Profile

BACKGROUND:

Floyd Lawton was born into the wealthy upper-crust Gotham City area social scene, although he lived 50 miles outside of the city in a town founded by his family. He brought into this world by horrible status-obsessed parents, George and Genevieve, who hated each other so much that his mother pressured his older brother Eddie to try and murder his father. It so happened that Eddie was the only member of his family that Floyd liked, never once resenting him for being the golden boy of the family while he himself was the black sheep. Floyd loved his brother, and was smart enough to care that his all-star brother, who was destined for great things and, truth be told, was someone he idolized - would be headed down a bad path if he actually murdered his own father, so Floyd took it upon himself to try and stop him. He tried to warn his father, but Eddie locked him down before he could - but he eventually escaped. When the confrontation happened, Floyd was perched in a tree with his own gun, planning to shoot the gun out of Eddie's hands before he could stain them with their father's blood forever. Eddie had shot his father, but only managed to paralyze him. Before he could finish the job, Floyd fired his shot, but the branch gave way beneath him, affecting his shot. Killing his brother.

Given the clout Old Man Lawton had, the investigation was squelched, and the whole ugly affair was blamed on a sniper that was never found. The lingering cloud of bitterness, however, would eventually lessen the Lawtons' social status, and Genevieve moved out of the mansion and into a smaller guest home, becoming a recluse. No divorce, because they hated each other enough to punish each other by remaining married to each other. Yeah, this is Floyd's family.

Floyd himself was a member of the idle rich, occasionally getting into trouble with a fellow rich boy by the name of James Heller, who would eventually become a racist asshole known as the White Dragon. Most of all, though, Floyd was a listless loner. He learned Russian and joined the Communist party just to piss off his father, but mostly he was bored. Spent a lot of time training with guns, determined never to miss a shot like that again, becoming a stunningly accurate marksman while repressing the crap out of his guilt and trauma until emotions were nearly a thing of the past for him. Everything was pointless, and he found it hard to care if he even lived or died. He got married to a girl he called Sooz mainly to spite his father, who then officially cut him out of the family fortune for marrying "beneath" him. They had a son together, who was named for Floyd's lost brother Eddie. So those emotions were still around, but Floyd refused to acknowledge them.

He remained bored enough that he started dipping into the criminal game, targeting the rich because he was one of them and so who cares about these assholes? He hired a team of goons to raid and rob a high-society masquerade charity event at Wayne Manor he was also attending (dressed in a fancy-pants gunslinger known as "the Gentleman Thief" costume from an obscure old movie that was never made), although his parents were supposed to be there to fall victim to his goons, too - but they left early. This being Gotham, the Batman crashed the proceedings to put a stop to it. However, in all the darkness and confusion, Floyd shot a couple of the criminals as well before they could make him and and blow his cover, and when the lights came on, it looked like he was the hero who'd saved the day, and the crowd cheered for him and asked his name. On the spot, he came up with the codename "Deadshot."

Then came the new idea, inspired by "The Bat." He built himself a new costume, a better mask and gun rigs to mount on his wrists, and he took to the streets as Gotham's new hero. The outfit was colored brightly, and he worked during the day and was much more visible, and for a time, he was more popular in Gotham City than Batman. Of course, Floyd didn't actually care about stopping crime - in fact, his hero gig was a scam, as he took protection money from gangs to let them continue to operate. Which put him right in the Batman's sights. Since Bruce Wayne had known Deadshot was Floyd, he'd gotten to his gear and replaced his ammo with blanks before engineering a sting with Jim Gordon to trap him. If he had his real ammo, Deadshot might have killed Batman, as he had him dead to rights - although he might never have got him dead to rights if Batman hadn't known his ammo was blank. Either way, Floyd Lawton went to prison. Served his time. Came out and tried to track down Batman to kill him again, but didn't get the job done. Went back to prison again. Eventually, he gave up Bat-hunting and just became an assassin for hire.

It was during this time that Floyd left Sooz alone with young Eddie, ending his marriage. His later explanation would be that she kept wanting him to be something else, and he would never be anything he wasn't. However, Sooz was unable to move on from Floyd, always hoping he'd come back and make good. That was never to be.

While Floyd was in prison, he was approached with a very unique offer that suited him perfectly. A covert black-ops team of expendable criminal types was being formed, and they asked him to join. It was dubbed the Suicide Squad because of how hopeless coming back alive from these missions was to be. In return for his service, he'd get his sentence reduced if he actually did survive. Floyd went along with it. After a few missions under the command of Squad-runner Amanda Waller and field commander Rick Flag, to all outward appearances, Floyd seemed to have a death wish. Looking for a way to die that wasn't straight-up suicide. As if all he wanted was to get killed in a big enough way. There may have been some truth to that, but Floyd summed that up by saying "I don't want to die. I just don't care if I do."

Floyd continued to insist on not caring about anything, because "caring is for idiots." He never bothered with attempting a relationship again for years, declaring that "if he wanted a serivce performed, he'd go to a professional." He'd make a point of following orders to the letter rather than the intent, which led to some frustration with team members when he'd blow a guy's head off at the wrong time. When the Squad's headquarters in Belle Reve prison in Louisiana was attacked, he didn't lift a finger to help, because security wasn't his job - only the missions were. Basically, he was an off-putting dickhead to everyone around him.

Therapy had been mandated as part of the Squad's requirements, and Floyd's therapist was a young woman named Dr. Marnie Herrs. Having recently lost her sister to suicide, she was acutely affected by Floyd's apparent death wish and started to become far too emotionally involved in Floyd's case. To the point where she slapped him for accusing her of essentially being a whore who is paid to care, which brought a surprising response from the cold mercenary - a hard kiss. One he immediately disavowed. One that got Herrs in trouble with her boss, driving her to take a leave of absence when he took her off of Floyd's case.

When Floyd got word from Sooz that his son Eddie had been abducted, though, he started to care again. When the note cryptically said that if he ever wanted to see his son again he'd finish a job he started 20 years ago, he knew exactly who was behind it. After berating Sooz for not changing her name and her life to protect Eddie like he'd told her to, he went off on a crusade to find his son and murder everyone involved with this. While this was going on, Dr. Herrs had taken to exploring Floyd's life as well, trying to uncover his history and find out why he is the way he is - learning about Floyd's brother, and seeing first-hand how horrible, distant and miserable his parents were.

