< So here's my take, and what else could it be but cyberpunk dystopia and gang leaders with weird names. Come join Red and the Big Bad Wolf out in the Sticks, and see what Jack comes up with to get his paws on a fresh bite to eat. >

𝖔𝖓𝖊

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Jack had been obsessed with Red since he first swung by Grandma's. Not that anyone in the goddamn city would come close to calling a guy like that Grandma, but he'd been Grandma since Jack was still pushing tens in high school, so it was what it was.

Grandma holed up deep in the Sticks, down in the burnt out gutters the civvies mostly just wrote off as a blacked-out spot on the map. Someone had told Jack once that back when, that's what they used to call real wilderness. Like nature wilderness. Said nature had been more than stacked farmland and preened hedgerows in the posh quarter.

Hard idea to get his head around, stuck in the guts of this city that sprawled all the planet.

A forest of concrete and glass.

Maybe it was like they'd always promised those space colonies would be, huh? Sprawling nothing begging you to soar screaming toward the horizon with nothin' on your tail but shit you could fix by smackin' someone hard enough in the face.

Jack was good at that – smacking people. Everything else, not so much. Fuck knew he had a hundred ex-girlfriends lining up to tell him that. The boys never stuck around long enough to find out that behind his grin and drunk charm, there was shit all but tears and cocaine.

Red. That's where he'd been at, wasn't it? Fuck knew it was where he was always at these days, eyes picking apart the seams of the city for a flash of crimson amongst the murk.

Coupla months back, it was. Jack had been lounging in the alley leading down to Grandma's, smoking a fag. Maybe something more than a fag, and if not, there'd been something swimming in his brain. He hadn't felt like shit, and that was enough to know he weren't sober.

Smog filled the sky, the age old forecast of air too thick to breathe. Murky brown swallowed the iron rafters where they arched over the sector like a blown-out dome. Rust fell from them like snow, and the wind blew just right to pull the dusty flakes down the alley where Jack smoked. Corrugated containers hulked either side of him, plastered in banners for raves and droid fights and the latest holo-brothel sprung up down the street.

Grandma ran the finest of each of them, black gloved fingers in all those sticky pies.

Drugs were the biggest of them, and he had Jack skulking out here waiting for the fresh little runner Mammie had sent down. Talk was Grandma got more out of this one than just a ride on the mule, and Jack was itching to sink his teeth into the new meat.

'Course lil' Red hadn't been any old morsel. When that short, tight little figure had stepped out the murk, Jack had just about stopped breathing.

The crimson hood peeking past Red's patched-up jacket snared Jack's swimming vision the second it strayed in. Beautiful that, the splash of shameless colour against the brown-grey-shit murk of the Sticks.

It'd almost dried Jack's mouth out more than Red's face.

Almost. 'Cause those fuckin' lips were made of sin, and it just took blinking to imagine them wrapped around his dick. His skin were sallowed tan like part of the smog-swirled sky, and his dark eyes bit before his teeth even bared. All of it was hard-edged perfection.

None of it more perfect than those pretty scars slicing through his cheek. Three, all stacked up like Jack had snagged through there himself with his wolf claws.

'Course Jack was a fucking twat, so he didn't just smile and drip one of those smooth lines Turner liked so much. Took a long drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke straight at Red's face.

"Fuck do you call that colour? You're not here to make yourself Sunday fuckin' lunch down the scraps, sweetheart."

That made Red bare his teeth, puckering up those scars in his cheek, and it matched the snap of his gaze so pretty Jack damn near swooned. Kinda like those foxes looked on the nature holos. Right cute, that's what it was. Jack could slap him, and he'd fall over, but the little fox with his cute lil' white teeth would probably scramble right back up. Fight the whole damn way as Jack slammed him back into the wall and ate him up.

"Fuck off." Red tugged at his hood, and the closer the garish crimson got to his face, the more it drained it to sallowness and set his eyes alight. The snarl trailed into a mumble, and the way his nose wrinkled had Jack's heart fluttering. That, and something miles lower down. "Mammie makes us wear this shit."

"Jeez, well Grandma ain't gonna be fuckin' happy. All sorts of wolves out in the Sticks, and they're programmed to pick up lil' twats who stroll around in that kinda colour. Sort it out."

A scowl knotted up Red's brow, silver piercing at the tail glinting blue with the neon scrawl off his jacket. Kid tucked his hands into his armpits, jerked his chin up at Jack. "You go that colour to suck Grandma off too? Get out of my way."

Then Red stomped off. Fingers tangling through the bleach, gel-soaked tangle of his hair, Jack stared out at the burntout shells lining the horizon with butterflies tumbled around his chest.

Kinda like the beginning of the end, 'cause since that day, Jack's mind had been stuck to Red like wolf's teeth. And the Corps had made those things like hooks so they didn't ever come out.