

Pip's comment at least drags a chuckle from him, however disgusted. "Do I ever? Just get it over with. We've gotta live somehow."

The Stink Eye is especially powerful when delivered with a single functioning eye. It laserbeams into a notch in Pip's soul that he diverts it to every time, and it leaves a brand in his head that he thinks about fondly. Some glares are as welcome as smiles.

Rocking the frame of their car with his weight, Pip adjusts the wheel in its seating with one hand while simultaneously ruffling Badou's hair with the other. Multitasking is second nature to him.

"It works, don't knock the hair. Your mane's long enough now, don't you want to match?"

And that's enough teasing for him to run on, and Pip gets busy with starting the ignition. She's a finicky one, their ride— it takes cajoling to get her to hum, and Pip knows which buttons to press, and in which order. Left, left, right, center. Then the key, then the acceleration. His efforts are rewarded with a reluctant but satisfied kick of the engine.

"—Got it in one. We are lucky today, I must've picked Lady Luck up with the cigs."

"Over my dead body," is the springloaded retort that fizzles out halfassed when its apparent their lucky Striking Lady is going to cooperate today. He'd even held his breath, just in case. If only a lucky rabbit's foot would give aid in these parts.

(when's the last time anyone ever saw one of the fuzzy critters? 10 years? 15?)

While Pip occupies himself with that, Badou decides to twist halfway 'round to get an eyeful of their belongings back there. Clothing, what little water they have to spare (his mouth goes extra dry, with an extra helping of salt-grain to it, just at the thought), the weapons, and the nicknacks they've gathered over the years.

How did he survive so many years with this bonehead?

"She must've known I was along for the ride or else you wouldn't have picked up jack dick."

Frugal living is the name of their game. Under the pile of spare weaponry that Pip's managed to salvage from years and years of roughhousing (including his darling Kalashnikov, mon cher Kalash), there are trinkets that he hasn't had the heart to throw away, tucked discreetly along with all the junk that his Geese have given up to Badou as consolation for all the scars and bloodloss that they've come back with. An empty lighter with a message engraved on it, a half-broken canteen embossed with a family crest that no one can identify. Useless, sentimental junk.

Descriptors that fit humanity as a whole, really. They're all just afterthoughts by now, set apart by a primal desire to live and laugh while they can.

"I should've known that you have an older women fetish. You like the ones that'd wrap you up in their tits and suffocate you lovingly."

His shoulders shake with his own unfunny joke, and the hand not trained on the wheel for dear life fiddles with the radio, waiting for just the right position that'd give them sweet, sweet reminders of a civilization where people had the luxury of song.

The machine fizzes, grunts, and then starts playing the first few bars of the Stones's 'Wild Horses'.

"—Merde, we're really getting lucky today."

The backseat, once upon a time a decent gray, has now turned a rusty, blotched out burgundy of dried blood and sand combined. It's a wonder they even have any room for anything with all the junk back there. At least the weapons are somewhat neatly packed beneath each of their seats and wedged between the doors and the seats.

"As long as she buys me food and water she can do almost anything to me. Just not freaky shit...and again with the projecting your own fantasies onto me? You old farts and your dreams..." Sighing, Badou shakes his head, eye flickers to the radio in an afterthought.

"Almost too lucky...Better watch your ass."

He doesn't want to say it out loud (because if he's learned one thing from Chuckles, that smiley fuck, it's that breathing into words gives them power. Words have power) but he's pretty sure it's too good to be true. Instead, Badou decides to check the ammo for the gun wedged between the door, careful fingers work quickly to figure out what he already knows.

A comfortable silence falls between them, one filled by broken hums of the former Frenchman trying to recall the lyrics to an old classic: something after living once love dies. Paying attention to the poetry of it all seems superfluous. The metallic click of weaponry being taken apart and put together is his percussion to the song, and Pip knows that those sun-cracked hands working the weapons are moving just the way he taught them to.

"You've gotten faster at that," he says, and it isn't a compliment. Just an observation. He says it through curled lips, posture slouched forward with his forearms on the top of the wheel. Dangerous.

The car keeps rumbling forward at a comfortable pace, kicking up sand and debris until the front tires hit the first beginnings of a road proper. It's smooth sailing from here, nothing but horizon.

