leloyon
I'll see you in the Wired.
- Feb 4, 2023
- 1,347
i wrote this short story like two weeks ago and posted it on my profile. it was received well enuff that i hath posted it as a thread to share it with the masses, the unwashed hordes (read: people who dont look at my profile)
also, since i know damien's rep as well as the title: THIS IS NOT A SMUT FIC. it contains references to sex as well as a couple brief saucy moments, enough for me to consider it NSFW, but it does not contain anything too explicit and i would not consider it "smutty" at all, i dont feel as if those aforementioned moments even count as smut tbh
also also i still aint come up with an official name for it, so fugg it, im just using what i named the google doc. doc's here if you wanna read it in that format. anyway sit back, relax and ejnoy.
Damien stumbled backwards.
Her day had been going incredibly well, up until now. She had started rapping at her girlfriend, reciting one of the many sex raps she had written, her flow easily blowing every other MC out of the water. Hell, an instrumental had even spontaneously started playing in the background, god knows where that came from, but she had no right to complain.
And it had worked, too. She'd given Damien the best head she'd ever had, inhaling her pussy like it was oxygen, as if she needed it to live. And then she had stood up, looking at her with eyes hazy with lust, as if she was itching for them to fuck like rabbits. And then…
She-she pushed her?! She fucking- she just pushed her away! Why- what?!
"L-Loyon?! H-how dare you?! I'm the Brainrot Queen, after all. Your Brainrot Queen." Damien yelled indignantly, as she brushed herself off, disheveled from being shoved. She hadn't fallen or anything, just been knocked back a little.
Loyon had a strange smile on her face, looking more smug than Damien had ever seen her before as she looked her in the eyes. If her smile was strange, then the look in her eyes was even stranger. If asked, Damien might have even said it was intimidating.
"You know the rules, and so do I."
Damien recoiled in shock at Loyon's words, unable to hide the hurt on her face. "The rules, Loyon? What are you talking about?" she said. "L-look" she stuttered out "if it's about all my other girls, I'll leave them if you want, for you, y'know? A full commitment's what I'm thinking of, you won't get this from any other girl."
Loyon laughed at Damien's words, creeping towards her with a strange glint in her eye and a stranger smile on her face. "I just wanted to tell you how I'm feelin'." she muttered in annoyance, then sighed, before speaking up, louder, perfectly calm. "Gotta make you understand."
All of a sudden, she raised her leg and kicked Damien, right in the chest. Damien fell, and fell. She could have sworn there was a wall there, could have sworn they were just in their apartment, and yet she fell into the void.
Could have sworn she heard Loyon yell something, her scrambled mind hardly being able to make it out but she would swear on anything that she heard "...parta!" at the end, as she fell into nothingness.
She fell and fell, seeing pitch black darkness, blinding white light, every colour of the rainbow, flashing around her like she'd stared at the sun too long. Until suddenly, several towering figures emerged, resembling Loyon but dressed oddly, all wearing matching tan trenchcoats with black t-shirts and trousers, all singing like a choir as Damien tumbled.
"Never gonna give you up,
Never gonna let you down,
Never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry,
Never gonna say goodbye,
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you."
The chorus repeated as Damien fell and fell, before all of a sudden landing on… nothing. There was floor, a cold, hard surface to land on, but from what she could see, she was still just in the void. The towering figures of Loyon faded away, the singing stopped.
Replaced by footsteps. Echoing, sounding like they were walking on concrete. Damien desperately looked around, before spotting a single figure. A man in a wide-brimmed hat and long, black robe, with no face, skin pitch black. Somehow, she could tell that he was looking at her with disdain. He carried a simple grey boombox in his hand as he walked up to her form, laying on her back, propping herself up on her elbows in the place that Should Not Be.
He stopped short of her, looking down upon her. He held the boombox up, as if to show her it, but she couldn't see what was inside it. He raised his hand lazily, and pressed PLAY.
A tune, all too familiar to Damien, started playing. Recognition spread across her face before being replaced by horror, absolute, primal fear adorning her features. The man just nodded his head a couple times, mockingly, before setting the boombox down on the ground. He turned his back on her and walked away, into nothingness, as the tune played.
Damien scrambled on her hands and knees, desperately trying to turn it off, to no avail. She tried opening the CD compartment and it wouldn't budge. With no further options, she got up and threw it as far as she could, and yet the music did not so much as fade, even as the boombox flew across the void and out of sight. The music taunted her. That familiar, repulsive tune, quickly being replaced by lyrics that no creature should ever be subjected to.
"I'm in the thick of it, everybody knows
They know me where it snows, I skied in and they froze
I don't know nothin' 'bout ice, I'm jus' cold
Forty-somethin' milli subs or so, I been told"
As Youtuber "Knowledge, Strength and Integrity" began rapping about going from the screen, to the ring, to the pen and to the king, Damien fell to her knees, already having taken too much of this torture for any being. She screamed, a primal cry of anguish, begging for whatever powers that be to grant her mercy, appealing that no matter what she had done, she didn't deserve this.
No creature deserved this.
Damien screamed.
Sitting up in bed, she looked around, completely startled. And yet, she was not in any void, surrounded by desolation in the form of what one man tried to label "music". Instead, in her bed, surrounded only by her apartment. Looking to her left, she saw her betrayer, the woman who had dared subject her to these horrors, begin to wake up. Her thin, pale arms unwrapped themselves from Damien's side, one going to prop herself up while the other rubbed sleep from her blue eyes.
"You okay, love?" the real Loyon said, her hand coming down from her eyes to her mouth to wipe some drool off. "You have a nightmare or somethin'?"
Damien stared at her blankly for a second, before getting her bearings and smiling. "Yeah, just a nightmare…"
She watched as Loyon grabbed her glasses, right next to the hunting knife she kept on the bedside table "in case rats made it through the ceiling". It was still a little intimidating having such a thing around, but at least the mental image of her tiny girlfriend fighting a rat the size of a cat off with a knife was amusing. But rats were a problem only in Loyon's previous house, back at her mother's, and they were a long way from there, and a part of Damien wished she would let it go.