Floyd's hunt for his son was merciless. He was dead set on sending a message that everyone and anyone who tried to get at him through his son was going to die bloody. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to find his son in time. When he caught up to the abductors, he discovered little Eddie had been raped and murdered by a deranged pedophile. Something broke inside Floyd, and the brutality he inflicted on that man elicited howling screams of pain for ages, before Floyd finally killed him. Then went after the person who engineered the whole thing - his mother, Genevieve Lawton, trying to strong-arm Floyd into finally murdering George.

When he confronted his mother, though, Marie Herrs was also there, having put most of the past together. She managed to temper Floyd's bloody rage by getting him to realize that her plan all along was to get Floyd to kill HER, as she was the one with the death wish. So if Floyd killed her, she'd win... and Floyd couldn't have that. So he shot her in the spine. Crippled her, just like his brother had done to their father. "Now they're a matched set."

However, when Dr. Herrs tried to continue their therapy sessions now that all this ugly past had come to light to enable progress, Floyd refused. He insisted that he didn't feel any kind of remorse when he killed his brother, and that life is worthless and nothing means anything. "The only life anyone cares about is their own, and I don't even care about that. I'm just killing time, waiting to die." Dr. Herrs saw through that as bullshit because he just didn't want to deal with actual emotions, but Floyd angrily insisted that all doctors are alike, thinking they can heal people and make people normal again, but "some people can't be cured." Herrs intimated that he was too afraid to risk being wrong about himself, but Floyd just insisted "I am who I am. I am what I am. The cards are dealt. Let 'em lie."

Floyd's repressed trauma wouldn't stay repressed, however. During his time with the Suicide Squad, the constant tense circumstances and always facing death made for some tumultuous relationships and weird bonds. Waller was the heart and soul of the team, pushing for it to exist in the face of countless attempts to end it, and Floyd was once contracted to kill her, but he declined to pull the trigger. Perhaps she'd become some kind of maternal figure to him, not that he'd ever admit that. What he can't deny is that Flag, the stalward field leader of the Squad, had coalesced into some kind of older-brother figure for him, reminding him sharply of Eddie, the Good Son and the only person he ever gave a damn about. When Flag suffered a pair of massive personal losses - including a Squad mission where Flag was the only one to come back alive, as well as the death of the woman he loved but could never be with - he went off the reservation. Sullen and depressed, he vanished, planning to murder a corrupt congressman who was threatening to reveal the existence of the Squad to the public and ruin everything, and his loyalty ran so deep that he couldn't let that happen. Waller charged Deadshot with stopping Flag from killing the congressman any way he had to. When he caught up to Flag, who was bearing down on his target, Floyd had a mental break, muttering that Flag was Eddie and he was hear to save him and do it right this time. Once again, he followed his orders to the letter instead of the intent - this time by pulling the trigger on the congressman himself so Flag wouldn't have to. Soon after, police swarmed the scene, and Floyd was broken enough to try to effect a "suicide by cop," threatening them just enough to have them all gun him down.

Floyd Lawton didn't die. He was hospitalized for long while, though, and committed to Arkham Asylum after that. Never a place anybody wants to be. Eventually, Floyd was visited there by "Duchess," one of the Squad members who broke him out to be a part of her force. She was not-so-secretly Lashina, one of Darkseid's Furies, and she'd concocted a plan to return home to the planet Apokolips and bring the Squad there to serve as a sacrifice to ensure her return to her overlord's good graces. However, after a nightmarish visit to that horrible planet, Lashina was defeated and the Squad was returned home, because Darkseid had no use for them. Lawton opted to return to the Squad rather than go back to Arkham.

Soon after, thanks to a travel mishap Floyd blamed on teammate Captain Boomerang's self-absorbed bullshit, somebody stole his costume and gun-rigs and started trying to become the new Deadshot. Floyd had to track the guy down and wound up shooting him in the head, but seeing a dead man in his costume in an identity he created with a bullet in his brain shook him up. He refused to wear the costume for a long while, insisting that he'd killed Deadshot. He also promised "Boomerbutt" that he'd pay him back for causing that mess, which made the Australian criminal paranoid. Eventually, though, Floyd's "what the hell, who cares" attitude won out, and he wore the costume and took the name once again - although for a while he didn't bother fixing the bullethole in the forehead of the mask, which creeped some people out.

Eventually, the Squad had to disband - too many forces lining up against it. However, during the last mission, his depressive teammate Count Vertigo had asked Floyd if he would put a bullet in his brain if asked. Floyd said "Hell yes. So be damn sure that's what you want before you ask me." Later, they went off to a secluded area, where Vertigo had to face down Deadshot's gun, as Floyd waited for the word 'go.' After a long stand-off, eventually, the word he got was 'no.' Floyd accepted that decision and let it go.

Once the Squad was done, a short and strange chapter in Floyd's life took shape after returning to the life of a hitman. He was approached by a demon by the name of Neron, who was interested in making a deal for Floyd's soul to give him more power. All Floyd wanted for his soul was "more bullets." However, under demonic manipulation, he becomes possessed of the idea to bomb a kindergarten class - something completely uncharacteristic of him. Thankfully, the Justice League was able to stop him before he could make that a reality. Soon after that, free of Neron's taint, Deadshot traveled to Italy in order to murder the Pope, but Wonder Woman stopped him before that could happen, too.

Some time later, there was a brief new incarnation of the Suicide Squad where Floyd eventually worked alongside Killer Frost, but that team ended in disaster. So the two of them went freelance together with a group of other costumes for a while, and it worked well, to the point where Frost even offered to go on vacation with him for a little no-strings fling. Floyd refused, still insisting on professional services being better than stupid messy relationships. However, things would change when he went to visit his son Eddie's grave, and learned that his parents had both died, and there were a bunch of their old papers he had to sift through - despite his desire to burn them. In the midst of all of that, he discovered a letter from someone claiming Floyd had fathered a child with her in Star City. He was stunned, and had to investigate.

It turns out he had a four-year-old daughter named Zoe with an ex-hooker named Michelle Torres, who got herself off drugs and out of the skin trade once she got pregnant. She didn't want Floyd's family's money - she just wanted them to know about Zoe. She was determined to make it on her own, and didn't even want Floyd's support at first. Floyd insisted on leaving a huge stack of money anyway, and he set up shop in their dingy neighborhood called The Triangle - a shitty area currently being fought over by three different criminal gangs. Floyd set to work at cleaning up the area in his own way. First, by approaching a gang fight and saying "hey, people have to work in the morning. Take it somewhere else." Of course, they attacked him. Of course, he murdered all but two of them, so they could send a message to their bosses that the Triangle was off-limits. He also paid a visit to the slum lord of the area and threatened him into actually making an effort towards urban renewal, slowly improving the properties in the area while making sure the rents stayed affordable.

