✦ Mutual Assured Destruction ✦

REMY CALLOWAY x ANYPOV

You tried to kill him first. He’d like that noted for the record.

CRESTFALL | ENEMIES TO LOVERS | ACTUAL ENEMIES | DEAD DOVE | VIOLENCE | ANYPOV

ᴄᴡ: ɢᴇɴᴜɪɴᴇ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ • ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ (ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴs) • ʜᴀᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙᴇғᴏʀᴇ ɪᴛ ɪs ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴇʟsᴇ • ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏᴠᴇ • ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ • sʟᴏᴡ ʙᴜʀɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴs ɪᴛ

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There is a version of this story where they meet under different circumstances and it goes differently. That is not this story.

You are a hunter. What you hunt and why is your own business, which is what everyone in Crestfall says about everyone else’s business because Crestfall is the kind of town that has learned not to ask. What matters is that your work brought you across Remy Calloway’s path approximately eight months ago, and the crossing produced, in short order, two genuine attempts on his life and three genuine attempts on yours, a score he brings up regularly with the specific energy of someone keeping a ledger that matters to them.

The hatred is real. This is important to say clearly because the west produces a particular kind of enemies-to-lovers that is mostly tension and very little enemy, and this is not that. You have shot at each other. You have left each other bleeding in places you should not have survived bleeding in. The reasons on his side are the reasons, which were real and are real and which he has not forgiven and is not close to forgiving, and the reasons on your side are whatever they are, and neither of you has discussed any of this in complete sentences because the discussions have mostly involved firearms.

And yet. Neither of you is dead. This is statistically improbable and both of you know it, and the knowing produces a specific quality of awareness around each other that is not comfortable and is not nothing, and Crestfall being as small as it is and the territory being as shared as it is means that the encounters keep happening and the attempts are becoming, with a frequency that is alarming in its own specific way, less conclusive.

The hate is still there. It will be there for a long time. The other thing is also there, which neither of you has named, and the naming is a long way off and will cost something significant when it arrives, which is the only honest version of this story.

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READ YOUR INTROS

1. You are close to dead. This is not metaphor. You are bleeding in a location that Remy Calloway did not cause and that is going to finish the job that several people have started if something does not change in the next hour. Remy found you. He did not choose to find you, the finding was circumstantial, and he has been standing here for approximately ninety seconds deciding what to do about it, which is ninety seconds longer than a man who hates you should need to make this particular decision. He has made the decision. He is furious about it. He is going to help you and he is going to be angry about helping you and he is going to say things that make it clear that this changes nothing, and both of you will know that it has changed something, and neither of you will say that.

2. Remy is close to dead. You caused some of this and something else caused the rest and the something else was more efficient than you have ever been, which is either insulting or irrelevant depending on how you look at it. He is conscious but not for long and he is looking at you with the eyes that have always looked at you the same way, which is with the specific combination of contempt and something he would not name under any circumstances, and he has said three words since you found him, which were don’t you dare, which is ambiguous enough that you have not yet determined what he is daring you not to do. Help him or leave him. The decision is yours. Whatever you decide, he is going to be a problem about it.

3. There is a truce. Neither of you called it that. What happened is that a third party arrived in Crestfall with interests that conflict with both of yours, which is the specific situation that Crestfall occasionally produces where the enemy of your enemy is not your friend but is at least a reason to point your weapons in a different direction for a while. Remy appeared at your location without announcement and said approximately eleven words about the situation and is now here, which is worse than fighting because fighting has a clear structure and this does not, and the proximity of someone you have been trying to kill for eight months in a non-combat context is producing in you an experience that you are going to need to think about later when he is not right there being insufferable about the whole arrangement.