He had been working nonstop, which was starting to wear on him a lot. So he informed Cern, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to take a few days off to be with Farah. The god, pleased enough with Grady's work lately, agreed to leave him alone for a week.

He went to London first, hoping to catch her before she left. He failed.

He ended up finding her in Texas, at her uncle's ranch. At least it was family, although his opinion of Billy was mixed, at best. He appeared in her room near 11 in the evening and was immediately greeted by Cat.

Grady finished his work, as best he could, then headed for home. Or, at least, that place he was calling home right now, Charlie's flat in London.

He appeared outside the door and let himself in. Brian greeted him first, jumping up on him and barking his hello. After he'd been pet, Grady went looking for Farah.

So, Grady has picked up some new friends, thanks to his need to go off and play with the superheros. That being said, I don't look at Grady's f-list that often. I have some of his friends on track post, but some I don't.

If you put something up that Grady might be interested in, or that is directed to him, drop me a PM with a link. Charlotte, Farah, Marius, Katsumi, Zee, and Brit are all exempt from this. I got y'all on track, my loves. Anyone else, at least until I get you added to the track, let me know. Okay?

And yes, Grady likes fraternizing with the superheroes. It drives Cern INSANE. Buahaha.

Also! I've pulled Grady of his hiatuses in his comms. So expect a little more action in this here journal.

1. There are 30 questions.
2. Next to each number, write only the name of the person who fits.
3. Answer one question with one name.
4. Don't tell the questions to anyone who isn't doing the meme.

1 zee_ali
2 xthegrimreaperx
3 Not a soul
4 aesthetic_mojo
5 no_rainbows (sometimes)
6 wild_cub
7 contact_zero
8 a_roman_w_power
9 a_roman_w_power
10 no_rainbows
11 atyourdesire
12 no_rainbows
13 zee_ali
14 a_roman_w_power
15 No one, thanks.
16 xthegrimreaperx
17 xthegrimreaperx
18 young_wildone
19 aesthetic_mojo
20 whiteabsolution
21 xthegrimreaperx
22 aethetic_mojo
23 No one.
24 I wish.
25 atyourdesire
26 contact_zero
27 xthegrimreaperx
28 zee_ali
29 no_rainbows
30 All of you are insane. And I love it.

Just as he'd promised, Grady's first stop once he was clear of the cabin was Farah's house. It was barely past dawn and she seemed to be asleep. Brian greeted him with a confused little whine, as much because Grady didn't knock as because of the little black kitten that was hanging on his puppy foot.

It took everything Grady had to not laugh. He was so busy being amused by the animals, who were now following him up the stairs, that he actually wasn't sniffing. He was just going to check on her. At the top of the stairs, he paused to look around.

Grady's going back on the shelf for a little while. I'm finish open tags, starting tomorrow. He and I are having a disagreement about some things and I'm just not in the mood to deal with it right now.

For anyone curious, he's returning to the Shetlands to deal with Cern.

Not that he usually stayed in hotels, for in the City. But he was there and he had work. The young woman with the boyfriend troubles was just an added bonus, the perfect distraction for an afternoon. She might even enjoy it and find some of her self-esteem.

Of course, he would need to be sure of her name.

He opened the door to the well-appointed room on the tenth floor and smiled. "Before you step into the lion's den, perhaps my name would be in order. I'm Grady."

When she told him she wouldn't stop him, his own hands stopped. He looked up at her and smiled weakly, then ran his hands over her belly. He pushed the fabric of her kimono out of the way before leaning down to start kissing her torso. His lips moved from her belly up to her breast, taking her nipple between his lips to suckling at her.

Tell me what you need.

Respect. Respect is not being left to my own devices when I thought I had a woman in my life. Respect is knowing that when you are with someone they are with you. Respect is all those things I was not getting before I left her.

Now, right now, she's acting like what I did offended her, like I made a bad choice. Which is a total crock of shit. I made the choice that I could live with. I chose to respect myself. And if she can't respect that, I don't care anymore. That's her damn choice.

I've gone back to being the man I used to be. I pick up women, I enjoy them, I respect them. They respect me. There is no game playing, there are no lies. I am there one hundred percent, as each woman I am with is for me. Come morning, we go our separate ways.

The difference between what I have and what I had is that I can still respect myself in the morning, now. And I couldn't before. I won't go back to that. Not at all.

End of discussion.

(190)

"Come on over here, baby." Grady lit his cigar and took a nice, long inhale on it as he watched her mess with the buttons of her shirt. He couldn't help the smile that curled on his lips. It felt really good to be back in the game. He had denied himself for far too long, trying to get his own shit straightened out.