"When's the last time you fired a gun, oison?"

Pip's voice actually gives Badou a little bolt of alarm. It isn't as though he hadn't expected it, was just pulled into the lull of mechanical workings and repetitive goingson and the landscape stretching out before them. A goddamn void of tan.

It's the other man's tone that has the ginger sitting up a little straighter, shoulders off the back of the seat and rolled tight, up to nearly his neck. He has to choose his words carefully. After meeting back up with his sort-of guardian, the first time in a couple of months, they haven't run into many skirmishes. Maybe one.

Smooth is not the rise in Pip's voice. In his question. Not even in the nickname that doesn't really get on his nerves.

It's more than a question. It's probably one of those looking back on what you did wrong with child rearing things. He doesn't understand that.

"When? Huuuuh....when...when did I....? When. The last time I did was....huuuh.."

Time to drag it out and see what the hell he wants.

(naturally suspicious? got nothing on this info broker's paranoia)

He asks, mainly because he wants to know if there are reasons other than his own bullheaded idiocy for the kid to pick up a gun and fire it. Not that he harbors any illusions about the state of this society and what kind of people crawl through its trenches— still, even War Boys are more frequently in the possession of lances.

(There came a time when Pip realized that Badou's suspicions sometimes collided with conventional idea of consideration. Some people hide self-preservation in a question, secrets folded into themselves like firecrackers that just won't go off. A flash-bang when you least expect it, or a slow smolder of a fuse weighed down by too many doubt.)

The last few notes of Wild Horses turn into a sandstorm of static, taper off into nothing. The satellite above them must have set their sights on some other sorry group, huddled in post-apocalyptic wasteland. Somewhere, they'll be humming Brown Sugar.

"I'm asking," he says, almost as if he's exasperated. He's not. "If you've wasted ammo without me knowing."

Phrasing it in a way that allows Badou to get indignant.

If he says I don't remember Pip is going to sniff it right away, faster than a wolf on the sand. They both know how sharp his mind is, how he takes an anal need to organize their means of survival. If, instead, he makes something up, there's the off-chance Pip will remember and then he's back to square one. Fuck.

Thankfully (for whom???) the way Pip words it immediately has its intended effect: Badou's hot under the collar, hotter than two blazing suns, cheeks burning.

"What the fuck do you mean I've wasted em?! You're the dumbfuck who has one of those macho hunting knives and you can't even catch a little lizard with it, you've gotta waste five bullets. Five! Look in the mirror and fix your shitty teeth, Limey, you've found your own culprit."

Good job, dad. Badou's so furious he sets down the gun he's since pieced back together with a slam into the bottom of the vehicle, long limbs reach for one of the bigger weapons they have. Not a rocket launcher, but it'll do. Something with a lot of power. And lots of parts to set right, teeth grit and sweat in his eyes.

Anything to lessen the scorched skin at the back of his neck, which creeps up and up and up, anything to make him forget Pip just thinks hes some dumb brat even at his age.

(does he not trust--)

Edited 2015-07-01 08:48 (UTC)

A trained nose for bullshit and a trained single eye for surrender. Throw in a soldier's sixth, seventh, and eighth sense for people flirting with danger, and you have a lethal combination all wound up in that braid of his.

But damn, this firestarter. He almost whistles at the ferocity of that retort, a heat well-suited for places a little more dangerous than the passenger's side of a rickety car— not that he wishes that on the kid, as well-worn for battle as he might be. Maybe if his stupid Geese could muster half the passion for bitebacks that Badou has, they'd all live a little longer.

(Catch-22s.)

"Are you trying to make me feel badly about my depth perception!? You're one to talk— give me back my other eye, you bastard."

His eyes still trained on the road (looking for storm clouds, dust kicked up from wandering war parties), he reaches blindly in Badou's general direction, tries to pinch a cheek and stretch.

And if that doesn't add fuel to the fire that is Badou, nothing does like Pip trying to mess with him and paw at him while fucking driving. Badou bristles right on cue, sways to one side while battling Pip's lazy goddamn arm, pinches and jostles and shoves all the while he spits:

"Will you watch the fuckin' road?! You're a shitty enough driver without your even worse attention span! And besides, finders keepers, sucker!"

