#i have a psych eval 4 hours from now

[camieoux]

the ways in which you talk to me (solas, var lath vir suledin) have me wishing i were gone (i wish it could, vhenan)

song: mr loverman

[snackhobi]

pairing: jungkook x reader / word count: 7.4k / genre: pacific rim au with brief smut (NSFW, 18+)

summary: there are no secrets in the drift. if jungkook were to see the mess inside your head and heart, laid utterly bare, he’d turn away from you.

warnings: sexually explicit content (briefly), unprotected sex (please be safe when you have sex) / reference to injuries but nothing graphic, giant robots powered by love punching big alien monsters

a/n: this is a birthday gift for the amazing @yeojaa​. happy birthday, erin. this is completely self serving and is stuffed full with inside references that I hope you’ll enjoy. I wrote this in two days and it kicked my ass because I did so much reading and researching that turned out to not even come up in the story 👁👄👁 you know when I said I was studying? I lied. I was writing HAHAHAH ily I hope you like it hhhh (this is unbeta’ed so please forgive any mistakes it’s 1:30am as I’m scheduling this) (also summaries are so hard, I’m sorry)

Jeon Jungkook really is the perfect posterboy for a Jaeger pilot.

Broad across the shoulders and trim at the waist, all sharp punches and hard muscle, resilient and tough, with a face that’s the perfect balance of angles and softness; the cut of his jaw easing up and into his pretty mouth, the line of his brows subdued by his warm eyes—he’s a Goddamn vision, raw masculinity overlaid on rich veins of boyishness, glittering stratum that sparkle and shine even under the harsh lights of the Shatterdome. 

He pouts when he thinks and his hair hangs a little in his big, big eyes and he has dimples that appear when he grins, teeth poking out onto his pretty pink lips, like someone took a rabbit and turned it into a man and packed on pounds of muscle alongside. Undeniably powerful and strong, but youthful and sweet, too.

Alongside Kim Taehyung—arresting and beautiful and somehow affable and approachable, all at the same time—they’re exactly what South Korea needs right now, propelling the country’s new look for their renewed assault against the kaiju. They’re the lucky new Rangers who’ve claimed ownership of the only Mark-5 that their homeland has produced, Bulletproof Striker, a fucking gorgeous Jaeger bristling with the latest and greatest technology that the world has produced.

But that doesn’t mean they’re the best that South Korea has to offer.

Cypher Zero is smaller, lighter, older, but she’s fierce. Just like her pilots. You and Yoongi might not be the burning beacons of hope that Jungkook and Taehyung are, polished and buffed to a squeaky shine, but you don’t need to be. You’re vicious and victorious and show no signs of stopping. The kaiju kills painted on your Mark-4’s shoulder are evidence enough of that, notches for each monster taken down, spray painted in one tiny corner of the huge swathe of burnished metal plating, the red edges of her midnight skin.

Bulletproof Striker is almost untouched, deployed just once since her recent launch, flawless exterior so at odds with Cypher Zero’s battered facade. Cypher’s beautiful, of course, but bears the history of your skirmishes, inside and out: scuffed paintwork, dented metal, rust dripping down from the ladder rungs dotted across her, melting into the obsidian of her hull. 

Jungkook and Taehyung move in a way that’s practiced, disciplined motions of combat that their Jaeger echoes in turn. Her mechanical movements reflect those of the men inside her head, skilled and superb. Stunning. But you and Yoongi? You fight dirty, violent and rough; messy bar room brawls; shattered glass and clawing hands in beer soaked backrooms, tinged sulphur yellow under dirty lightbulbs; two kids who fought against a world that was against them. 

(Two damaged people coming together in the Drift to make something even stronger than the sum of your parts.)

(Two damaged people who survived the rough hands of the Jaeger Academy, trying to take them, push them, shape them, break them.)

(Life isn’t kind. You’d learned that young, surrounded in the splintered remnants of your childhood home, the facade of family and happiness already gone, long long long ago, leaving you aching and lonely and cold. The prospect of fighting thousands of tons of alien hatred, lifting out of the depths of the uncaring, dark sea? At least you can see the kaiju coming. Broken households and loneliness? A little harder to lay your hands on.)