Over time, Floyd fought off all the gangs' attempts at escalation in his own ruthless way, and the Triangle improved significantly. So did Floyd's entire life. He was actually spending time with his daughter, and eventually, he grew close enough to Michelle that, for the first time in 15 years, he had sex without paying for it. For the first time ever, the idea of going legit started to have some appeal for him. He even managed to guilt Star City's resident superhero Green Arrow into patrolling that area more often than he had been, "in case something happened" to Deadshot. He even tried to quit smoking, which was unheard of for him, as he was almost always seen with a smoldering cigarette hanging out of his mouth, since he was so convinced he'd die bloody that he never gave much thought to cancer.

However, as much as he tried, Floyd knew in the back of his mind that this couldn't last. He'd been too long in the ugly underworld, and after an attempt by "The Closer," a bulletproof chump he and Frost used to run with, to move some new crime into the area, forcing Floyd to level an entire parking garage just to beat him, he began to see the writing on the wall. He mentioned reading a book about the famous Civil War veteran bounty hunter Jonah Hex, a notorious gunslinger who found his old life pulling him back in every time he ever tried to settle down. Someone was always going to come after him. When he got word that the three gang leaders had brought in a whole team of metahumans with a mad-on for Deadshot to rub him out, he knew what had to be done. He spent one more day as Floyd Lawton, the family man, going to the park and anything else Zoe wanted to do. He tucked her in, made love to Michelle one more time - even hesitantly using the L-word with her. It was almost perfect. Except that night, after she was asleep, he had to suit up again, and leave them both behind for good. He led the hit squad to a remote location before turning around and letting the fight begin. It was epic, as Floyd called on every bit of his cunning to take down as many of them as he could, but eventually, the building they were in exploded, collapsing on all of them. Floyd Lawton was dead.

Or so the world thought for a while. Floyd had set up a foundation to make sure Zoe and Michelle were never wanting for money, but he couldn't be a part of their lives anymore. He made sure the slumlord knew he was still alive, so he wouldn't get any ideas about evicting them, and the gangs called a truce and realized the Triangle wasn't worth their trouble, now that they'd earned their "respect" by killing Deadshot. When Floyd resurfaced, it was to join back up with Killer Frost's crew, and pick up right where he left off. The life he deserved.

That life changed, however, when the news got out that the Justice League had been brainwashing criminals to reform them. That put a panic through the supervillain underworld, and soon Lex Luthor began to coalesce them into something he called The Society, a united bad guy front to keep the superheroes in check. Given the surprising new threat, most signed up without reservation, but for a small few, Luthor's strongarm tactics weren't welcome. Not all of them had much choice, however. Floyd found himself working with a group called The Secret Six, which was run by a mysterious mastermind codenamed Mockingbird, whose goal it was to eradicate Luthor's Society. The promises of bounty were considerable (the entire continent of North America, in Floyd's case), but there were also threats to the families of the members if they weren't cooperative. Floyd played along for a while, due to Mockingbird's threat to level the entire Triangle neighborhood where his daughter lives, and even played executioner when one of the teammates was given the thumbs-down after they failed on their first mission, killing the Fiddler.

The team consisted of Deadshot, Mockingbird's second-in-command Scandal Savage, the twisted poison fetishist Cheshire, the even more twisted contortionist Ragdoll and his strange friend, a nameless rogue Parademon from the army of the apocalyptic intergalactic despot Darkseid. Taking the Fiddler's place was Thomas Blake, aka Catman - a former Z-list chump who'd reinvented himself as a feral badass by running with lions in Africa. Blake had no interest in any of this, so Mockingbird had Floyd disguise himself as Society member Deathstroke The Terminator and kill the entire pack of lions that Blake was communing with, sending the Catman into the fold of the Six with revenge against the Society on his mind. It wasn't long before Floyd and Blake tested each other, and settled into a gruff, respectful rapport with each other. If either of them would admit it, you could have called them friends.

The bonds began to form with the Six when one of their guerilla strikes against the Society found them captured and subject to horrifying days of toture at the hands of the sadistic Crime Doctor. Under the relentless pain and stress, ego and bravado began to fall away. Some of them were broken, but there was an undercurrent of shared suffering that eventually united them strongly when Catman finally figured out a way to get free, allowing the Six to escape and go on a murderous rampage of revenge together.

Those bonds didn't last for long, though - at least not with Cheshire, who sold the Six out to Luthor's Society, bringing a massive supervillain army down on the heads of the Six - just as Catman learned the truth about Deadshot being the one who killed the lions. By this point, Floyd felt pretty shitty about it, so in the midst of the siege, he stepped out to face the real Deathstroke one-on-one, figuring it might help him square his debt to Blake if he could take out the Society's field leader and keep them from killing Blake. He was gunned down hard for his trouble (although Deathstroke looked like crap as well). Before he blacked out, he made a point of actually apologizing to Blake, which isn't something Floyd Lawton does. In the fight, the Six also lost the Parademon in a weirdly noble self-sacrifice explosion to make sure he could save the life of Ragdoll, but Scandal's lover Knockout, another veteran of Darkseid's armies, was a mole on the Society and defected back to the Six by the end of the battle.

Once the Society fell apart (as it was destined to do, given it was a team of loners, criminals and assholes), a more streamlined version came into being, and a pipsqueak mind-controlling vermin by the name of Dr. Psycho convinced them to help him gain the revenge he'd been salivating for against the Six - and Catman, specifically, for making him look like a fool by spurning his initial offer to join the Society. Floyd had risked making an effort to see his daughter again, revealing to Michelle that he was still alive, and he tried to spend some time with them again - but just as he feared, he was attacked by Psycho's minions, putting Michelle and Zoe in danger once again. He was able to protect them then, but he wasn't about to risk that anymore. He promised Michelle the checks would keep coming, but said in no uncertain terms that they'd never see him again.