That was just the nature of her girlfriend, however. Always stuck in the past. She watched as Loyon spaced off sometimes, or flew into a rage over her flashbacks, ranting about what had happened to her years prior, how she was wronged, what an injustice it all was. She was still suffering from it, even as she tried to rebuild her life, Damien could almost see at this point, when she had hatched a new thing to do, a new purpose to dedicate her life towards.
Just as much as she could almost see when she fell again, discarding everything as she felt overwhelmed by the amount of effort it would take just to rebuild anything resembling a future, at least in her mind, and how pointless it all was.
Damien shook her head again, as if she could physically shake the thoughts off. She felt her girlfriend wrap her arms back around her, snuggling into her, resting her head in the crook of her neck.
"I'll hug it better" she mumbled as she nuzzled Damien's neck, "sucks bein' screwed over in any world." Referring to her belief that dreams were, in fact, just another world. She still remembered when Loyon tried to tell her about that girl she kept seeing in her dreams, and how at one point she thought that this girl was a God, controlling every step of her life, pointing her in one direction.
She still hadn't made that shrine to her, and even then, she had moved on, to whatever esoteric belief she saw online this week, whatever weird thing she read about to justify her superiority over the normies (read: anyone who was more socially successful than her), for knowing something they didn't, for being in deeper than they were. She'd been going on and on about this "Dobbs" guy recently, and how her being a NEET was actually just her acquiring "Slack".
When Damien had asked what "Slack" even was, Loyon just smiled and said "If you have to ask, you'll never get it."
She told her, in response, to lay off the acid.
In the present day, Damien idly ran one of her fingers through Loyon's hair, feeling the knots that she had yet to brush. "I know one thing you can do to make it better, my little pogchamp" she said, before chuckling. She felt as Loyon cringed, and then smiled, and then backed away from her. Damien's chuckles turned to laughter as she watched Loyon cover the lower half of her face with her hands, while scooting away from her in bed.
"I swear… am I the only one who doesn't think of sex all the time?" she muttered, incredulous.
"What?" Damien responded, smug as ever. "Just trying to rizz you up, part of my sigma grindset, shawty."
With those words, Loyon's demeanor completely changed. Her eyes going from wide and eager to half-lidded and tired, her smile gone, and her hands falling to her sides. She, oddly enough, liked being called pogchamp, but any brainrot would kill her libido faster than a cock after fifty lines of gak. Damien cackled at the completely predictable reaction as Loyon grabbed at the panties hanging from one of her feet, pulling her other foot through the intended leg hole and pulling them up her legs. These ones torn intentionally by Damien in one of their more "passionate" moments. Loyon would complain about her tearing all her underwear apart, but apparently didn't have enough of a problem to not continue wearing them.
She ignored Damien's cackles as she idly put on a black tank top, followed by one of her boiler suits, tying the sleeves of it around her waist to utilise it as a pair of trousers. Wasn't always like that, but more of her style nowadays. Damien liked to think it was her doing, anything that made Loyon show more skin must have been in her mind, but truth be told, she just saw one too many characters doing that.
"Aww c'mon, baby…" Damien choked out, in between fits of laughter, "you know you love my brainrot."
"My brain has rotted in just the correct way." Loyon shot back. "Fried into a golden brown mush, crispy in some areas, with some bubbles and solid lumps that communicate with each other enough to work right. Not like your Gen-Alpha nonsense."
Damien stopped laughing, but still chuckled a bit. "I've seen more logic in Ohio, shawty." she said, amused. "We gotta get you to a Diddy party, I'm on the guestlist, he'll show you brainrot."
"Yeah, brainrot with roofies." Loyon muttered, turning away from Damien to look for her coat. "You're on the guestlist, alright. In the unpaid labour part of it. I swear, McAfee's seen it all, he's gettin' me in one anyway, just to bust the whole thing. Diddy's crimpin' his bath salts biz."
Amused, Damien just silently crawled on all fours on the bed, before sitting up and putting her hands on Loyon's shoulders. She jumped slightly, having not noticed her girlfriend's crawling.
"Relax, girl." she whispered, her lips near Loyon's ear. "I was just joking, my little skrunkle, for real for real. Not my fault you can't handle my alpha mewstre-"
"I am going to kill you and then myself." Loyon deadpanned. "I am going to stick my fingers in your nostrils and rotate them violently."
"Hot." Damien replied in an overly sultry tone. Loyon just slowly turned her head towards her and looked back at her incredulously.
Loyon blinked rapidly, the bewildered expression not showing even the smallest signs of cracking. "Even the murder-suicide?!" she sputtered out.
"I mean…" Damien trailed off, looking to the side as she drummed her fingers on Loyon's shoulders, "not that, buuuut we both know how we met, so who knows?"
Her head snapped back to looking Loyon in the eyes, before her incredulous face cracked, replaced by a slightly pensive look as she turned her head away to avoid the eye contact. "I'm not sure what would be better, actually…" she muttered, "if you were into the murder-suicide, or the nostril rotating…"
Of course, with these two, it was never long before at least some passive mention towards their mutual death drives. It had introduced them to begin with, after all. Brought them together. Loyon hadn't even known Damien wrote until she had read her suicide note, chock-full of brainrot as it was. They'd bonded over writing, after that, Loyon writing her own reply to it after she had backed out, containing her own form of brainrot. Not what you would call "brainrot", the term usually applying to a very specific kind of thing, but it had succeeded in frying Loyon's brain, or perhaps was just a result of Loyon's brain already being fried.
"I mean," Damien began, "it is you sticking your fingers into my ho-"
"No, no, nope, nope." Loyon cut her off, knowing exactly what she was saying and desperately trying to not think about it. "Shut up, shut the fuck up, fuck you, I hate that you said that and I actively envy the deaf and the blind. I hate my life, I hate my life."