Now he was free to do as he wanted. Or who he wanted, as the case happened to me. "I promise to only bite if you ask me to."

He'd had his misgivings about agreeing to being another diety's plaything, but he'd already sold the one soul he had, so there was little harm in it. The beach was beautiful, the company moreso. He supposed that was to be expected, she was Venus, after all.

Since Cern had bought him, he'd made a bit of a study of the various pantheons, so he knew exactly who he was dealing with. His hope was that she would be everything she was claimed to be. And he really hoped she didn't mind the cat. He could change, he knew that, but it had been so long since he'd seen any action at all in this form, he would only do it if she asked. But she would have to ask.

He closed his teeth on the string connecting the cups of her bikini top and tugged, snapping it and exposing her breasts. His tongue pressed against the raised flesh.

His hotel was a shithole. And it was still the best that the town had to offer. He hated the Balkans. He hated Cern. He was not having fun, in the least. Then he'd met Charlotte, who looked to offer a bit of a challenge and a way to take his mind off things.

He escorted her inside and up the rickety stairs. He would have to ask her what had brought her to this backwater hole in the world, but not until after they had their drinks and their fun. He opened the door into the room and gave her a wink as he closed the door behind them.

As he walked past her, he let his hand trail over her ass. "Well, since we came here, I hope you don't mind bourbon."

This journal is on hiatus until July 3rd. All rps, prompts, and tags will be answered only OOC until them. Thank you for your consideration.

For all of Grady's interest in combat and his generally aggressive nature, he was rather violently opposed to conflict with Kat. So the fact that he could not find a way to address their growing distance bothered him more than it probably should have. They would go days at a time without seeing each other, and that was when he was at the house in Japan. When he was out on some errand for Cern, their time apart was even longer. Not that there weren't opportunities. His errands tended to end in death, with was her bailiwick.

Yet, somehow, they were growing apart. Sitting on the porch, his feet hanging over the edge, he was trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong. Unfortunately, he was drawing a blank, past being sure that his having sold his soul was part of it. Why would she want anything to do with a man who had become a petty servant to someone who held so little power.

As though summoned by the mere thought of him, Cern appeared in the field and approached the house. Grady knew what was coming. It would be another pointless run into some war-torn country, to kill some unimportant person. When the deity was close enough, Grady stove off any comments by asking for the information. Cern, unused to this type of response, sputtered for a moment before producing the file.

After Cern was gone, Grady made his way through the house, gathering up the things that were his. It all fit in a single suitcase. He placed a call down to the town at the base of the mountain, arranging a car to come and take him to the airport. While he waited, he wrote Kat a note, which he left on the bed they so infrequently shared. When the car arrived, he made sure the house was locked up before leaving.

He did not look back as the car pulled away.

Aijin,

I wish that things had been different between us. We have both given up so much to be together, only to find that we must not like each other's company. I have not seen you in days and have not shared your bed in longer.

Maybe it was my mistake to think that if I gave you forever you would want to spent it with me. Maybe it was naive of me to believe that either of us would actually want marriage, especially when we do not even have death to give us peace. We are different, you and I, and, as such, not meant to spend eternity together, outside of the thing which is your purpose and my trade.

I have suffered from the vanity that exists inside all men who hold power over the life and death of other people. I actually believed myself worthy of someone else's love. In this case, however, the person I chose to love could never truly be mine. You belong to everyone, my love. And I was a fool to ever think that I could hold you close.

I hope that you do not think ill of me, now that I am gone. I know that our paths will cross again. They have crossed for so long that you will always know my handiwork. Please know that I will miss you, that I will miss laughing with you and holding your hand. I will miss our attempts to be normal, to be humans without a care in the world. But we both know, have always known, that what we had was merely a dream.

I love you. I will always love you.

-Grady

He stumbled out of the bar, his arm around the tall red head. She was clearly more sober than he was, a rare thing for Grady. Somewhere, whispering quietly at the back of his mind, was the idea that he was about to be played. The rest of his mind, the drunk part that was having more fun than it had in a while, was quite happily beating the voice of reason into submission.

The red head led him down the block, letting him grope her without a word of complaint. Her hotel, she informed him, was on the next block. He could not care less if it was on the next block or a mile away. He was enjoying himself too much to really care. He was on a weekend pass, his first one since arriving at Scout-Sniper school, and he planned on living it up.

It turned out her hotel was a dive, one of those pay by the hour places. Grady happily paid for three hours, earning him a snicker from the desk clerk. He didn't care. He just wanted to get the woman into a room with a bed. She pulled him up the stairs, kissing him the entire way.

She opened the door to the room and pulled him back toward the bed. A tangle of arms, legs, and lips, they fell into the bed and he started pulling at her clothes. She got him naked far more easily then he did her. His eyes closed as they kissed, her tongue teasing at his lips.