(But out of everything you lost, you’d gained one thing—Min Yoongi, another quiet, damaged thing, but with the biggest depths of warmth and love underneath that hard surface; your best friend, your brother-in-arms, growing alongside you, with you. Damaged kids turned bitter teenagers turned razor-edged adults, outcasts in solitude, but together. Not alone.)

(The deeper the bond, the better you fight. Falling into the Drift with Yoongi had been easy, years of tangled connection bleeding into the images that flashed across your brain. The same memories from different angles, overlaid with different emotions, undercurrents eddying under the surface that caught both of you and swept you up in its flow; the same mind, bridged by hundreds of tons of metal and technology and firepower underneath you, linked together in the silence of the Drift.)

There’s reverence, in the way these two new pilots look at you both, reverence and awe and respect alike: older Rangers, more experienced, history written across the worn edges of your Drivesuits, the paint flaking away from your battle armour, scuffs and scrapes on the once unblemished veneer; knowledge etched into the feline slant of Yoongi’s eyes, the turn of your shoulders and hips. 

You know Jungkook’s track record. You know of the endless months of assessment and sparring and psych evals and Drift tests and simulation drops that every successful Ranger has to go through, and Jungkook had trumped them all, stood atop them like a conqueror surveying his hard-won lands—gifted, talented, some even said God-touched. And yet for all this indomitable talent and skill, there’s still humility at his core, a willingness to defer with respect.

That deference is obvious whenever he sees you. Jungkook’s dark eyes will touch your own, for a moment, dark and deep and bright—and then his gaze will skitter away, cockiness and bravado dissolving into something submissive, yielding. (Shy.) You’ve watched him orbit you, the younger ranger caught in your gravity, always nearby—the Shatterdome is only so big, for its magnitude and sprawling corridors—but never broaching that final gap, that little step, into Cypher Zero’s space, Yoongi’s space, your space. Keeping himself at arm’s length.

South Korea’s golden boy, less afraid of the Kaiju than he is of his sunbaenim.

Jungkook and Taehyung are both beautiful. But you and Yoongi are less so, unapproachable in ways that the younger pilots aren’t, private and prickly, like grasping a patch of stinging nettles with bare hands, stinging and burning.

As if Jungkook isn’t terrifying and gorgeous in his own ways. As if he doesn’t shine brighter than the sun himself. Taehyung moves through the world with a thoughtless, charismatic ease that Jungkook doesn’t share—but he’s still magnetic, bold and brilliant, monstrously skilled at everything he puts his mind to, training again and again and again to get it right, get it right, get it right. 

To get it perfect. 

But there’s no level of perfectionism that can surmount the twisted, unpredictable nature of the kaiju belched forth from the breach. No matter how good you are, how strong or fast, how smart or seasoned, sometimes you still get caught in that hurricane, even in a Jaeger.

It doesn’t matter how many engines are packed into each muscle strand. It doesn’t matter how fast the pistons and levers and gears shift and move. It doesn’t matter that the pilots in her cockpit are impeccable and incredible. Under the cloak of deepest night and pouring rain, blanketed in darkness and water from the heavens above and the sea below, movement is impossible to track—and when Steelbrute rises from the waves, no one sees the kaiju coming.

Bulletproof Striker takes the hit. Jungkook and Taehyung fight back but they’re blindsided and overwhelmed, and their Jaeger falls to her knees in the churn of the Pacific Ocean, salt water crashing over her in choppy waves as Steelbrute’s merciless maw gapes wide open.

Cypher Zero is 250ft tall and weighs 1410 tons. You and Yoongi are tiny specks of organic matter in a fearsome behemoth of titanium and tungsten and graphene and circuitry, commanders of a weapon that’s the same size as a skyscraper—and yet you wouldn’t think that for how fast you move. Zero hesitation. No verbal communication. Cypher’s legs cut through endless waves and gain momentum with each crashing step that slams into the seafloor before you leap forward in a flurry of motion and Drift powered fury. 