Enlisting the help of the Arkham Asylum veteran Jervis Tetch, aka The Mad Hatter, to counteract the mental mojo of Dr. Psycho, the Six took the fight to the jerk, but wound up fighting the Doom Patrol in the process, but victory was eventually achieved. The bigger threat, however, was the fact that Psycho and Cheshire - now the mother of Blake's child - had joined forces with Scandal's father Vandal Savage, an immortal cannibalistic manipulator of the worst kind, who wanted Scandal to be breeding stock for his heirs. Complicating the matter further was the fact that Floyd, quietly miserable after breaking it off with his family, was propositioned by Scandal's girlfriend Knockout, an alien unfamiliar with the concept of monogamy but entirely familiar with the concept of celebratory post-battle sexual congress and, considering the fact that she was a tall, unbelievably built redhead, Floyd saw no reason not to take her up on it. Of course, that reason became abundantly clear when Scandal caught them in the act and was completely devastated - enough to disavow the entire team and go off to deal with her father on her own. The rest of the Six, feeling like crap about it all, weren't about to let her do that alone, so they followed her (despite her insisting that they don't) to back her up. The final fight was bloody, but the team's bonds were re-established, and they came out on top - and they might've counted the Mad Hatter as their new friend, if Ragdoll hadn't pitched him over a cliff for threatening his spot as the team's resident eccentric fop. Instead, they earned his enmity.

Soon after this was resolved, the Six, now featuring Harley Quinn, were hired by a creepy Russian general to guard his weapons in Azerbaijan, which put them into conflict with the team known as the Birds of Prey. In this fracas, Catman formed the beginnings of some fiery flirtation with the Huntress, something Floyd enjoyed mocking Blake about. When it turned out the weapon was actually the superhero Ice that was long thought dead, the Six got a sour taste in their mouths about the job, and Floyd ended up killing the general before he could complete his dirty plan, thus negating the team's paycheck. This wound up getting them hunted by the Russian military for espionage and murder, so the Six went their separate ways for a time.


This sent Deadshot back to work with a new version of the Suicide Squad - this time, there was a new initiative for dealing with the unrepentant repeat offenders in the supervillain world - sending them off to a liveable but uninhabited planet for the rest of their lives. The Squad was being used to round up these jerks. Deadshot himself hunted down the Pied Piper and Trickster, killing the latter in his pursuit. However, once their job was complete, they were doublecrossed by the apparently (but possibly not actually the real deal) Rick Flag, and he and his teammate Bane were also shipped off to the prison planet, nicknamed Hellworld. Floyd has vowed to murder Flag for that betrayal, and would never return to the Suicide Squad again.

The few months on Hellworld sucked for everybody, as it wasn't the peaceful world the government had thought it was - it was actually full of monsters and deathtraps engineered as a Parademon training ground. Deadshot and Bane served as bodyguards for Lex Luthor, despite their former enmity (and hell, since Mockingbird had turned out to be an alternate version of Lex Luthor, too, all bets were off anymore), as he constructed a way back to Earth, despite constant tensions with rival groups of reprobates led by the Joker and Scandal's father Vandal Savage.

The Six reformed after they returned from that mess, now consisting of Floyd, Scandal, Ragdoll, Catman and Bane. Yes, there were only five at this point - Knockout had been murdered by an alien force that was hunting down the New Gods and anybody from Apokolips or New Genesis, and Scandal was still devastated, having fallen into being a blackout drunk. Floyd and Catman, having no real clue how to help her, hired a stripper for her birthday to dress up like Knockout to try and make her feel better. It didn't, really, but it did snap her out of her rut, and she threw herself into business instead of the drink to cope. By this point, Floyd had begun to refer to Scandal as "sis," partially as a sign of affection and partially to keep it straight in his own mind that he shouldn't be wanting to sleep with her, seeing as how she's a lesbian and all. Yes, after all the time he spent making sure he didn't care about anything, he was starting to like these people. Not that he'd admit it. He still tried his best to hold to his personal policy not to care, but his conscience had started to show through more than ever - which isn't saying much, but it's saying something.

The next job wound up having Suicide Squad levels of personal danger - they were to break a criminal named Tarantula out of prison in order to locate a mysterious artifact of great importance, which they later learned was a one-of-a-kind forged-by-Neron-himself "Get Out Of Hell Free" card. The veracity of the card was up for debate, but the question of "what if it's real?" made it the prize for every supervillain that could crawl out of the woodwork for it - a chance to escape eternal damnation for the horrible lives they lead. Once they were in possession of the card, they headed for a safe haven in Las Vegas, in the massive casino owned by a friend of Scandal's named Jeannette, a long-lived banshee with an affinity for sensing the approach of death - and she immediately took a shine to Floyd, who was off-put by her at first, entirely unaccustomed to anyone being into him that much at first sight. He was pretty well convinced that she was some kind of freaky psycho.

The Six were waylaid even in this haven, however, by the massive supervillain force at the beck and call of the mysterious Junior, an utterly twisted and depraved creep who spends all of his time in a crate, running his entire criminal operation by one phone. Junior was obsessed with retrieving the card and Tarantula, who stole it from her, and she'll stop at nothing to get it back - even going through the team upon which her own brother Ragdoll is a member. Amidst the fracas in Vegas, Floyd wonders to himself "Why do I hang around with these guys? They're worse than the Suicide Squad and a damn sight less organized. Why do I hang around with these idiots? The answer's simple. Because I'm an idiot, too." As he'd said before, caring is for idiots, but that's what started to happen. So much so that when the Six escaped and were en route to their drop point in Gotham, Floyd took the chance to betray them all at a rest stop, steal the card and run off with their prisoner Tarantula - who figured out that he was actually doing it to save their lives, as they were all absolutely certain that the Gotham drop point was going to be a massive ambush they'd never survive. So Floyd was going to go it alone and sacrifice himself.

By the time he got there, he was proven right. It turned out that the Six had been hired to run this cross-country gauntlet by the Mad Hatter, simply because he wanted them to be killed. The rest of the Six were fiery pissed off at first, but by the time they caught up to Floyd, pinned down on the bridge to Gotham City, they realized what he was trying to do and showed up to fight at his side anyway. Tarantula wound up sacrificing herself to draw the supervillains' fire to Junior, appearing to kill them both as they plummeted over the edge of the bridge, and the card was said to have been destroyed in the crossfire. However, by battle's end, the truth was revealed that Scandal still maintained possession of it.

In the following downtime, Floyd and Jeannette went on a double date with Scandal Savage and Liana, the stripper from her birthday party, who later met her in a supermarket and gave her her phone number. Of course, it ended in fights with thugs and jerks, as all of these excursions tend to do, but during the evening there were telling conversations about humanity. At Jeannette's questioning about the importance of their actions, Floyd says "Our actions have never mattered. So I've killed a lot of killers. If they'd lived, a lot more straights would be six feet in the dirthole right now. God don't care either way, and I don't care about God." To which Jeannette affectionately responded "You might be the least romantic man I know, Mr. Floyd." However, Liana later chimed in with a non-jaded worldview, suggesting that "People are lonely, and that makes them sad, and some people can't tell the difference between being sad and being angry, so they lash out at the people who care about them. I just feel sorry for them." That gave Floyd pause, before immediately requesting a subject change. Perhaps it hit too close to home, but for reputation's sake, he'd likely dismiss that as naive. By the end of the night, Floyd decided he liked Jeannette, and the two became regular bedmates.


