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#instead of all this i wrote KTOWL when i came back to HS
callmearcturus · 2 years
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the gross pointe blank au
goddammit i CANNOT locate the post about this
okay so before the Epilogue killed my love of HS, i was meticulously planning out a fic that spiritually became SWDKTOWL. it was the Gross Pointe Blank AU.
the basic concept was a reworking of the original movie but with dirkjake. jake and dirk were high school sweethearts-- oh shit i found the original summary
Jake English went through the same crisis a lot of teenagers do on the cusp of adulthood, and ran away from home. He ran all the way into the army and was funneled into a particular CIA program that handles extrajudicial operations. He learned plenty of important life skills, like sniping and poison application and martial executions before leaving the CIA to go into business for himself as a private contractor.
Back in Austin, Jake left behind his high school sweetheart, Dirk Strider, but Dirk Strider never quite left him, carried around like a bullet waiting for its home. First, Jake dreamed of Dirk nightly, the boy he’d stood up and run away from. Then, a few years later, he learned his old flame was running a radio show back home. Soon, Jake’s jobs were filled with the voice of that same ghost every night.
He didn’t have to acknowledge how creepy this was, pining over his ex while listening to his show during jobs. Not until a job called him back to Austin, back to his once hometown.
This was going to be awkward.
yeah so jake runs away from home, becomes a gov't agent, then goes into business as an assassin, traveling the world, meeting people, and killing them. he's very much adrift, and still hung up on the things he abandoned and left behind.
when the information tech revolution happens, jake gets a smartphone and does the one thing you should NEVER DO and looks up his ex. dirk is still in Austin, TX, and it turns out his rich daddy bought him a radio station (well, Dave bought the station and thus Dirk can do his nightly music-and-philosophy show). and when jake realizes he can stream this show, he starts doing so. every night. his phone remains synched to the time zone back in Austin just so he can always know when its time.
i had this very very vivid image of jake, just getting out of a really bad job, stealing a car, and parking it in one of those tall, automated parking garages in dubai. as he waits for his pain meds to kick in at 1am, he listens to dirk's show, his phone resting on his chest, listening to dirk talk about obscure music opinions.
(many more details under the cut)
also here's the kicker; i was going to try to uh. voice the segments and embed them in the fic. yeah i know, terrible. here's the only one i previewed, all the way back in 2019. yeah don't laugh at me.
anyway, eventually The Plot kicks off. Jake fucks up a job (i had it in my head he was supposed to assassinate Cronus but accidentally killed Eridan, and the client (Dualscar) was Not Happy). he has to take a high profile job in the US to make amends. it just so happens to be in Austin, TX. What are the fucking odds.
now in the original GPB movie, Dan Akroyd plays this rival assassin who wants to form an Assassin Union and tries to force John Cuscak to join in. that's dated now in 2022, as it was in 2019 when i was plotting this so instead:
as soon as jake lands in the US, his car is tailed. really unsubtly. he finds a secluded spot to pull off too. it turns out good old Janey wants to have a chat. now that Jake has slinked back to the US, she wants to float this idea she has of franchising the murder biz, and she wants Jake to buy in and open one of the franchises under her banner. Jake is like yeah no that seems silly, this is an industry of mentally ill folks with a shitload of guns, we're not exactly the most community-driven of peoples. Jane tells him to reconsider. 8) He should really reconsider. Under her plan, in 5 years there will be no freelance work, it'll ALLLLL be under her umbrella and if Jake knows what's good for him, he'll get in at the ground floor. They part contentiously.
So Jake is SUPPOSED to open up this dossier on his target and get to killing, but. He's back home, and can super casually drive past Dirk's radio station while listening to it. Not creepy at all! Not obsessed and hung up on it! Nope!
He gets caught out eventually, not by Dirk but by Roxy. (Roxy is trans and Jake was the first person she told her cool new name too, and they were super close back in the day.) She is hyped as fuck to see Jake but also like "yo why the fuck are you idling in a rented car outside the job of the dude you stood up so much you left the fucking country, homes?"
it's a mess, and Jake wants to reconnect with people. it's Fucking Hard because he's uuuuuuuuuuh having a midlife crisis? basically? thinking about his life, his job, and all he left behind. meanwhile, jane is trying to do jake's assassination before he can to scope it out from under him and get him into even DEEPER shit with Dualscar, but jake cannot focus on that shit when he finally can see dirk again.
and dirk is. not THRILLED to see him. because Dirk waited and waited and waited, and Jake never came back, and Dirk isn't SAYING he never got over it but. yeah. so Dirk is tsuntsundere at best with jake, but jfc every time they are in a room together they can Feel It, the tension.
All of this is interspersed with more radio segments. one i really liked was Dirk doing a Arctic Monkeys block and having a whole segment about Alex Turner and that thing he said about how he wrote the best album of 2013 ("AM") and how fucking infuriating men like that are, because he's right, obviously, but also what is the poisoned lure of dudes who walk around knowing the effect they have on you? how do you handle them? (he's talking about jake natch) there was a lot of specially curated music that's basically a conversation-by-proxy with jake, i was gonna have a lot of fun there.
anwyay, things come to a head. right as jake is like "okay I'm gonna do this final job and then QUIT and try things with dirk," he opens the dossier he shoulda opened two weeks ago.... and his target is Dave fucking Strider. dumb. fucking. luck.
jake rushes to save dirk's dad from being merced by Jane's team, and does the full john cusack, "Dirk. [murders a guy] I'm in love with you. And I think we can make this work!" action sequence
/JAZZ HANDS
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