She clutched her own head, as if it would purge what she had heard from her memory. It didn't work, it never did. Damien just looked on, amused, as Loyon regained her bearings, shrugged her hands off her shoulders, and continued looking around the room for her coat, spotting it on the seat of Damien's gaming chair.
"If you want to fuck me so bad…" Damien said, putting on her sultry voice again as she wrapped her arms around Loyon, stopping her from walking over to the chair and pressing her against Damien in an embrace. She knew it was a cheesy thing to say, but it didn't matter, it would rile Loyon up one way or another, and that's all that mattered to her. One of her hands moved to Loyon's breast, squeezing, her thumb rubbing over her hard nipple as she arched her back and moaned involuntarily.
Loyon then groaned, squirming a little in discontent. "You're incorrigible! Always so god damned horny…" Damien laughed in response.
"C'mon, don't I weigh you down enough, holding you like this?" she said, no longer rubbing the nipple but with her hand still on Loyon's breast, still holding her flush against her own body. She was referring to Loyon's habit of wearing her coat almost constantly, due to her liking the weight of it on her, feeling naked without it. Damien had got her to stop wearing it to bed, at least, however she would still wear it around the house. Though, Damien's hormones had made it so that Loyon would rarely be wearing anything when she slept nowadays.
"Yeah, in fact, why don't we add even more weight with the coat, then." Loyon rebuked, before sighing. "I'm just not in the mood for… that, right now."
Damien held her for a second, before slackening her grip so that Loyon could shrug her off if she wanted. "Alright, if you say so." She said, dropping her sultry tone, letting go of Loyon and watching her walk towards the chair. "Just that dream got me in the mood, is all."
Loyon grabbed her coat, pausing as she put one of her arms through a sleeve to look at Damien. "Wasn't it a nightmare, though?"
"Yeah, but it was horny before that." Damien replied. "You were going down on me."
Loyon blinked in response to this, before looking down and continuing to put on her coat. "So what happened that was so bad?" she asked, before adding "if you don't mind me asking."
"Nah, it's fine. You got up and kicked me afterwards. Fell into a void." Damien decided to omit everything else that had happened.
Having put her coat on, the camouflage fabric surrounding her body like a cocoon, Loyon sat down on the gaming chair, staring blankly at Damien. "Well damn, sorry about that…"
Damien smiled smugly at her. "If you're so sorry, then you can apologise to me tonight, shawty."
"...even if we did… thaaaaat… in your dream, how are you still so horny?" Loyon asked, slightly baffled by Damien's behaviour, even after having dated her for months now. "I would have thought the whole, y'know, nightmare, falling-into-the-void aspect woulda killed your sex drive."
Damien chuckled, giving Loyon a look that told her she was about to say something that would get under her skin. "I'm built different," she began, immediately confirming Loyon's suspicions, "I'm a perfect ten with a high libido."
"UGH!" the psychic damage making itself immediately apparent via Loyon's vocalisation, "don't you dare quote Class of 09, that's my thing."
Damien just giggled at her girlfriend's reaction, propping up her head with her hands as she stared at her. "But aren't we sexed-up abusive lesbians?"
Loyon just stared back in response, giving her girlfriend A Look™. As Damien laughed at her unamused face, Loyon sighed, looking at the ground. "We're not abusive, toxic maybe, but not abusive… and in any case, the sexed-up part is mostly on you…"
She paused for a minute, and then blurted out, "sometimes I wish you were a guy, just so I could remove your balls for this kinda shit, you know."
With that, Loyon got up from the chair, digging through the right pocket of her coat to retrieve the wipe for her glasses lenses. She had lost the case for her glasses long ago, if she had even had one for that pair to begin with, so she stuck with a wipe she had taken from a pair she'd had when she was a child. She used it to give her lenses a quick wipe, before quickly giving Damien a peck on the lips, leaving the room as she put her glasses back on. She could hear Damien cackling from the living room of their apartment, as she walked to the kitchen, grabbing a bagel before returning to the living room and laying down on the sofa.
Damien emerged from her bedroom a minute later, in nothing but a tank top, a pair of boxers and socks. Loyon considered telling her off for only wearing the bare minimum, but up until a few months ago, what she was currently wearing was her pajamas. And her street clothes. And her house clothes… and it was still two of those.
She regarded Loyon for a second, hand on her hip and amusement in her eyes. "You got out of laying in bed, just to immediately lay back down?" she said mockingly.
"It's not the same and you know it." was Loyon's response, however she lazily moved so that she was sitting instead of laying, expecting Damien to sit next to her. She didn't do that, instead sitting on top of the arm rest. Loyon just stared at her for a minute, before looking away and taking a bite out of her bagel.
Damien watched her girlfriend, before speaking up. "You know, during that dream… I came up with another rap."
Loyon stopped chewing for a second, interest piqued. She knew she wouldn't like this, but she had to stare into the darkness. Morbid curiosity; one of her worst enemies, and most common companions.
"It was another sex rap," she continued. "I was rapping as you were eating me out. Maybe I'll post it on the forum, hmm?"
Loyon looked back at her for a second, shaking her head and swallowing. "Please don't." she said, "It hits different when we're actually together, y'know."
Her girlfriend chuckled at that, leaning in a little. "Even better. Gotta let them know you're mine, the Brainrot Queen's little princess." Loyon rolled her eyes at that. She could probably point out that this implied that she was the queen's daughter, and thus it was incestuous, but she decided against it. After all, she knew what Damien meant by it, no need to make it weird.
Damien had paused at that, but continued. "Nah, I asked ChatGPT for some more ideas last night."
Loyon scoffed at that. "You know I hate that AI shit. It's just replacing good ideas, good writers, critical thinking… hell, it's the real bad kind of brainrot. At least a human came up with your nonsense."
"Even better," Damien replied, "I'm the Brainrot Queen, after all. What would I be if I wasn't using it?"