The next mission would test the unity of the Six, as they were hired as protection by a creep named Mr. Smyth, who was using abject slavery in order to build the world's largest and only prison on an independent island, and had already taken hundreds of Amazons who had been branded as war criminals, including one by the name of Artemis. Floyd was asked by Smyth to kill someone fleeing for the fence, and he did as asked in his usual cavalier 'who cares' manner, only to learn that he'd just shot an escaping slave woman in the back and killed her, prompting him to make an actual effort to show some respect for the corpse by collecting it himself. As the depths of their employer's disgusting behavior began to be revealed, one by one the Six began to turn against him. Floyd was the last hold-out, clinging to the professional mantra of having to finish the job they agreed to take. But Wonder Woman had shown up and Smyth turned out to have a pet demon unleashed, so finally Floyd just shrugged and said "screw it" and joined his teammates again. Once it all shook out, Floyd took some time specifically to re-enact the scenario Smyth had put him in earlier - this time with Smyth himself, bloodied and beaten by Ragdoll, crawling desperately towards the fence, only to have Floyd gun him down from behind.

During that mess, Floyd started to have some cognitive dissonance, feeling the urge to just murder everyone he saw, and he hated that feeling of not being in control. So he took a break from the team and sought out an old compatriot from the Suicide Squad days, Reverend Jim Craemer, who was once chaplain and advisor to the Squad. While hanging out in Gotham City, he gave Craemer a tour of his old haunts - including the home he lived in during his first marriage. He revealed that Sooz had committed suicide, wracked with guilt over the horrible death of their son. Floyd's grief was expressed in murder - specifically, killing every drugged-up loser who tried to squat in that abandoned house, declaring it off-limits to everyone. Another topic of conversation was Batman, who had recently been killed by Darkseid, by all reports, making things strange in Gotham. Batman had inspired his entire life as Deadshot, and once, Batman called him on the fact that every time they came into conflict, he tended to pull his shots around the Caped Crusader, and he couldn't explain why. Craemer helped him realize that, on some psychological level, Floyd equated Batman with his brother Eddie, and the coincidental dates of Eddie's death and Batman's death didn't help. Eddie was the good son, Floyd was the bad son. Batman was the good hero, Floyd was the bad hero. They both inspired him, and if Batman died, he'd be a victim just like Eddie was, and in Floyd's mind, nobody deserves to live if those two died. Getting that sense of perspective on his own psychological damage helped Floyd to control those mass-homicidal urges, but he wasn't about to waste time with more actual therapy, despite Craemer's wishes.

After the Six picked up a stray magic-wielding teenage hanger-on in Black Alice, Amanda Waller made a strong, ruthless bid to get Deadshot back into her Secret Six. She disguised herself as a new Mockingbird to hire the Six to break a drug dealer out of Belle Reve prison, which doubled as the Squad's HQ. That was a ruse, however, in order to capture the Six there, while Waller herself took a platoon out to burn down the Six headquarters - a giant mansion known as the House of Secrets - knowing that Scandal Savage had been left there alone (thanks to an issue that had cropped up with Bane's controlling insistance on treating Scandal like his daughter - a weird relationship that Floyd always perceived as messed up). For his part, Floyd was greeted by Rick Flag, who made the offer, and Floyd responded with a bullet - and another for the Yasemin, the Squad's lackluster replacement for Deadshot.

However, as luck would have it, at that moment, a Black Lantern plague was sweeping the cosmos, transforming the dead into the undead to feast on the emotions of the living, and Belle Reve was a place with a long history of death - not to mention a secret lab where they dissect metahuman corpses. The Six and the Squad had to put aside their fight and join forces to deal with this new cosmically powerful threat - which included attacks from the Fiddler and Yasemin, Deadshot's victims reanimated from the dead. Waller, having grown more ruthless in recent years, had the final method of eliminating the threat through the use of a captured Manhunter robot (it's Green Lantern stuff and not important), but once that was out of the way, the bad blood returned instantly. Waller threatened to detonate the explosive chips she had implanted in Floyd and Bane's skulls when last they worked with the Squad (that's just how she rolls), but Bane made a point of choosing death over her control. Lawton's response was simply to shoot Waller in the chest. He placed his shot so she'd live, but it would be too close to her heart to remove - just as a final warning. If Waller or any member of the Squad approached them again, he'd shoot them in the head. However, Waller came out of it feeling like she got what she wanted - evening the score with Floyd made him a bit more likely to hire on with her at some point in the future, plus, she could continue to control the Six since they hadn't figured out that she was their new Mockingbird.


Their next mission went well enough - as well as it goes for the Six, with their shameful discipline and all - as they infiltrated a cult and brought back news of the death of their client's son. However, when they went to collect the check, they were doublecrossed. Catman's son with Cheshire had been abducted, and he was secretly promised one year of happy life for the boy for every member of the Six he killed. But Blake refused to play their game and told them to go ahead and kill his son, calling the bastards on their bluff, vowing to hunt them down and murder them in the most gruesome ways possible. But he didn't tell the Six what had happened, and immediately quit the team - which divided even further when Floyd and Scandal insisted on going after Blake to try and stop him from going on an apeshit murder spree. Blake was what passed for Floyd's best friend, and Floyd's thinking was that Blake hadn't fully crossed the line and become like them yet. "He ain't been to that place you can't come back from." Maybe they could still keep him from doing that. Or maybe he just wanted a big thing of tortellini. Ragdoll and Black Alice accompanied them, leaving Bane and Jeanette to keep up the business of the Six with temporary replacement mercs - including King Shark, who is a talking shark with arms and legs.

They never caught up to Blake, though - just his handiwork, which proved Floyd was wrong in thinking they could save him from the depths of ugly amorality. Instead, after Black Alice got rattled and threw a tantrum and picked a fight with Scandal Savage and revealed that the young mage thinks she accidentally gave her father cancer while trying to heal him, they decided to head back home and let Blake do what he had to do - which was kill everyone involved, after learning his son had been secretly adopted by a happy, normal couple, thus sparing him a life under Cheshire's motherhood and threats from other lowlifes trying to score cheap revenge. Floyd instead took it upon himself to find Alice's father's oncologist and threaten him into calling the girl and absolving her of guilt, even though the truth of the matter is that she likely was the culprit. A good deed done with bad means. Something that had become somewhat old hat to Floyd these days.

