Archive of Our Own ^beta

The relentless waves of paint peeling heat had soaked through the fabric of his clothes, leaving his entire being hot, a solid 10° hotter than what he wants to be anyway. The dual-convection ovens that are the Pandoran suns have a way of making the poor bastards that populate the planet sleep naked when they finally set for the next 45 hours. Unfortunately, two suns mean a long dawn/dusk which means that the heat tends to take forever to dissipate. 

Skidding over the hot, gravely road, Mordecai nearly misses the turn off for the 100th time since he's ridden through this hellhole. Back and forth back and forth for random shit that seemed like it couldn't stay in the same little spot, no. 

Glaring down at his busted, dust ridden ECHO, Mordecai scrutinizes the long grocery list of random bounty board jobs as he takes a sharp turn at the little Middle of Nowhere hub, parking his hot ass whip in the shade, he practically jumps out the seat to find a better, solid looking seat to cool off. Mordecai finds a neat thick ledge in the rock roughly 6 feet off the ground, decides to clamber on up and press his boney back against the sandstone's cool surface.

Looking around the near-abandoned hub, he laid down, fully flush with the rock now. He takes off his mask and pulls out his ECHO. Scrolling through his mission log, eyes still glossing over the old bullshit he accepted, he doesn't feel compelled to do anything while his lean figure continues to ooze in it's miserable state. The heat gets to him worse than the other guys no doubt. They ought to be doing better than his sorry ass is currently.

'Soldier boy must've gotten his share of chores done by now, and is probably hanging out in his dingy apartment back in New Haven, with all the armor pieces he's got on all the time, he's gotta overheat from time to time.'

'Siren Chick's probably hanging around him, wanting to hang with someone who's not Scooter or Helena, probably bitching about how she's burnt from head to toe and wished that she'd pack more sunscreen or zinc or whatever pale people put on.'

'That big dude Brick though..' Mordecai thought. He had no idea what that motherfucker would do. With all that upper body bulk he's got, dude must run hotter than hell on a good day. Dude's gotta be hanging around somewhere shirtless at the very least.

He grimaced at the thought. Personally, he'd rather be lightweight and breathable than all big and sweaty and sticky all of the time. Which is the reason why he's brooding out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, preferring to be sticky and miserable by himself rather than mean-mug all day and give the others the wrong idea. 'No I'm not going to run off again, Roland I'm just gonna go for a ride and do something instead of moping around New Haven.' 'yeah right, just get back before it gets dark out'

'shitt, whatever." He blinks hard and breaths deep, forcing himself to think about something else. He dozes after a while, wondering what Zed's been up to since they cleaned up his lil neck of the woods.

Some time after killing sledge, Zed had called him and the crew up and asked them if they wanted to help renovate the old motel for a bit of cash, saying something about the local bandit population being low enough for tourism to pick back up. In a surprising display of free will, only half of the crew showed up, with only Mordecai and the walking slab of meat pulling up. They spent a good while out there, almost a full day/night cycle because it was just too hot to be working on the roof without any sort of shade or break.

The lovebirds took a raincheck after a particularly rough night, so it was just the three of them hauling building materials back and forth all day. After sprucing up two of the tiny rooms, installing a couple of showers and expanding the other two rooms into something of a master suite, Zed let them crash there for the night. "Consider it half of your pay, now y'all go on now and rest up." He said, then promptly left, leaving them with the keys to lock up behind themselves for the night. He never asked for them back afterwards so every now and again they have little sleepovers in the air conditioned rooms.

Mordecai let Brick go test the showers first mostly because he felt that the pipes would either shoot out raw sewage or some other nondescript fluid. That and because he doesn't want to hear yet another 'you gotta eat sumn or your going to die' lecture from a guy who could (and probably would) gladly carry him everywhere if he'd asked.

*Ping!* His ECHO goes off. He opens his eyes and squints at the screen, seeing a popup notification from Roland. He groans to himself as he peels himself from his perch and clambers down and walks toward his now cooled off runner, busting a U-turn as soon as he gets in. he turns to head back to New Haven, having successfully blown off a hour or two of work.