Loyon said nothing as she continued to eat, but Damien continued. "Besides, who are you to talk? I saw you getting flustered while messing around with CharacterAI, grinning like an idiot."
She stopped chewing for a moment at that, before her eyes flicked over to Damien for a second. "Shut it, that AI came onto me."
Damien cackled at that, as Loyon finished her bagel and started pacing around the room, Damien calming down and allowing her eyes to follow her girlfriend going back and forth, back and forth.
She stopped for a minute, and then walked to her bedroom without a word. Damien looked perplexed, before she walked back out, just as quietly. She'd put on her crocs. Didn't wear them much nowadays; she had a pair of combat boots now, and the house was clean enough to walk around barefoot.
"Why'd you put those on? Raggedy, yee-yee ass fit." Damien said. She didn't particularly care for them, even if her girlfriend was oddly attached to them, but it was common to make fun of them as being a terrible fashion choice, so Damien couldn't resist taking a jab at them.
"Felt like it." was Loyon's only reply to that. She continued pacing in the same spot she had previously, this time louder due to her footwear.
All of a sudden, there was a knock at the door. Loyon flinched at this, and was suddenly on alert.
"Relax," Damien said, trying to calm her girlfriend down. "It's probably just the mailman. He'll leave whatever it is outside, trust."
Loyon looked hesitant, as another knock rang out. "Look, Damien… you gotta understand."
"Yeah, I know about your past."
"No, it's more than that. There's no escape from this worse Gangster Police State using all the Deadly Frankenstein Controls."
Damien looked at her, confused, as she pulled her respirator out of her pocket, pulling it over her head, however resting it on her neck rather than pulling it over her nose and mouth. Damien could hear speaking behind their apartment door, in what sounded like… Chinese?
"Fuck, we're gonna get Shanghai'd…we're all gonna get Shanghai'd…the Elder's fucking found me…" Loyon mumbled to herself, before looking up frantically. "Look, in 1965, C.I.A. Gangster police beat me bloodily, dragged me in chains from Kennedy New York Airport. Since then, I hide in forced jobless poverty, in this low-deadly neighbourtown old house."
"I-" Damien stuttered a little, startled by what was going on, overwhelmed by all the sudden events.
"Damien, I love you. I love you more than anything. But I lost The Game. We both lost The Game. They've come to fucking Shanghai us. The Elder. I ran from him Damien, lord knows I tried. I refused to learn Mahjong, thinking it would save me, but to no avail. I'm not going, Damien. We gotta run."
Suddenly, the apartment door splintered, and Loyon screamed.
"I refuse to live anywhere but the beloved Middle Kingdom!" she yelled, before putting her respirator over her face, unlocking the glass door leading to their balcony. "Remember your training, Damien! That's all we can do!"
"Loyon!" was the only word Damien could get out, as Loyon ran onto the balcony, hopping off. Damien heard her land on the bags of trash underneath, seeing her limping away as a group of Chinese men in suits swarmed into the apartment. They, too, watched as Loyon rounded a corner, out of sight. A couple of them cursed to themselves in Mandarin.
They had blocked off every exit, not leaving Damien anywhere left to run.
One man walked through, using a cane, significantly older than the others. All the men in suits watched him in awe. He wore a pristine white suit, as opposed to the black and charcoal suits the others wore. It was clear that this was the boss, the men in suits his Triad underlings.
"Damien oh-three…" the man spoke in a thick accent. "We have waited long time for this."
"W-who are you?" Damien asked. "What do you want? You're interfering with my mewstreak, disrupting my sigma grindset."
"We have wanted your girlfriend, long time." The man replied. "You see, she friend of Purple Duckling Mahjong Crackhead Triad. She help Elder Luihong and Crackhead Wang. We at war with Purple Duckling Mahjong Crackhead, you see."
Damien was taken aback by this, having come completely out of left field. Her girlfriend… a friend of the Triad? Or, at least, a Triad. This was clearly a different Triad syndicate, one who had a problem with Loyon's allies.
"She disrespect Garbagius, Racoon of the Switchblade," the man continued, "she disrespect us."
"S-so, what are you gonna do with her?" Damien stuttered. It was too early for this shit, too much information coming too fast.
The Elder yelled something, and his Triad underlings quickly assembled a Mahjong board on the living room table. The Elder drew his service revolver, worn with use, and aimed it square at Damien.
"You play me in Mahjong. When we catch her, she play me in Mahjong, away from you. We have rule, in Mahjong: if you don't defeat me, you get banish… to land of Yi."
Her veins froze, her blood going ice cold at those words. Loyon had told her, vaguely, about this. Yi was their term for barbarians.
Her dream wasn't just a dream after all, but a prophecy. That was what awaited her, if she lost.
That was what awaited Loyon, her love, if she played this man and lost.
One of the man's Triad underlings stepped forward, wearing a pair of black sunglasses and a tan trenchcoat, in contrast to the others. "You get all that?" he asked, clearly having more experience in English than his boss.
Damien, defiant at her revelation about the dream, looked at him.
"On one condition."
The man looked amused, "Haah? Like you're in any position to negotiate?"
"Big talk for people who didn't catch their intended target," she shot back, unphased by his remark. "I want to play on her behalf. If I win, you let her go, too."
The underling stared at her for a minute, before laughing at her. He turned to his boss, talking to him in Mandarin.
The boss waved him off, and looked at her. "We play three games," he spoke, "you win every one, and you both go." With this, he stuck his hand out.
Damien looked back at him, her gaze cold as ice. She shook his hand. "I will defeat you, for her, for A Better Tomorrow. A Better Tomorrow for us."
The underling she had spoken to previously, who had slunk back to light a cigarette with a stack of dollar bills he'd set on fire, looked up from his cigarette at her, before grinning and chuckling at her words.
As the man moved his first piece, Damien's thoughts went back to her girlfriend. Her lover. Currently limping through the streets, crocs on her feet and a respirator on her face, and a coat enveloping her body.