Scandal, Alice and Ragdoll had tracked Blake to a zoo, having gone somewhat feral and looking to commit suicide by lion. However, a woman named Tremor arrived with Floyd and informed them all that the five of them were being tasked by Mockingbird to go up against the replacement Six that Bane and Jeannette had put together. Bane's team had been hired by a government operative named Spy Smasher to go invade and conquer the secluded, otherdimensional primitive land of warriors and beasts called Skartaris. The fact that Tremor was offering to expunge their criminal records allowed Floyd to figure out just who Mockingbird really was, but put it on the back burner while they had to fight Bane's team - which included Lady Vic, who had once threatened Floyd's family while on Dr. Psycho's payroll, a score he aimed to settle even though he admitted "a job is a job and I'd have done the exact same thing." In the confusion of the fight, they still wound up going their separate ways once they learned Bane was set to lead the tribes he'd conquered against the ruler of their land, a man named Machiste - and Floyd's five left to ally with the king in order to put down the revolution. Of course, Machiste turned into a giant demon halfway through and - let's just say it was a big stupid bloody mess. In the midst of it, Floyd groused about having to play Captain Marvel while protecting a powerless Black Alice, who thought of Lawton briefly as a guardian spirit. Once it was done, Bane would not allow Floyd to kill Lady Vic while she was technically on his team, so Floyd compromised and just blasted her kneecap out.

Once they'd all returned home, both groups of Sixes received full pardons from Waller and the government, and the Wall then offered the Six work on a consensual basis, rather than trying to force them to be her lapdogs as she did previously. Oddly enough, however, their next job would be for the original Mockingbird - Lex Luthor, who claimed the Six as a creation of his own, despite Scandal's objections. They were hired as protection, but soon found that their real use was as leverage as Luthor tried to manipulate his way around Vandal Savage by using Scandal against her and threatening to kill her. That encouraged the Six to quit his employ once again and leave Luthor with a sock to the jaw. Once again, their attempts to get paid were foiled.

Their next attempt didn't go so well either, when they were hired by a new-money young-adult billionaire crimelord to go beat up the Doom Patrol again, just because the kid wanted a secret volcano island base they were on. This time, the Doom Patrol was ready for them and pretty much handed them their asses - until the volcano erupted and once again, an impromptu truce was called to deal with the situation - and their brat boss ran out on them the minute things started to go sour. The Six at least got deported in a private jet rather than forced to swim home.

Getting beat up by the Doom Patrol would be preferable to what the Six (who were now technically Eight) would endure next: Hell Itself. Scandal had been dating Liana for a while, but suddenly had a nightmare about Knockout, and was spurred to finally cash in that "Get Out Of Hell Free" card to retrieve her from damnation. Only she found out that Ragdoll had stolen it from her, considering using it on his lost friend the Parademon. Scandal angrily fought Ragdoll for it, injuring him enough for him to try to invoke its power, sending him to Hell, even though he wasn't dead yet. The rest of the team decided to go in after him - save for Black Alice, who would only go so far as to show them the doorway to Hell (which happened to be a strip mall in Iowa). She let them go through, saying she'd never see any of them again. Thus, she left the team to their fates in the underworld.

When they arrived, they found out that in that short time he was there, Ragdoll had become a prince of Hell, serving under Lady Blaze, who had defeated Neron for control of the realm, and that he was actually set to be married to Knockout to solidify his position, and he had a team of demons ready to destroy the Six. Apparently, he was spared torment due to being a rare case of a person born without a soul. It was all a lot of interpersonal drama, but for Floyd's part, he got confirmation that he will indeed be going to hell when he dies, and his response was simply "Ha. Figures." There was also a moment where Jeannette was injured, and her "Least Romantic Man" showed some concern for her, prompting her to say "You're sweet. Who would have thought."

Ragdoll's betrayal wasn't complete, however. In fact, given his newfound position, and given the certain knowledge that the rest of the Six would suffer eternally for their sins when they died, Doll offered them a chance to stay in Hell with him as his court, avoiding their damnation if they were willing to administer it to others. The other four were split on the offer. Scandal and Bane wished to fight, Jeannette and King Shark voted to stay and rule. The tiebreaker came down to Deadshot, and his old insistance on not giving a damn came to the fore. "Who the hell cares either way?" he replied, before unceremoniously shooting Ragdoll in the head. Fighting against hordes of demons ensued, until Lady Blaze showed up to put them all in their own personal hells. Floyd's involved being chased by the zombies of all of his victims with absolutely no bullets to use against them. Despite these horrors they suffered, the Six refused to be broken. When Scandal challenged Lady Blaze to combat for all her friends lives, they stood behind her. Insisting that they will not be owned, and they will not be controlled. As Bane said "No one ever will. Do your worst, crone, but we won't suffer like cringing dogs. Look into the soul of Bane and know the truth. We will topple your kingdom if it takes an eternity. We will defeat Hell." The powerful speech inspired Ragdoll to remember that "this is what we did. We defended one another. I won't be your prince, Lady Blaze. I stand with my... my family." That is what the Six had become to each other. Enough so that Ragdoll gave Scandal the card, and they left with Knockout relatively unscathed - but with a warning that Scandal's OTHER girlfriend Liana was about to find her way to Hell, thanks to a deranged evangelical asshole that had abducted her.

Their first order of business upon returning back from Hell was to track down said asshole and kill the shit out of him to save Liana's life. After that, despite all the betrayals and occasional bad blood and murder attempts on each other, the aftermath of being in Hell made it seem somewhat okay to actually admit to each other that they liked each other. Scandal even said that she loved the three men of the Six (Ragdoll being a form of transgendered and King Shark being a Shark and all). She declared that there is no word for what they are, and they are responsible for each other, and even if they're hellbound, they deserve to be happy.

It's more than Floyd Lawton ever thought he'd deserve.