Your motions in the Conn-Pod are ragged and incensed, your arms and legs moving in sync with Yoongi, with Cypher Zero, a snarl ripping out of your co-pilot’s usually quiet mouth as the kaiju lurches underneath you. The world narrows down to this: throwing yourself into the fray, jagged knuckles edged with plasma pummelled into Steelbrute’s skin in a scuffle that’s vicious, aggressive, until Bulletproof Striker regains her footing.

The sun is rising, grey and cold on the horizon when Steelbrute finally sinks into the sea, toxic blood flooding the water with neon blue. When you step out of the cockpit, Yoongi’s fringe is matted with sweat, and you can feel all the places the circuitry suit sticks to your skin—piloting a Jaeger is mentally and physically exhausting, every muscle and organ and bone working overtime for endless hours as you fight tooth and nail. Without the helmets in the way, there’s nothing stopping you bumping your foreheads together, heedless of the sweat slicked there; Yoongi’s hand rests at the back of your head, a familiar cradle.

“All good,” you say. Yoongi lets out a quiet bark of a laugh, rough and exhausted.

“I want a nap,” he says, like he always does, even if you’re a long way away from that, still fully suited and due to speak to the Marshalls. There are so, so many things separating you from the bliss of sleep.

One thing that’s not part of the normal routine, though, is the other pilots catching you, demanding your recognition, respectful (Taehyung) but insistent (Jungkook). You know that Yoongi doesn’t like attention or hero-worship, but there’s nothing except gratitude, here, bent heads and words of thanks. You’d saved their lives, after all. Saved their Jaeger from being torn apart, pain screaming through their own bodies of flesh and bone, connected to their metal monster. Of course they’re grateful.

You dismiss it with a hard cut of your hand.

“It’s nothing,” you say. 

You’re speaking the words you know are in Yoongi’s head—years of friendship and shared Drifts leaving his thought processes wide open to you—although you know you’re sharper than he is, harsher than he is, even, for all that he looks like the cold one from the outside. Long lashes and silken hair don’t translate to something soft and feminine and pretty, and you’re all ragged edges and rough parts, bleeding into the delivery of your words. Yoongi rounds the words in his mouth and places them into the world with a rumble of quiet strength that belies his past, but you? Your tongue is cutting and terse and drips with distrust, even when you don’t mean it to, staring at these two boys, Jungkook’s eyes so brown and large when he stares back at you.

The truth is that you care about humanity, of course. You care about humanity and you care about the millions of people in the cities that line the coasts and further inland, and you care about your fellow pilots, skilled but soft-hearted as they are. You’re stronger. You have to be. That’s what Yoongi is, that’s what you are: fighters. You fight dirty because you fight to win, not to protect yourselves. You’ll fight and you’ll die for this, for them, even if there’s no friendship there. Not yet. You’re still too distant, for all that you’d thrown yourself in the line of fire to rip the kaiju from the younger Rangers. 

And when Jungkook levels a look at you, there’s a flicker of something. A spark. All the glittering of his warm eyes comes together like the cascading sparks of molten fire that fall when metal is cut through— his eyes score through you, down down down, right to your core, underneath all the armour you’ve laid about yourself throughout your life. Your heart stutters. You’ve been watching Jeon Jungkook, and he’s all cocky Ranger bravado, or innocent brown eyes and shy, curving smiles, and yet. 

And yet. You know he sees this soft part of you, somehow. Past the thorns and sharp leaves, past the hard husk, into the rich, bursting sweetness inside, oozing red gems of pomegranate that yield so easily to the fingers and mouth.

(He’s temerarious and modest and wickedly perceptive too, it seems.)

“That was our kill,” he says suddenly. Taehyung—the voice piece of the two, the one who’s been smiling and speaking, easy and slow—goes still at his side.

“What?” Yoongi’s eyes pierce through him, but Jungkook keeps his focus on you.

“Steelbrute. Our kill. It was a hit from our rockets that took him out,” Jungkook says, eyes still glinting with that sparkling shine. Slicing through you with an explosion of light. “Not your blades.”

Silence steals over you, for a breath. It’s never truly silent in the Shatterdome, an iron fortress that never sleeps, but for a second, there’s quiet. It wraps around you. Tight. Almost deafening.