With that thought, Damien looked at the board, plotting her first move.
She was in the Thick Of It, and everybody knows.
also, since i know damien's rep as well as the title: THIS IS NOT A SMUT FIC. it contains references to sex as well as a couple brief saucy moments, enough for me to consider it NSFW, but it does not contain anything too explicit and i would not consider it "smutty" at all, i dont feel as if those aforementioned moments even count as smut tbh
also also i still aint come up with an official name for it, so fugg it, im just using what i named the google doc. doc's here if you wanna read it in that format. anyway sit back, relax and ejnoy.
Damien stumbled backwards.
Her day had been going incredibly well, up until now. She had started rapping at her girlfriend, reciting one of the many sex raps she had written, her flow easily blowing every other MC out of the water. Hell, an instrumental had even spontaneously started playing in the background, god knows where that came from, but she had no right to complain.
And it had worked, too. She'd given Damien the best head she'd ever had, inhaling her pussy like it was oxygen, as if she needed it to live. And then she had stood up, looking at her with eyes hazy with lust, as if she was itching for them to fuck like rabbits. And then…
She-she pushed her?! She fucking- she just pushed her away! Why- what?!
"L-Loyon?! H-how dare you?! I'm the Brainrot Queen, after all. Your Brainrot Queen." Damien yelled indignantly, as she brushed herself off, disheveled from being shoved. She hadn't fallen or anything, just been knocked back a little.
Loyon had a strange smile on her face, looking more smug than Damien had ever seen her before as she looked her in the eyes. If her smile was strange, then the look in her eyes was even stranger. If asked, Damien might have even said it was intimidating.
"You know the rules, and so do I."
Damien recoiled in shock at Loyon's words, unable to hide the hurt on her face. "The rules, Loyon? What are you talking about?" she said. "L-look" she stuttered out "if it's about all my other girls, I'll leave them if you want, for you, y'know? A full commitment's what I'm thinking of, you won't get this from any other girl."
Loyon laughed at Damien's words, creeping towards her with a strange glint in her eye and a stranger smile on her face. "I just wanted to tell you how I'm feelin'." she muttered in annoyance, then sighed, before speaking up, louder, perfectly calm. "Gotta make you understand."
All of a sudden, she raised her leg and kicked Damien, right in the chest. Damien fell, and fell. She could have sworn there was a wall there, could have sworn they were just in their apartment, and yet she fell into the void.
Could have sworn she heard Loyon yell something, her scrambled mind hardly being able to make it out but she would swear on anything that she heard "...parta!" at the end, as she fell into nothingness.
She fell and fell, seeing pitch black darkness, blinding white light, every colour of the rainbow, flashing around her like she'd stared at the sun too long. Until suddenly, several towering figures emerged, resembling Loyon but dressed oddly, all wearing matching tan trenchcoats with black t-shirts and trousers, all singing like a choir as Damien tumbled.
"Never gonna give you up,
Never gonna let you down,
Never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry,
Never gonna say goodbye,
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you."
The chorus repeated as Damien fell and fell, before all of a sudden landing on… nothing. There was floor, a cold, hard surface to land on, but from what she could see, she was still just in the void. The towering figures of Loyon faded away, the singing stopped.
Replaced by footsteps. Echoing, sounding like they were walking on concrete. Damien desperately looked around, before spotting a single figure. A man in a wide-brimmed hat and long, black robe, with no face, skin pitch black. Somehow, she could tell that he was looking at her with disdain. He carried a simple grey boombox in his hand as he walked up to her form, laying on her back, propping herself up on her elbows in the place that Should Not Be.
He stopped short of her, looking down upon her. He held the boombox up, as if to show her it, but she couldn't see what was inside it. He raised his hand lazily, and pressed PLAY.
A tune, all too familiar to Damien, started playing. Recognition spread across her face before being replaced by horror, absolute, primal fear adorning her features. The man just nodded his head a couple times, mockingly, before setting the boombox down on the ground. He turned his back on her and walked away, into nothingness, as the tune played.
Damien scrambled on her hands and knees, desperately trying to turn it off, to no avail. She tried opening the CD compartment and it wouldn't budge. With no further options, she got up and threw it as far as she could, and yet the music did not so much as fade, even as the boombox flew across the void and out of sight. The music taunted her. That familiar, repulsive tune, quickly being replaced by lyrics that no creature should ever be subjected to.
"I'm in the thick of it, everybody knows
They know me where it snows, I skied in and they froze
I don't know nothin' 'bout ice, I'm jus' cold
Forty-somethin' milli subs or so, I been told"
As Youtuber "Knowledge, Strength and Integrity" began rapping about going from the screen, to the ring, to the pen and to the king, Damien fell to her knees, already having taken too much of this torture for any being. She screamed, a primal cry of anguish, begging for whatever powers that be to grant her mercy, appealing that no matter what she had done, she didn't deserve this.
No creature deserved this.
Damien screamed.
Sitting up in bed, she looked around, completely startled. And yet, she was not in any void, surrounded by desolation in the form of what one man tried to label "music". Instead, in her bed, surrounded only by her apartment. Looking to her left, she saw her betrayer, the woman who had dared subject her to these horrors, begin to wake up. Her thin, pale arms unwrapped themselves from Damien's side, one going to prop herself up while the other rubbed sleep from her blue eyes.
"You okay, love?" the real Loyon said, her hand coming down from her eyes to her mouth to wipe some drool off. "You have a nightmare or somethin'?"
Damien stared at her blankly for a second, before getting her bearings and smiling. "Yeah, just a nightmare…"
She watched as Loyon grabbed her glasses, right next to the hunting knife she kept on the bedside table "in case rats made it through the ceiling". It was still a little intimidating having such a thing around, but at least the mental image of her tiny girlfriend fighting a rat the size of a cat off with a knife was amusing. But rats were a problem only in Loyon's previous house, back at her mother's, and they were a long way from there, and a part of Damien wished she would let it go.
