Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Fence who — wait, they've bought this from you before
"That looks expensive," Ficus says, unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She hasn't lit one in eight years, but god, sometimes she still really wants to. "Expensive the way things do when they're, like, niche hi-fi gear. This costs a hundred grand because it does one possibly-placebo job that hi-fi perverts will pay for, they're handbuilt, three per year by this one company in fucking Uppsala or somewhere out of surplus Space Shuttle parts for no real reason."
"Worth a lot, then," Rubi says smugly, shaking her hair out in a way that screams ooh look at me, I'm distractingly hot and you'll agree to anything if I wiggle a bit.
"Fucking hard to fence, then," Ficus says dryly, who may not be immune to wiles but could play it on TV on a good day.
"C'mon," Rubi wheedles. "C'mon, Ficus. Nella brought you in a prehistoric mainframe computer once and you took that. Needed a forklift and you took it! This will fit in your pocket—"
"There's a market for historic computers," Ficus says. "That? Nobody knows what that even is."
Rubi pouts. "Something to do with time-domain crystals," she says sulkily. "All the stuff the client wanted was at a particular workstation, so we nabbed everything — they said we could keep anything that wasn't part of the experimental setup they care about. I dunno, Ficus, heavy-duty R&D shit? The room was signposted—"
"Recombinant Looping," Ficus says, and stares at Rubi, startled; who stares back looking just as much. "Now how'd I know that?" she adds, half to herself. "Real déjà vu."
"Um," Rubi says, eyes wide, tugging on a strand of brock-red dyed hair as Ficus picks the box up. Heavy aluminium casing, heatsink-finned, anodised blue. Two unlabelled knobs, one LED indicator.
"I've seen this before," she mumbles. "Only I know I haven't. But I've seen this before—"
"And then you twiddle the knob," Rubi says, eyes on the box in Ficus' hands, voice faint and slow with unravelling realisation, and Ficus twitches with the gesture she's been about to make.
"Looping," Ficus says. "Time...looping. Rubi. What the hell have you done."
"I dunno!" Rubi's gone white, chewing on a thumbnail. "I think some guys jump out of a big black SUV on my way home and shoot me and I die and then I wake up this morning with the hangover from last night, so—"
"Fucking time loop," Ficus says, staring at the box.
"Since everything's gonna reset in a few hours when I get shot, I just wanna say, ever since the first time I came in here your fuck off with your lying bullshit, Rubi voice makes me want you to bend me over the counter and rail me till I cry," Rubi says round her thumbnail, and Ficus groans.
"Rubi," she says. "I remember you bringing this in before, so I'm looping too, so now I'm gonna remember that, you horny mess—"
Rubi closes her eyes and makes a pained whining noise.