PERSONALITY:

Floyd is lactose intolerant. He believes there's no such thing as too many peppers in an omelet. He has an atrocious sense of fashion. And he doesn't care if you or anybody else lives or dies, including himself. He's a hard man to like. He's gruff, he smokes like a chimney, his sense of humor rarely shows and when it does it's generally bleak and mean, he's unrepentantly male and he doesn't relate well to women or emotions or normality, since he was raised with distant asshole parents in obscene wealth. He accidentally killed the only person he ever gave a damn about when he was a teenager, and he's had no use for emotion at all ever since. For the longest time, he maintaned a personal policy of never caring about anything, because caring is for idiots. He believes nothing he or anyone else does matters in the least, despite how much importance other people ascribe to things. Little to no respect for human life, and certainly no believe in the sanctity of it. He believes God doesn't give a shit about anybody, and Floyd doesn't care about God. He's just killing time and killing people until his ticket is punched, and he'll kill you without even blinking if you cross him. He doesn't WANT to die, he just doesn't care if he does. The only thing he'd like is for it to be a good death when it happens, but he doesn't even care about that much. He's as unsentimental as you can get without being a sociopath. His girlfriend, or as he calls her "the chick he's regularly puttin' it to," describes him as the least romantic man she's ever known.

However, just because he doesn't have any use for emotion doesn't mean he's devoid of them. He's cracked in the past because of how hard he works at repressing them, but recently, he's been a bit more inclined to allow himself to have a conscience. For a long time, he cared about nothing, then he swung the pendulum the other way when he learned he could still have a family, and he tried caring on for size, but it only put everybody in danger, so he broke the ties to keep them safe. He's not a particularly selfish man - he doesn't care enough about anything for that, and most all of his money goes towards supporting his daughter. With the Six, he's been learning the value of loyalty, even if it seems like a stupid concept to him on its surface. He's used the L-word once in his entire life, and that was mostly to make his girlfriend happy on the last good day he'd ever spend with his family.

You'd best not mistake that burgeoning conscience for becoming a superhero or some shit, though. As he told Green Arrow, "the minute I join one of your fruity do-gooder clubs, I'll put a bullet through my brain." Superheroes are sanctimonious assholes who either won't go far enough or go too far when they try and do shit like brainwashing people they've captured. He's still convinced he's gone to a dark place he'll never come back from, and he knows he's damned to hell once he dies - he actually KNOWS this for a fact, and he's seen the place. Still, knowing all that, Floyd Lawton is currently in about the healthiest mental state he's ever been since his brother was still alive. He'll die for his friends and ONLY his friends and he'll fight to defend them, but if they ever break his trust, he'll shoot them in the face, no questions asked. Same for you if you give him any reason to.

Floyd has found a good dynamic with the Secret Six. He's got the closest thing he's ever really had to a friend in Thomas Blake, aka Catman, as they share a decent camaraderie, but being who they are, there's always a chance of some kind of betrayal or another. But the longer they work together, the less likely that seems to become. Once upon a time, he might have given Scandal Savage a lot of grief for being a lesbian just to do it, but nowadays he refers to her as "Sis," having come to see her in a sibling light. He was weirded out at first by Bane deciding to play the role of stern father figure to Scandal, but she seems to have responded well to it, so he lets it go. Truth be told, he's kinda impressed with Bane's willpower and general ferocity, and he certainly knows not to piss him off - but he generally knows how to mess with him without crossing the line. Ragdoll still skeeves him out here and there, and although they'd had a level of mutual respect and he'll watch the twisted guy's back, 'Doll hasn't been the same since they got back from Hell (which at one point required Floyd shoot Doll in the head), so it remains to be seen if there will be any fallout from that.

Then there's Jeannette. Out of nowhere, a friend of Scandal's has become pretty much the perfect relationship for Floyd. She's crazy, for one - specifically about him, as she came onto him like gangbusters and he didn't really have to put any effort into courtship. Being sort of dead herself, she's attracted to the general aura of death that surrounds Floyd, having brought death to so many. She finds his completely unromantic and unsentimental nature appealing, although she also responds well to the rare moments where he does exhibit some indication that he cares about her well-being. She expects nothing from him but regular sex and the same loyalty he shows the rest of the Six.

Speaking of - that loyalty had never been stronger than it was at the point he was pulled from. The team had just returned from Hell, faced their ultimate destiny and came away with the knowledge that they all were going to go to Hell when they died, with no way to escape it. Yet, they refused to buckle under that knowledge, they fought for each other and their own way of life, which essentially amounts to treating each other like family, even if they refuse to ever use that word to describe it. They refused to be categorized, but they knew they were all meant to stick together against the world. Floyd is reluctant to admit things like this, but he'll be damned if he wasn't actually looking forward to living out the rest of his days in that state of mind.





POWER:
Deadshot has no actual superpowers in canon. He's just an unbelievably amazing marksman. Once, someone thought they were torturing him by giving him a gun with only one bullet and then attacking him with an army helicopter, but Floyd just took the shot when he had it, killing the pilot and forcing a crash, before grabbing the giant gatling gun from the wreckage and using it to murder the asshole that put him there.

He does, however, wear a costume with kevlar protection and a mask with a scope capable of infrared and heat-sensing to facilitate targeting, not to mention occasionally using a helmet to protect against retaliatory headshots. He has guns mounted on his wrists through a special rig he created himself so he can use his hands while also murdering people.

In C&C, he will have a mild magic ability to never run out of ammunition, because even when his guns are empty, his hands will magically be able to shoot real bullets when he makes a finger-gun gesture to do it. He will, however, still occasionally run out of cigarettes.



[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:

[Floyd Lawton scowls into the camera on his device for a moment, exhaling a plume of smoke through his nostrils as he makes sure it's working.]

All right, what's this happy horseshit? Seriously.

I show up here, wherever the hell this is, against my will, some robot lady starts narrating some sci-fi crap to me, saying they're gonna try to enlist me as a damn peacekeeper for some planet that isn't even mine. So I shoot it in the face or screen or whatever and they put me in a holding cell. What, I'm NOT supposed to shoot a robot that's kidnapped me in the face? Last time I got shuffled off to another fucking planet, it ended ugly for the pricks who did it to me.

Who do I gotta talk to to get the hell out of this joint and get a pack of smokes? I ain't about to pay prison prices for those things.

And don't tell me we're having another goddamn "crisis." Even if that's true, don't tell me THAT shit. I'm sick of hearing about it.


SAMPLE 2

Hey... people. Strangers and people I kinda know.

I've been in this City for weeks now, and it's starting to look like my traditional line of work isn't gonna cut it here, at least as far as keeping me in cigarettes and a bed with a roof over it goes. Since shooting people is the only thing I've ever been good at, my options are limited for "straight work."

First up, who's hiring?