That was just the nature of her girlfriend, however. Always stuck in the past. She watched as Loyon spaced off sometimes, or flew into a rage over her flashbacks, ranting about what had happened to her years prior, how she was wronged, what an injustice it all was. She was still suffering from it, even as she tried to rebuild her life, Damien could almost see at this point, when she had hatched a new thing to do, a new purpose to dedicate her life towards.
Just as much as she could almost see when she fell again, discarding everything as she felt overwhelmed by the amount of effort it would take just to rebuild anything resembling a future, at least in her mind, and how pointless it all was.
Damien shook her head again, as if she could physically shake the thoughts off. She felt her girlfriend wrap her arms back around her, snuggling into her, resting her head in the crook of her neck.
"I'll hug it better" she mumbled as she nuzzled Damien's neck, "sucks bein' screwed over in any world." Referring to her belief that dreams were, in fact, just another world. She still remembered when Loyon tried to tell her about that girl she kept seeing in her dreams, and how at one point she thought that this girl was a God, controlling every step of her life, pointing her in one direction.
She still hadn't made that shrine to her, and even then, she had moved on, to whatever esoteric belief she saw online this week, whatever weird thing she read about to justify her superiority over the normies (read: anyone who was more socially successful than her), for knowing something they didn't, for being in deeper than they were. She'd been going on and on about this "Dobbs" guy recently, and how her being a NEET was actually just her acquiring "Slack".
When Damien had asked what "Slack" even was, Loyon just smiled and said "If you have to ask, you'll never get it."
She told her, in response, to lay off the acid.
In the present day, Damien idly ran one of her fingers through Loyon's hair, feeling the knots that she had yet to brush. "I know one thing you can do to make it better, my little pogchamp" she said, before chuckling. She felt as Loyon cringed, and then smiled, and then backed away from her. Damien's chuckles turned to laughter as she watched Loyon cover the lower half of her face with her hands, while scooting away from her in bed.
"I swear… am I the only one who doesn't think of sex all the time?" she muttered, incredulous.
"What?" Damien responded, smug as ever. "Just trying to rizz you up, part of my sigma grindset, shawty."
With those words, Loyon's demeanor completely changed. Her eyes going from wide and eager to half-lidded and tired, her smile gone, and her hands falling to her sides. She, oddly enough, liked being called pogchamp, but any brainrot would kill her libido faster than a cock after fifty lines of gak. Damien cackled at the completely predictable reaction as Loyon grabbed at the panties hanging from one of her feet, pulling her other foot through the intended leg hole and pulling them up her legs. These ones torn intentionally by Damien in one of their more "passionate" moments. Loyon would complain about her tearing all her underwear apart, but apparently didn't have enough of a problem to not continue wearing them.
She ignored Damien's cackles as she idly put on a black tank top, followed by one of her boiler suits, tying the sleeves of it around her waist to utilise it as a pair of trousers. Wasn't always like that, but more of her style nowadays. Damien liked to think it was her doing, anything that made Loyon show more skin must have been in her mind, but truth be told, she just saw one too many characters doing that.
"Aww c'mon, baby…" Damien choked out, in between fits of laughter, "you know you love my brainrot."
"My brain has rotted in just the correct way." Loyon shot back. "Fried into a golden brown mush, crispy in some areas, with some bubbles and solid lumps that communicate with each other enough to work right. Not like your Gen-Alpha nonsense."
Damien stopped laughing, but still chuckled a bit. "I've seen more logic in Ohio, shawty." she said, amused. "We gotta get you to a Diddy party, I'm on the guestlist, he'll show you brainrot."
"Yeah, brainrot with roofies." Loyon muttered, turning away from Damien to look for her coat. "You're on the guestlist, alright. In the unpaid labour part of it. I swear, McAfee's seen it all, he's gettin' me in one anyway, just to bust the whole thing. Diddy's crimpin' his bath salts biz."
Amused, Damien just silently crawled on all fours on the bed, before sitting up and putting her hands on Loyon's shoulders. She jumped slightly, having not noticed her girlfriend's crawling.
"Relax, girl." she whispered, her lips near Loyon's ear. "I was just joking, my little skrunkle, for real for real. Not my fault you can't handle my alpha mewstre-"
"I am going to kill you and then myself." Loyon deadpanned. "I am going to stick my fingers in your nostrils and rotate them violently."
"Hot." Damien replied in an overly sultry tone. Loyon just slowly turned her head towards her and looked back at her incredulously.
Loyon blinked rapidly, the bewildered expression not showing even the smallest signs of cracking. "Even the murder-suicide?!" she sputtered out.
"I mean…" Damien trailed off, looking to the side as she drummed her fingers on Loyon's shoulders, "not that, buuuut we both know how we met, so who knows?"
Her head snapped back to looking Loyon in the eyes, before her incredulous face cracked, replaced by a slightly pensive look as she turned her head away to avoid the eye contact. "I'm not sure what would be better, actually…" she muttered, "if you were into the murder-suicide, or the nostril rotating…"
Of course, with these two, it was never long before at least some passive mention towards their mutual death drives. It had introduced them to begin with, after all. Brought them together. Loyon hadn't even known Damien wrote until she had read her suicide note, chock-full of brainrot as it was. They'd bonded over writing, after that, Loyon writing her own reply to it after she had backed out, containing her own form of brainrot. Not what you would call "brainrot", the term usually applying to a very specific kind of thing, but it had succeeded in frying Loyon's brain, or perhaps was just a result of Loyon's brain already being fried.
"I mean," Damien began, "it is you sticking your fingers into my ho-"
"No, no, nope, nope." Loyon cut her off, knowing exactly what she was saying and desperately trying to not think about it. "Shut up, shut the fuck up, fuck you, I hate that you said that and I actively envy the deaf and the blind. I hate my life, I hate my life."