He's also going to just curl his fingers around the steering wheel just in case Pip starts to let them wander.

Is getting this mad really worth it? Is it worth losing energy and sweat? Badou doesn't know anything else, honestly. So why the fuck not.

"Merde, I only trashed our ride just that once... let it go, besides, we had a hell of a time."

Read: that one time Pip flipped their car over a particularly big sandhill just to prove that he could drive with his eye closed.

He definitely couldn't drive with his eye closed.

After enduring a few vicious swats that leave red handprints on his forearm, Pip obediently trains both hands back on the wheel, strokes the dashboard once to apologize to Lady Luck for being such a shithead. As is his way.

Transferring his white-knuckled grip from the steering wheel to the ripped bottom of his seat, Badou grits his teeth and stares straight ahead for two beats, his mouth slack with a fire that is impending. Impending doom.

"A HELL OF A TIME!! A HELL OF A TIME? A hell of a time.... We flipped the fuck over, I threw up in your eye and then you threw up in the backseat!! That's not a hell of a time! That was terrible," the doom crashes upon Pip, figuratively, at least, when Badou turns to face him and simultaneously smack him in the chest with an open palm.

He owes Lady Luck and Strike some new parts for being such a shithead. But she understands, after all this time. Boys will be boys, even old birds like Pip. At least they still have their eyeteeth.

"Yeah, I remember. I fancy I can still smell your puke when the wind blows juuuuust.... so."

And he turns his head, blows a puff right between Badou's eyes. Doesn't Pip know that the fastest way to get his nose torn clear off his face is to provoke something (someone) like this? It's likely, but he's never been particularly adept at making choices that prolong his lifespan.

Also, he figures that being in the driver's seat will increase his survival rate by at least 10%. He's the one with the feet on the pedals here, their life and death depend on his kneejerk reactions; Badou definitely knows that. Should know that. Hopefully.

(Cheater.)

Edited 2015-07-02 14:08 (UTC)

See, out of the two of them Badou's probably the more.....realistic one. Surprisingly. Perhaps unsurprisingly. So one would expect him to be reasonable about this. Not responsible, but hold back just enough.

"FUCK YOU! IF YOU LIKE IT SO MUCH I'LL BOTTLE IT FOR YOU!"

Instead, he shoves hard at Pip's shoulder with his open palm, enough to jostle him, to pull hands from the wheels, to get them into a sand dune.

(he's absolutely a cheater)

(has been since being born in a ditch somewhere out there)

Things have taken an unexpected turn... literally. Lucky Strike, goddess to two unfortunate infants, 'strikes' a roadbump and goes sailing, sailing, sailing. She's a graceful flier, but her landing needs some work.

The impact of the front bumper hitting sun-baked sand throws Pip forward, and predictably, has his thick skull collide with the rim of the steering wheel.

That's going to leave a mark.

"—WHAT THE FUCK?!" Cue a steady stream of French obscenities: even in a desert, languages remain colorful. "Are you trying to kill us?! What will our tombstones have said, ahh?! 'Here lie two idiots who died talking about puke'?! What kind of way is that to go?!"

That's right, the poor steering wheel...she'd just gotten that fixed, too! What a shame...to have that big hard stupid head bash into her. Lu-Stri-san suffers a blow to the window in the form of Badou's equally hard head smashed into it.

He'll at least leave a smudge. The glass has taken worse.

Badou's head swims, eye unfocused as Pip talks and talks and rants; in one ear and out the other, as per the norm. The ginger hasn't really thought about what'd be on his tombstone because he figures no one who knows him will outlive him. A sad thought that.

French burbles into his ears like streams once did to the yielding earth, and Badou blinks.

"Here lies a dumbfuck who longed for puke until the end and his hard boiled comrade who died thinking about a hand model," is what is supplied. A palm comes up to his forehead even as his eye gives Pip a once over for anything substantial.

The brain damage that can be helped, that is.

The only visible damage is a thin strip of red lashed across his stupid forehead, better known as The Scarlet Punctuation, forever marking Pip Bernadotte as The Worst Adult ever. He rubs at it with the pads of his fingers, groans, and turns off the gas.