But then you break that silence.

You laugh. 

You laugh at the cheeky grin that pulls at Jungkook’s lips, the boyish lift to his face.  You laugh at his shamelessness, the sudden 180 from his earlier fear. You laugh at the way he’s diluted this astonishing, formidable thing—humanity coming together to destroy alien predators that threaten the planet—into a competition.

“You’re a menace, Jeon Jungkook,” you say.

Stinging nettles you might be, but if you’re grabbed hard and fast by confident hands, you don’t wound. Jeon Jungkook defers to respect, avoids confrontation, bows his head and quiets his mouth, but he knows, now, that he can do this. That he can push you like this, and you’ll let him, sway against it, let yourself be pushed.

Yoongi slides you a glance out the corner of his eyes, a light touch, a tacit agreement to an unspoken question.

“You can have it. Steelbrute’s yours.” There’s the smallest curl to your lips as you speak for you both. There’s something weirdly easy and familiar to this, to this interaction, even if you’ve barely exchanged words before now, giving this triumph to the other pilots hand over fist.

(Giving it to Jungkook on a platter.)

You can see the flare of triumph in Jungkook’s eyes. You know it’s not for the notch of their first kill, one they can add to their Jaeger. It’s for something far harder to achieve, something far more ephemeral: digging down and past your cool veneer and lifting out a smile, spreading it across your lips like warm butter, liquid gold.

And he keeps making you smile. 

Jeon Jungkook, you find, is a force of nature, relentless, an ocean. Sometimes he’s soft, loving waves of glittering blue that crash on pearly white beaches, playful and bright. Sometimes, he’s intense, the crashing waves of a storm tossed sea, powerful and unstoppable. Always, he’s striking, even when he’s not trying—even more so because of it, moving without thought or uncertainty, a silence settling over your thoughts whenever you see him like this. See him in this raw state, so unafraid where before he’d curbed his tongue and bent his head in front of you. Now, he’s just himself, without filter.

Taehyung is there too, of course. Both pilots join your small, fiercely private circle, not just a path from you to Yoongi any more. They become intertwining lines, a pattern that’s drawn between the four of you, pilots, friends. And you learn, that for all that you’d thought that Taehyung was the dominant one outside of their Jaeger, social and extroverted and unabashed, Jungkook isn’t quiet. Not when he’s comfortable.

(Not, now, when he’s with you.)

He’s a myriad of things, endlessly deep, so different from you, from Yoongi, but—the truth of it settles inside you, your joints, the marrow of your bones, the blood that pulses forth from your heart each time it beats in your chest, liquid life running through you. 

Drift compatibility.

Not that it matters. You already have a partner. You’re never going to open yourself up to anyone that isn’t Yoongi, who’s seen every part of you already. There’d been no fear about letting Yoongi see inside your brain, your heart, the raw, bleeding parts of you—because he’d already known them. Just like you’d known his. Yoongi stands to your right, inside the Conn-Pod and out, a driving force, even in his silence. 

But Jungkook is softer, sweeter, for all his raw power and skill, respect engraved into his every motion, even when he’s teasing and making you laugh. Even when he ignores the social guidelines that he should follow, does follow for others, everyone except you. 

And you don’t mind. You don’t bite out insults at him when he slides into the quiet hollow you’ve scraped out, a small space with just enough room for the people you keep in your heart. You’re still barbed and spiked, warding away unwanted attention, but for Jungkook, the claws retract. 

You’re still you, of course. Jungkook calls you mean, says that you bully him, even as he’s flopped across your bunk, eating your rations, shovelling coveted popcorn into his mouth. He might pout and sigh and cry oppression, but you’re soft on him and he knows it. That quiet hollow in your heart is a little larger, now, a little louder. Jungkook is brazen in his claim of this space, spreading each of his limbs wide as he fits himself into every part of it. He doesn’t know every piece of your past, and you don’t plan to let him see all the messy parts bundled in your chest, but. But he’s still there.

And you let him stay. You make a home for him inside you and let him take the key. He might tilt his head and goad you, might pretend there’s a genuine challenge in the set of his jaw, but you know it’s all tempered with admiration, veneration. Friendship.