She clutched her own head, as if it would purge what she had heard from her memory. It didn't work, it never did. Damien just looked on, amused, as Loyon regained her bearings, shrugged her hands off her shoulders, and continued looking around the room for her coat, spotting it on the seat of Damien's gaming chair.
"If you want to fuck me so bad…" Damien said, putting on her sultry voice again as she wrapped her arms around Loyon, stopping her from walking over to the chair and pressing her against Damien in an embrace. She knew it was a cheesy thing to say, but it didn't matter, it would rile Loyon up one way or another, and that's all that mattered to her. One of her hands moved to Loyon's breast, squeezing, her thumb rubbing over her hard nipple as she arched her back and moaned involuntarily.
Loyon then groaned, squirming a little in discontent. "You're incorrigible! Always so god damned horny…" Damien laughed in response.
"C'mon, don't I weigh you down enough, holding you like this?" she said, no longer rubbing the nipple but with her hand still on Loyon's breast, still holding her flush against her own body. She was referring to Loyon's habit of wearing her coat almost constantly, due to her liking the weight of it on her, feeling naked without it. Damien had got her to stop wearing it to bed, at least, however she would still wear it around the house. Though, Damien's hormones had made it so that Loyon would rarely be wearing anything when she slept nowadays.
"Yeah, in fact, why don't we add even more weight with the coat, then." Loyon rebuked, before sighing. "I'm just not in the mood for… that, right now."
Damien held her for a second, before slackening her grip so that Loyon could shrug her off if she wanted. "Alright, if you say so." She said, dropping her sultry tone, letting go of Loyon and watching her walk towards the chair. "Just that dream got me in the mood, is all."
Loyon grabbed her coat, pausing as she put one of her arms through a sleeve to look at Damien. "Wasn't it a nightmare, though?"
"Yeah, but it was horny before that." Damien replied. "You were going down on me."
Loyon blinked in response to this, before looking down and continuing to put on her coat. "So what happened that was so bad?" she asked, before adding "if you don't mind me asking."
"Nah, it's fine. You got up and kicked me afterwards. Fell into a void." Damien decided to omit everything else that had happened.
Having put her coat on, the camouflage fabric surrounding her body like a cocoon, Loyon sat down on the gaming chair, staring blankly at Damien. "Well damn, sorry about that…"
Damien smiled smugly at her. "If you're so sorry, then you can apologise to me tonight, shawty."
"...even if we did… thaaaaat… in your dream, how are you still so horny?" Loyon asked, slightly baffled by Damien's behaviour, even after having dated her for months now. "I would have thought the whole, y'know, nightmare, falling-into-the-void aspect woulda killed your sex drive."
Damien chuckled, giving Loyon a look that told her she was about to say something that would get under her skin. "I'm built different," she began, immediately confirming Loyon's suspicions, "I'm a perfect ten with a high libido."
"UGH!" the psychic damage making itself immediately apparent via Loyon's vocalisation, "don't you dare quote Class of 09, that's my thing."
Damien just giggled at her girlfriend's reaction, propping up her head with her hands as she stared at her. "But aren't we sexed-up abusive lesbians?"
Loyon just stared back in response, giving her girlfriend A Look™. As Damien laughed at her unamused face, Loyon sighed, looking at the ground. "We're not abusive, toxic maybe, but not abusive… and in any case, the sexed-up part is mostly on you…"
She paused for a minute, and then blurted out, "sometimes I wish you were a guy, just so I could remove your balls for this kinda shit, you know."
With that, Loyon got up from the chair, digging through the right pocket of her coat to retrieve the wipe for her glasses lenses. She had lost the case for her glasses long ago, if she had even had one for that pair to begin with, so she stuck with a wipe she had taken from a pair she'd had when she was a child. She used it to give her lenses a quick wipe, before quickly giving Damien a peck on the lips, leaving the room as she put her glasses back on. She could hear Damien cackling from the living room of their apartment, as she walked to the kitchen, grabbing a bagel before returning to the living room and laying down on the sofa.
Damien emerged from her bedroom a minute later, in nothing but a tank top, a pair of boxers and socks. Loyon considered telling her off for only wearing the bare minimum, but up until a few months ago, what she was currently wearing was her pajamas. And her street clothes. And her house clothes… and it was still two of those.
She regarded Loyon for a second, hand on her hip and amusement in her eyes. "You got out of laying in bed, just to immediately lay back down?" she said mockingly.
"It's not the same and you know it." was Loyon's response, however she lazily moved so that she was sitting instead of laying, expecting Damien to sit next to her. She didn't do that, instead sitting on top of the arm rest. Loyon just stared at her for a minute, before looking away and taking a bite out of her bagel.
Damien watched her girlfriend, before speaking up. "You know, during that dream… I came up with another rap."
Loyon stopped chewing for a second, interest piqued. She knew she wouldn't like this, but she had to stare into the darkness. Morbid curiosity; one of her worst enemies, and most common companions.
"It was another sex rap," she continued. "I was rapping as you were eating me out. Maybe I'll post it on the forum, hmm?"
Loyon looked back at her for a second, shaking her head and swallowing. "Please don't." she said, "It hits different when we're actually together, y'know."
Her girlfriend chuckled at that, leaning in a little. "Even better. Gotta let them know you're mine, the Brainrot Queen's little princess." Loyon rolled her eyes at that. She could probably point out that this implied that she was the queen's daughter, and thus it was incestuous, but she decided against it. After all, she knew what Damien meant by it, no need to make it weird.
Damien had paused at that, but continued. "Nah, I asked ChatGPT for some more ideas last night."
Loyon scoffed at that. "You know I hate that AI shit. It's just replacing good ideas, good writers, critical thinking… hell, it's the real bad kind of brainrot. At least a human came up with your nonsense."
"Even better," Damien replied, "I'm the Brainrot Queen, after all. What would I be if I wasn't using it?"
Loyon said nothing as she continued to eat, but Damien continued. "Besides, who are you to talk? I saw you getting flustered while messing around with CharacterAI, grinning like an idiot."