"Hand models," he offers, sagely. "Are usually ugly as sin."

If Badou remembers none of Pip's wise sayings, this is the one to keep. Apparently.

"I should just throw you out onto your scrawny ass, you know that? Ah, have I ever told you about what they used to do in some parts of the world as ways to repent for your shitty sins? One of them was to bury yourself neck-deep in sand and pray that the vultures or assholes who want to piss on your face didn't come around."

This is a complete and utter lie. But he tells it like it's a fact of life— was a fact of life, some relic of the glory days before, you know. All of this.

Badou leans in, expression just as sage, just as savage, and it appears he's actually listening! Holy shit, maybe Pip is finally getting through to--

"Hand models can't be that ugly. Out of all the hope that's left in this world, we still have this."

And slaps a palm against Pip's forehead.

Then he's quickly prying the door open to roll out of the car and check the damage while he, you know, flees from imminent death as well. Badou does at least pop his stupidly hard head back through the window and says,

"If that's true then you must've reevaluated why your breath tastes like piss every morning, huuuuuh," overly fond and smug, the little shit. And then he's trouncing off towards the hood, a little dizzy but not so worse for wear.

Edited 2015-07-04 01:35 (UTC)

How unwise of Badou, to ignore such words of wisdom from the mouth of such a credible source. Pip looks indignant for precisely two seconds, before realizing that expecting the kid to take him seriously about hand models is an uphill struggle he's only willing to make in small increments. He'll learn.

So, instead of bestowing more nuggets of knowledge, instead of letting the desert rain with rivers of his platitudes...

...He grins.

And turns their ride on reverse.

And starts speeding backwards, away from Badou.

"What was that? You need to speak up, gamin!"

Badou watches the sand fly and his ride fly-bye-bye-bye for all of three seconds before he starts after Pip.

"GET BACK HERE, YOU SON OF A BIIIIIIIIITCH! I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHERE YOUR MAG IS!"

It sure is a rough lyfe, tumbling over the salt only to sink every few footfalls, feet pounding so hard he feels it in his knees to accompany the thunder that is his heart, where it aches in his chest.

He's going to fucking kill Pip. Half-raised him be damned. He's going to kill him. That's how students surpass their masters.

A shitty head pokes out from the window, an accompanying braid fluttering like a pennant in the wind. Pip's smile is appropriately crooked, out of place for a father goose teaching his precious gosling how to fly.

At this rate, he'll navigate them both right past the Equator and straight into Hell.

"Hustle, hustle! Move those skinny legs and catch up before I turn for the road!"

Who does Pip think he is, a drill sergeant? Actually...

"Come on, when'd you become such a weak-ankled little shit, huh?"

Oh, that's how he's going to play, huh? Either it's heatstroke making another appearance in Badou's already raging blood or he's snapped. Because he stops in his tracks, dust caked to his ankles and hair in the wind.

He stops and says not a word. He doesn't move an inch.

"Weak ankled little shit...weak ankled...little shit...."

His gosling mutters to himself, shoulders stooped forward and tense. Hands limp at his sides. What ever happened to that cigarette he had earlier? Was it lost among the junk in Strikie? Did he swallow it?

How much time has passed since his last puff of nicotine?

Badou stands there like one of those junkies who are addicted to the rays of the sun, who broil themselves to a crisp until they can just barely take it, until they can hardly move to shelter let alone recognize it anymore; then he slowly lifts his chin to look at Pip's retreating form.

That's...worrying. The chase momentarily suspended, Pip backs up another few yards before stopping the engines to get a full blast of that Arctic chill radiating from Badou's form, all the way to where he's sitting.

(Arctic? White-hot flames? He can't distinguish between the two, but they both spell the same word: B-A-D.)

(no wonder 'bad boy' was a thing.)

"...Hey, hey. Don't tell me you're giving up already? I hope you wore white underwear today, oison, you can use that as a white flag...?"

Let's see how this joke plays. It's as tentative as he is curious, because Pip has a third eye for danger and a second stomach to digest his own demise.

He yells it over a whistle of sand-soaked wind. Hopefully Badou can hear it.

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i am taking a lot of liberties gomen possibly

please always take as many liberties as you want?! i love it so...

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