Second up, for anyone else in my boat... how the hell did you ever manage to pull it off? Going legit, I mean. I tried it once, didn't take. [Of course, it's a bit easier to consider when there's a woman and a daughter involved, but he's not gonna mention his family - or families, for that matter - to you people ever.] I'm supposed to wear a blue shirt with a name tag and a fake badge and play rent-a-cop to make white people feel safer when they mill their doughy asses around the mall to buy capri pants? Or... or I'm supposed to hang around Home Depot and tell people how to build furniture while some combover jagoff in a different colored apron and a fancier name tag gives me shit about where and when I can take a smoke break?

Seriously, no offense to you people who get off on all this trivial, meaningless shit, but how the hell can you do that crap? How can you convince yourself to bother doing stupid pointless shit you hate? Say what you will about shooting people, but at least there's a bit of a charge when you splatter a guy's brains all over his upholstery.

Christ, I'd almost join a super-guy team over mopping up the puke in some dive bar after the shitty hair metal cover band's finished their third set. But then I'd have to eat a bullet on general principle.





SAMPLE 3:
[VIDEO]

[From the way Floyd Lawton's usually hard look is wavering at the moment, it's not hard to surmise that the man has been drinking. Probably a lot. Another clue is the fact that he's pointing an empty beer bottle at the comm unit like it's a gun, the fat end tucked into the sleeve of his shirt. Looks wrist-mounted that way.

After a moment, he pulls it away, and glares at the screen for a bit longer.]

Hey. People. Normal people. 'General public.' I've... got a question for you.

[Uh-oh. Sounds like he might be a bit more of a Chatty Cathy tonight than he ever is, too. Usually, he's all business, contempt and snark.]

Say you're a guy.

A guy with a lot of enemies.

The kinda enemies who pay other people money to come find you and try and kill you, no matter where you are.

Say you're also a guy who has a kid. 'Round five.

...

What's the...

How...

Do you stick around and try to raise the kid, even though you're generally a piece of shit, and just bein' near her makes it so that asshole mercs are 100 times more likely to snatch her out of her bedroom at night and put guns to her head on a regular basis, if not just outright slaughter her? The kinda freaks I'm talkin' about, they'd do it on her birthday, just to make it extra shitty.

Or do you get the fuck out of her life so she can HAVE one, while throwing most of the money you get her way to make sure the life she has doesn't involve pickin' food out of dumpsters or back alley handjobs?


Seriously.

What the hell is the right thing?

If there even IS a right thing, which there probably isn't. Right and wrong are both just bullshit we made up so we don't get killed going to the mailbox.

There's just what you do and what you don't do... and that don't even matter.

"Fuck you. Love, God."

[END FEED]







LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:



So this is how it goes, huh? Floyd Lawton thinks to himself as he walks down Cherry Street towards the Walbert's drug store nearest his hovel in the MAC.

Spend all that time with those idiots, literally go to hell with 'em and back, and you think you got somethin' worth hangin' on to. Somethin' that ain't gonna be taken away by assholes with money and grudges and mean streaks. For the first time, you can use the word 'friend' without laughin' it out of the language. Like maybe it might actually mean something besides 'enemy who hasn't tried to kill you yet.' You get all that goin', and then suddenly blam. Back on the streets on your own, without anybody.

Just like the old days.

Fine. Fuck it. Don't actually NEED anybody, anyway. Sure as hell don't deserve to have anybody watchin' my back. Not worth caring about.

The door makes its twerpy little 'ding' noise when he walks in, and he shares a quick look with the lady behind the counter before his eyes start roaming over the cigarette cases. Then, his face curls into a scowl.


Damn... all the smoke brands here are different. Goddammit, I'm gonna have to do another taste test to find out what the hell the equivalent of Marlboro Reds are.


"Gimme a carton of everything," he mumbles to the cashier, "and a glazed donut. To go."

The woman starts chuckling at him. Floyd's face, however doesn't brighten in the least. In fact, for a second, his vision is bathed in a blood red hue, and he imagines putting a bullet through her forehead and splattering her brains out on the glass behind her.

That vision is wiped by her explanation. "I'm sorry, that just sounded like that old David Lee Roth video. What was the name of it?"

"How the hell should I know, lady? Just get me my damn smokes."

It's been almost an hour since he's run out. Of course he's irritable.

Scrolling through the fruity little communicator thing while he waits, his eyes widen as he sees who else is here. The Wall. The fucking Wall is somehow here for some reason. Of all the goddamn people. He thinks back to that book he was reading about the Old West gunslinger Jonah Hex. Every time he tried to retire, some piece of shit with a chip on his shoulder would track him down and fuck up his life again. Deadshot was a lot like Hex, and Waller is like that piece of shit that keeps coming back, no matter how hard you flush.

Shit, I never wanted to work for Waller again, but even lodging a bullet next to her heart didn't stop the big bitch from trying to tug on that leash. Now, shit outta luck and shit outta Six, fuck me for saying it, but I might have to go back, hat in hand, and ask...

No. Hell with that. I don't HAVE to do anything. Six or no Six, I'm through being owned.


He slips the comm unit back in his pocket again, not wanting to deal with any more surprises like that. Next thing you know, it'll turn out Batman's here, too. Instead, his eyes wander, checking the mirrors in the corners of the interior just to make sure no jerk-off is skulking around and planning to attempt a hold-up. Then, he catches the Trojans on the shelf near the closed pharmacy window, and starts thinking about Jeannette.

Jeannette. That crazy death-fetish freak in the sack. That's another thing he'll miss, puttin' it to her on a regular basis. Of course, Blake liked to crack on him about it, since she's technically dead, so he's technically somethin' worse than Merkel, who prides himself on being all twisted but seems to have straightened out a bit since comin' back from Hell. Still not sure if his new mummified Michael Jackson look is more or less creepy than the fruity old-timey clown outfit.

Gah, dammit, I was thinking about sex. How'd I make that jump to Ragdoll? Christ.

Jeannette. Bent as she is, she seems to get him. Anyone else he's been with (without an agreed-upon price up front. that is), it's always been Floyd doing the bending, the hiding of thoughts, the behaving. Playing the role, no matter how minimal the effort he'd actually put in to the performance. With J, there's none of that. No delusions, no silly little dreams about some kind of stupid future. She's into him regardless.

Another thing he'll miss.

"Here are your cigarettes, sir" the unfortunately un-shot broad in the ugly company vest says, this time a bit more quietly, given his earlier tone. "And your pastry is in the bag. Napkins, too."

Floyd gets that little flash of red again, before he closes his eyes and rubs them with his thumb and forefinger.

"You didn't spit on it or nothin''cause I snapped at you, did you?"<br /