She stopped chewing for a moment at that, before her eyes flicked over to Damien for a second. "Shut it, that AI came onto me."
Damien cackled at that, as Loyon finished her bagel and started pacing around the room, Damien calming down and allowing her eyes to follow her girlfriend going back and forth, back and forth.
She stopped for a minute, and then walked to her bedroom without a word. Damien looked perplexed, before she walked back out, just as quietly. She'd put on her crocs. Didn't wear them much nowadays; she had a pair of combat boots now, and the house was clean enough to walk around barefoot.
"Why'd you put those on? Raggedy, yee-yee ass fit." Damien said. She didn't particularly care for them, even if her girlfriend was oddly attached to them, but it was common to make fun of them as being a terrible fashion choice, so Damien couldn't resist taking a jab at them.
"Felt like it." was Loyon's only reply to that. She continued pacing in the same spot she had previously, this time louder due to her footwear.
All of a sudden, there was a knock at the door. Loyon flinched at this, and was suddenly on alert.
"Relax," Damien said, trying to calm her girlfriend down. "It's probably just the mailman. He'll leave whatever it is outside, trust."
Loyon looked hesitant, as another knock rang out. "Look, Damien… you gotta understand."
"Yeah, I know about your past."
"No, it's more than that. There's no escape from this worse Gangster Police State using all the Deadly Frankenstein Controls."
Damien looked at her, confused, as she pulled her respirator out of her pocket, pulling it over her head, however resting it on her neck rather than pulling it over her nose and mouth. Damien could hear speaking behind their apartment door, in what sounded like… Chinese?
"Fuck, we're gonna get Shanghai'd…we're all gonna get Shanghai'd…the Elder's fucking found me…" Loyon mumbled to herself, before looking up frantically. "Look, in 1965, C.I.A. Gangster police beat me bloodily, dragged me in chains from Kennedy New York Airport. Since then, I hide in forced jobless poverty, in this low-deadly neighbourtown old house."
"I-" Damien stuttered a little, startled by what was going on, overwhelmed by all the sudden events.
"Damien, I love you. I love you more than anything. But I lost The Game. We both lost The Game. They've come to fucking Shanghai us. The Elder. I ran from him Damien, lord knows I tried. I refused to learn Mahjong, thinking it would save me, but to no avail. I'm not going, Damien. We gotta run."
Suddenly, the apartment door splintered, and Loyon screamed.
"I refuse to live anywhere but the beloved Middle Kingdom!" she yelled, before putting her respirator over her face, unlocking the glass door leading to their balcony. "Remember your training, Damien! That's all we can do!"
"Loyon!" was the only word Damien could get out, as Loyon ran onto the balcony, hopping off. Damien heard her land on the bags of trash underneath, seeing her limping away as a group of Chinese men in suits swarmed into the apartment. They, too, watched as Loyon rounded a corner, out of sight. A couple of them cursed to themselves in Mandarin.
They had blocked off every exit, not leaving Damien anywhere left to run.
One man walked through, using a cane, significantly older than the others. All the men in suits watched him in awe. He wore a pristine white suit, as opposed to the black and charcoal suits the others wore. It was clear that this was the boss, the men in suits his Triad underlings.
"Damien oh-three…" the man spoke in a thick accent. "We have waited long time for this."
"W-who are you?" Damien asked. "What do you want? You're interfering with my mewstreak, disrupting my sigma grindset."
"We have wanted your girlfriend, long time." The man replied. "You see, she friend of Purple Duckling Mahjong Crackhead Triad. She help Elder Luihong and Crackhead Wang. We at war with Purple Duckling Mahjong Crackhead, you see."
Damien was taken aback by this, having come completely out of left field. Her girlfriend… a friend of the Triad? Or, at least, a Triad. This was clearly a different Triad syndicate, one who had a problem with Loyon's allies.
"She disrespect Garbagius, Racoon of the Switchblade," the man continued, "she disrespect us."
"S-so, what are you gonna do with her?" Damien stuttered. It was too early for this shit, too much information coming too fast.
The Elder yelled something, and his Triad underlings quickly assembled a Mahjong board on the living room table. The Elder drew his service revolver, worn with use, and aimed it square at Damien.
"You play me in Mahjong. When we catch her, she play me in Mahjong, away from you. We have rule, in Mahjong: if you don't defeat me, you get banish… to land of Yi."
Her veins froze, her blood going ice cold at those words. Loyon had told her, vaguely, about this. Yi was their term for barbarians.
Her dream wasn't just a dream after all, but a prophecy. That was what awaited her, if she lost.
That was what awaited Loyon, her love, if she played this man and lost.
One of the man's Triad underlings stepped forward, wearing a pair of black sunglasses and a tan trenchcoat, in contrast to the others. "You get all that?" he asked, clearly having more experience in English than his boss.
Damien, defiant at her revelation about the dream, looked at him.
"On one condition."
The man looked amused, "Haah? Like you're in any position to negotiate?"
"Big talk for people who didn't catch their intended target," she shot back, unphased by his remark. "I want to play on her behalf. If I win, you let her go, too."
The underling stared at her for a minute, before laughing at her. He turned to his boss, talking to him in Mandarin.
The boss waved him off, and looked at her. "We play three games," he spoke, "you win every one, and you both go." With this, he stuck his hand out.
Damien looked back at him, her gaze cold as ice. She shook his hand. "I will defeat you, for her, for A Better Tomorrow. A Better Tomorrow for us."
The underling she had spoken to previously, who had slunk back to light a cigarette with a stack of dollar bills he'd set on fire, looked up from his cigarette at her, before grinning and chuckling at her words.
As the man moved his first piece, Damien's thoughts went back to her girlfriend. Her lover. Currently limping through the streets, crocs on her feet and a respirator on her face, and a coat enveloping her body.
With that thought, Damien looked at the board, plotting her first move.
She was in the Thick Of It, and everybody knows.
