#and because there are some adult implications here i don't necessarily want in the main tags

[theminecraftbee]

There’s a flier someone’s left on the bus. Something shaming a—company logo he doesn’t recognize, as he shoves it aside to grab the last seat in the back that usually means he and Gem don’t have to sit next to anyone else—for “desecration of the Carrows Life”. Alright; with a logo and a slogan like that, it’s either a religious nut job or one of the people real mad at the Church about the demons.

Yeah, sure. He’s exhausted. Impulse can’t really bring himself to care about neon-yellow fliers in the dead of night on the bus.

Just another hour and practically every single stop down the line, and he’ll be home. He’s glad there’s a late-night bus down here; enough people come and go from these streets at two am that they make some poor bus driver do the route.

Next to him, Gem grumbles as she removes her makeup. “Impulse, why do I keep getting the waterproof kind?”

“Hard to dance and still look good if it doesn’t stand up to sweat,” Impulse says, settling into his seat as the bus starts moving again. “Don’t see why that should make it that much harder to remove, unless you’re sweating acetone these days, but they don’t pay me to know how your makeup works.”

“No, they pay you to be your stupid big protective butt. You absolutely know how my makeup works,” Gem says.

“You could wait until we aren’t on a moving bus to take it off?” Impulse offers.

“Nah. I need something to do so I don’t fall asleep, and I’m not opening my other bag until we’re both safely at home.”

“Yeah, fair,” Impulse says, not glancing at it for too long. Gem had a good night tonight. Sometimes, he’s jealous of the nights she has; the amount people are willing to throw at her sometimes is insane. Most of the time, though, he’s just glad he’s paid a regular salary to stand in the corner and occasionally show people exactly why he’s so big if they act up.

(Someone’s got to do it.)

The doors open. The unmistakeable smell of someone on way, way too much weed wafts through the doors. Impulse sighs. There’s a reason they sit in the back.

“What are the odds we get lucky and get home early?” Gem says. “My knee hurts.”

Impulse looks at her sharply. “You didn’t say anything during the show.”

Gem laughs. “Relax, relax. Not that bad. Nothing a bit of icyhot won’t solve, or one of your little…” She wiggles her fingers.

“You need to tell me these things before you dance on them, Gem,” Impulse says. “One of these days, I won’t be able to fix it! Then what are you gonna do about your knee, huh?”

“Uhuh. And the bruise on your face…?”

“He was drunk,” Impulse says. “It’s barely a scratch. Or, uh, well, it’s a bruise, but…”

“If I were any good at healing,” Gem says.

“I’ll ice it!” Impulse says, putting his hands up. “Besides, I don’t need my face to do my job. Might make guys respect me more?”

The bus stops. A few more people get on. There’s a bit of shouting from a drunk guy, and it makes Impulse look up on instinct, both his and Gem’s awareness hovering around their bag. Gem has a nasty curse on it if anyone but her tries to grab it, but these days…

The drunkard isn’t looking their way. He settles down again. Impulse doesn’t.

“One day, one of us will get a car, and we’ll just drive,” Impulse mutters.

“And pay for parking?” Gem asks.

“Well, it’s the thought that counts,” Impulse says.

The bus stops. Impulse looks up at the sign, just to make sure they aren’t near their stop. They aren’t. He almost looks down.

There’s a feeling in his gut. He doesn’t ignore gut feelings after as long as he’s been doing what he does. He puts a hand in his jacket. He doesn’t actually carry a gun; people think he does, but he’s fairly effective at threatening without it, and if all else fails, he does have a thick vest he’d bought with his own money after the only time he’d been shot. It had taken all of his savings, but it had been worth it.

He curls his fingers instead around the lucky charm Gem had given him after they’d become roommates and tries to focus on the feeling. There's something scraping nearby. A horrible scraping, like talons against brick, or maybe more like death clawing against soil.

The bus starts moving again. The drunks stay drunk. The fellow exhausted club and bar workers stay exhausted. The guy who’s high out of his mind doesn’t even blink.

A woman who had gotten on the bus, though, approaches them. Gem stiffens. Impulse is hyper-aware of the bag full of the night’s tips that Gem has with her.

“Hello. Sorry for interrupting,” the woman says. She’s tall. She has long, light brown hair that she hasn’t tied back. She’s wearing a long overcoat. It looks second-hand, but not properly so, like it’s being worn by someone who doesn’t quite know how to fit into second-hand clothes, or perhaps doesn’t quite know how not to fit.

There's bruises on her face, too. A split lip and a black eye and a bit of blood on the collar of her shirt.

"You look lost," Impulse says without thinking. The woman blinks.

"Oh! Yes, I suppose you could say that," she says. "That's..."

Impulse slowly takes his hand out of his jacket. Her voice is even more lost, somehow. Impeccably put-together. Very hard to read. But Impulse, he has to read people for a living, and this is a woman who is lost.

"I was just here because you two look the most aware and fit on the bus," she says.

"Oh, I'm not all that fit," Gem lies to the woman's face. "I mean, just look at me! I'm delicate!"

Impulse has seen Gem's abs. She's not delicate, she just puts on a show of being—still not delicate, actually, but the kind of not-delicate men like, not the kind of not-delicate she actually is. It's a fine line.

The woman raises an eyebrow. "Okay," she says. "I'm just—there are demons. Not far. I got away from them, but they might be following you."

"They're following you?" says Gem.

"Shhh," says the woman.

"Fine," Impulse says. "They're following you. Why? And why did you get on the bus?"

The woman is silent for a moment. "I don't think they'll catch up to us," she says. "I don't—I don't have another place to go back to, right now. I'm a bit... I don't mean to put anyone in danger. You two are the most fit looking people on here, is all. If danger did happen..."

Impulse feels something in him crack. He looks at Gem. It wouldn't be the first time the two of them have helped someone down on their luck off the streets. Of course, it's not entirely out of the goodness of their hearts, all the time, but, well, Impulse is still Impulse and Gem puts up with it and this world doesn't work if people don't help each other, Impulse has always said.

Gem shrugs and nods.

"Sit down. You can get off at our stop. My name's Gem, by the way."

The woman, slowly, sits down in a seat across from them.

"Impulse," Impulse says.

The woman opens her mouth. The woman closes it. "You can call me Griba," she says, finally.

Impulse quirks an eyebrow. "I can call you?"

"Hey, that sounds like—wasn't there someone with a name like that on the news recently?" Gem says.

The woman grimaces. "You could say that," she says.

Gem and Impulse look at each other. They look back at the woman. "Fine then. Keep your secrets," Gem says imperiously, and her tone works, because it makes—Griba, Impulse supposes, until she wants to give them her real name—laugh.

"At least until we find out if the demons get me," she says agreeably.

The bus stops again. They all tense. One person gets off and no one gets on. The bus starts moving again.

"One of these days," Impulse mutters.

"You've got to finish the sentence," Gem says. "Don't leave me hanging like that!"

"Is this an ongoing thing?" Griba says, and they continue onwards together.

#a bee fic #last days talk #not tagging with the characters both to preserve the (very thin) mystery of who one of these is #and because there are some adult implications here i don't necessarily want in the main tags #anyway. for anyone wondering what i'd do with a last days sequel: something like this. #mentions of alcohol #mentions of drugs #also for the record. the way... griba... enters this story is an intentional parallel with how she does it in last days #however changed because she's changed as a character and that's a large part of what this story would be about