When he came to, two hours later, his wallet was empty of all the cash he had, an entire two weeks' pay, and his head was pounded. The woman was nowhere to be seen. He dressed and stumbled back down to the front desk. The clerk denied having seen her leave, but did let him use the phone to call one of his company mates.

The whole ride back to base, Grady beat himself up. He'd been played and rubbed. His buddy told him not to bother reporting it, he'd only be embarrassed. The pursuit of pleasure, after all, did not come without consequences.

(365)

His travel patterns had changed completely. He still worked for pay, but now he also worked for his master. His master, the words made him ill every time he was forced to use them. Cern had become difficult about it, insisting that he be addressed that way whenever he saw Grady. Surely the deity knew the effect it had on his servant, it had to be a calculate effort on the god's part. There was no way that Cern could not know that Grady was overly violent after a run in with him.

Covered in blood and panting with excited exhaustion, Grady lay on the grass next to the body of his latest victim. He was convinced that some of the people, and things, that he was sent after couldn't possibly make a difference. They were only targetted to serve as lessons to Grady. This time, it was an elderly woman who lived alone. No one would miss her, she had no family. Still, in a rage from a visit from his master, Grady had torn the old woman to shreds.

Licking blood from his snout, he stood and started off toward the town his hotel room was in. He did not even bother looking back at the carnage he had left. There was no point in it, there was nothing he could do. And, he knew, if he looked back, he would see Her there, watching him with that sad look in his eyes.

Despite the fact that they never talked about what he did, they both knew he was slowly going mad. And there was nothing either of them could do about it.

(277)

"If it was not 'love' that we experienced for the all-too-brief time that we were together, what was it then?"

(ooc: This references an AU rp with bendigo_nicole for muse_erotica and is not related to Grady's current canon, at all.)

I am not the biggest believer in the concept of love as it is portrayed by the poetics and the dramatists. Their ideas are far more fluffy and sentimental then they need to be. Why does love have to be all heart and emotion, with no body? I hold that I could emotionally dislike you and still be perfectly capable of loving you with my body.

Recently, I had occasion to run into a lovely and adventurous little blonde. She was very spunky. We'd teased the first time we met. It was the start of a 'loving' relationship. Since then, we've allowed our bodies to take from each other. There is no emotion in it. She wants another and, well, I'm me.

That doesn't mean that our run ins could not be called love. Just because the bullshit words were not said does not mean that our bodies didn't feel it. What else would you call it when you are so in sync with someone that you can fuck them in an alley and neither of you thinks it is out of the ordinary? Or when you can break into someone's apartment and, instead of kicking you out, they strip you down and fuck you senseless?

Sure, it's not the poets' idea of love, all wine, roses, and angst. It's a love for the world I live in. And, quite frankly, that is all I give a shit about.

(240)

He who angers you conquers you. - Elizabeth Kenny

When Cern first tricked me into being his black bag man, I was angry. Violently so, even. I could have killed him and I would have killed anyone who suggested that it was my own fault. I was miserable and it led to fights with Kat, which was unfair to her. It wasn't her fault, but I took it out on her anyway.

We separated, and that is when I learned that Cern had won. By getting me worked up and irrational, he had me completely. There was no way I could get free of him, not when I couldn't think straight.

It took me a little time and the support of my love to get my head straight about the whole thing. What's done is done. I am a bag man for some bush league minor deity. I have no soul, so I will probably live forever. These things are immutable right now. I have not found a way to change them.

But I am not angry any more. I look at it as positively as I can. I will be with my Anjin forever, if she'll have me. The prospect of her having to take my soul, and the pain that would cause, is gone now. I have no soul to be taken. I have only myself and my love for her.

Cern fucked up. I'm not angry anymore. His control has slipped some. I wonder how long it will be before he figures that out. Maybe I'll tell him, the next time I see him. That should piss him off quite nicely. Then who will be the victor?

(272)

So, there are days when I come wandering in from whatever no good I've been up to and I discover that she's not home. I've come to expect it, since she does have slightly more demanding bosses then I do. Those days, when I know I am all alone in the house, I don't bother going to bed. Hell, some of those days, I don't even bother changing back into a man.

I just climb myself right up onto the couch and stretch out. It is plenty big enough for me to sleep on as a man, but not so much as a cat. My tail hangs over the arm. I know the sight of it amuses her, since she has pulled my tail a few times to wake me up.

Do not wake a sleeping 200 pound wild cat by pulling his tail. He will not be happy and is very likely to attack you. Not that she complained about the licking, though. She never really does. I'm just too cute for complaints.

(175)