anonymous prompted: Lolix Moonlight

A/N: I am very, very particular about the way I ship Lolix and very very opinionated on them staying Bad Guys 99.999% of the time, so this was a really fun write for me in that sense but I can only hope it's enjoyable for you, anon!

Red vs Blue and associated characters © Rooster Teeth

You Ever Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight?

Locus stopped trusting anyone so long ago that the very concept of trust felt foul and rotted. Yet, despite himself, when he recognized the number dialing his private line, he accepted it.

He accepted it because it was Felix.

"You aren't supposed to have this number," he said, voice a low rumble full of unkindness and threat. It was more than enough to keep nearly any other man or woman at bay, but for Felix it was a greeting.

It was something the other man could meet with a hardy laugh.

"You know, that'd mean something more if you didn't answer, Sammy," Felix's voice called in pitches high and low, carrying a tune and maybe even a song. "But for me you do. You always do."

There was nothing in Locus' apartment, testament to the Spartan lifestyle he had adopted in basic and which had ruled his very existence since the moment the fissure of his moral fiber and his mind was hammered out by his CO. He sat against his wall, opposite the empty refrigerator and on the spotless floor.

It was only him and the clothes on his back in that room. And it did not change much in the other rooms.

"The least you could do is silence your extraneous exposition and do me at least the favor of using my codename while on my private line," Locus reminded his old partner with his words firmly annunciated to hint at a temper he long ago lost the energy for.

"And leave the conversation up to you? I couldn't imagine anything less productive," Felix laughed. "I sent you coordinates with this cal. Did you get them?"

Locus rested his head back against the wall and leered at the ceiling. Spotless and plain.

"I have retired."

The words could not have sounded less convincing.

"Yeah, sure. Sure you have," Felix said with a hint of spite. "Did you get the coordinates?"

If he was true to his word, if Locus could quit the addiction that had become the blood on his hands, he would not have even bothered checking. But, of course, beneath his bulk and beneath his anger and rumbles of animosity, Locus was a broken and weak man. A man who was checking his communicator to see the coordinates in question.

"I'll take that as a yes," Felix said knowingly. "Time's twenty-one hundred. Sync?"

"That's only two hours from now," Locus pointed out angrily.

"Sync?" Felix asked, more harshly and almost threateningly.

"Sync," Locus responded just before the click.

Then, despite having no idea what he was getting himself into, Locus began to prepare for something unexpected. Something bloody. Something ruthless.

Something that would make him feel alive.

Getting into the motion of things was hypnotic. It began with readying his equipment, checking, double checking. Storage. Armoring. Padding. Calibrating. Preparing. Preparing. Preparing.

The more automatic the actions, the more he sunk into the ether of action, check, action check action — the more that Locus lost permanence and conscience. The more he felt normal and alive.

But his questions were still not answered. And even dressed as unsuspiciously as he was with as much attention to his surroundings as he was, Locus was not sure what kind of job Felix had lined up or what ind of heat could have been following Locus if he was careless.

He wasn't followed, and he arrived at the coordinates exactly at nine o'clock.

The location was uninteresting, isolated but not far enough away to be out of reasonable walking distance from the nearest bullet train. It was a marked wilderness trail in a Federation park and Locus took careful note of the labeled alien flora along the way. He tried to cross reference to see if anything was poisonous or illegal in a nearby sector that would desire a run from himself and Felix. But he found nothing of note on the entire trail up to the steeper cliffside of the park's mountain.

They were Felix's exact coordinates, to the point that Felix himself was even standing on a gaudy red and white plastic shooting target in full armor and flourish.

It was enough to make Locus take complete pause.

Then it was enough to enrage him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he snarled at his longtime partner. "Is the job to drop a grenade on you?"

Felix held out his arms, leaving little for Locus to imagine was waiting behind his helmet beyond a shit eating grin. "Would you really be willing to do that to me after all this time?"

"I would have been willing to do that to you the second after we met," Locus lied through his teeth.

"You say that like we don't get along," Felix feigned hurt, dropping his arms back to his sides.

"We don't," Locus reminded him.

"Then why'd you come?" Felix asked.

Locus stood stock still, staring at Felix with as much intensity as he could manage. Which, he was told, was quite a lot. But he didn't move and didn't appeal to Felix's logic or apparent lack thereof. He waited for the night's wasted time to be justified to him. And he waited rather angrily for it.

"You look terrible, by the way," Felix offered as small talk.

"I am in full armor and you have not seen me in nearly three years," Locus hissed.

"Yeah, but I can tell," Felix joked, walking off of the target and knocking his knuckles against the chest of Locus' chest plate. "I can tell because I bet you've been doing the exact thing I would be doing if I had no sense of self preservation whatsoever since Mason—"

"Siris," Locus corrected in a growl.

"Broke up the gang," Felix continued without missing a beat. "Sitting on your laurels, bottom feeding off a bank account you put some interest on, waiting for the paint to peel off of the walls."

Locus had tried — Samuel Ortez had tried — to do more over the years. There were employment opportunities that did not require weapons. But those ended in disaster. There were security jobs which scrambled for him at first, until insurance liability and rowdy alcoholics complaining too much about broken fingers put that to a firm end as well. He still checked bounty listings and polished the weapons that now adorned his armor. And that was how he spent most of his days.

Scrolling through bounties. Never allowing himself to click. Never leaving to deal with the scars that were deeper than the ones on his face.

"I can't see you like this," Felix finally said, his voice strangely sincere. Strange because he was, after all, still Felix.

"Then you shouldn't have contacted me without a reason," Locus said bitterly.

He already knew how his night would go. He would undress enough to hide in the crowds on the bullet train home. He would enter his apartment, perfectly disarm himself and put away his armor and his life, lock it away in the hidden bottom of his refrigerator, then go back to peeling the paint off of his wall until he could sleep.

It would be exactly in that order, and in a week it would be as if his routine had never been interrupted at all.

"Not being able to see you like this is exactly why I got a hold of you," Felix revealed. "You're a man who needs to do the one job he's better at than any goddamn person in this universe is next to me. Not doing it is against your nature. It's against your training. It's against your destiny."

"Those things don't matter," Locus responded coldly. "I was discharged. Dishonorably. As were you."

"Fuck you for thinking that's the end," Felix said, getting in Locus' face, closer than he ever had in their armors before. "Fuck you for believing that bullshit and fuck them for selling it to you. Of course it still matters. If it didn't matter, we wouldn't be fucking gods at what we do."

"What do we do, Felix?" Locus demanded.

"Whatever we want," Felix reminded him, pushing his chest with a poke that amounted to nothing. "Shit. Okay. You did more than peeling paint to keep up your pecs."

"Which is why you don't know me as well as you think you do," Locus replied dryly, watching the reflection of the rising moon in the glint of Felix's catlike visor.

"Yeah, I do," Felix countered. "We need each other, Locus."

Hearing his name — the only one that felt real anymore — coming from Felix, him meaning it that way, was the most breathtaking and reviving thing that Locus had felt since the day his world had chipped off into three pieces. He looked intently at Felix as the moonlight only grew brighter, shining against their combined armors. And, despite himself, despite every rule, Locus made the first move and removed his helmet. Felix was quick to follow suit.

And with the moonlight as their witness, they joined again. It was a bond that could only be broken through hatred and resentment and manipulation again, but as long as they shared a goal, an enemy, an objective, it could last as long as their devilish union in the pale moon's light.