(And where he clearly respects you, you admire him in turn. You’re reminded of your differences every second he moves and breathes and just exists in front of you, but you don’t have to be similar to someone to realise just how incredible they are.)

(But though you’re different, there are similarities. You’re not a mirrored image, a reflection, like you are with Yoongi. Instead, you’re a line drawn between two separate places, an isohel, sun lighting up your world for the same sweep of the clock even for how far apart you are. Sharing that same, tenuous thing, for all your contrasting parts.)

(This thing that’s growing, held in your hands. This soft, gentle thing, shimmering, frail, unfurling slowly but undeniably. Tinged with happiness, disbelief. Disbelief that you’ve found this, that you can see Jungkook across the echoing cavern of the Shatterdome’s main hall, so far in the distance, barely visible at the foot of his Jaeger—and something will settle in your chest. Featherlight, iridescent. Something comforting.)

When you fight the kaiju, now, it’s with a deeper reserve of desperation. Taehyung and Jungkook aren’t just fellow pilots, dongsaeng that you’re obliged to look after: they’re your friends, something more than that too, part of the rare handful of people in the world who understand, this overwhelming pressure to fight and win and protect the things you love. The people you love. They understand what it’s like to step into someone else’s head, to be connected to that person on a level that’s unfathomable, anchored in a depth of love that’s endless. You’re their aegis, now, their shield.

(Jungkook’s shield.)

Maybe that’s what’s to blame. Maybe that’s why you’re so sloppy, this time. Maybe that’s why you throw yourselves in the way of the blow that was meant for Bulletproof Striker. Maybe that’s why Ojousan shreds Cypher Zero’s chest apart, her head, why Yoongi is almost ripped from you, his fear and pain screaming through your neural connection. You feel everything he feels and more beside, your heart hammering in your throat as you scream, Jaeger’s arm swinging up and around in tandem with your own motions as you try to rip the kaiju away, anything to protect Yoongi, so scared of losing him, always always always, scared of being left alone.

But you’re not alone. 

Bulletproof Striker lifts up like an avenging angel. Her horns roar a challenge, an echoing battle cry as the younger pilots move in. Heavier and stronger, keeping her balance even in the turbulence of a fight, she takes the hits, gives back her own, sends the kaiju down into the crashing waves, waits for it to rise. But the monster is crafty and quick and even as you’re lifting your left arm—Yoongi’s hurt, so hurt, you know this, feel this, but he moves with you to ready the plasma cannon buried in the mechanics of your Jaeger’s hand, even if he’s keening with pain—you watch as the other pilots, too, fall victim to the clawed tail of the kaiju, screeching through layers of alloys and across their Conn-Pod.

Terror strikes through every part of you and morphs into hate. You hate the kaiju, hate your own weakness, hate the pain that’s been saved from being written into your own body while Yoongi screams and sobs even though he still fights. Your motions are anguished and desperate as you battle to overcome this beast that’s almost taken away everything that matters to you—and Cypher Zero, Yoongi, as damaged and hurt as they are, come through. (Like they always do, for you, always.)

And somehow, despite everything, for all the self-hatred and pain and fear, you pull through. You pull through. Damaged and hurt but alive.

Barely.

Barely alive. 

(One hand gives, the other takes away.)

It takes hours for them to pick Yoongi’s Drivesuit from his body, crumpled around him from Ojousan’s claws, cutting into the soft flesh of his body, body ruined further by the fighting he’d been forced into despite his injuries; so many of Taehyung’s bones are shattered, and when you finally see him awake and with his eyes open, there are burst blood vessels that cast red across the usually warm expression, his friendly eyes.

You should be grateful that they’re alive. You should be on your hands and knees, weeping, benedictions dripping from your graceless mouth as you thank whatever merciless God above decided to turn their gaze on you and grant you this leniency. So many pilots have died and will continue to die, you know this, but somehow your partners are still alive.

And you are grateful. You are. But there’s bitterness on your tongue, twisted across your palate, sour and acrid and filling you with its taste. You’d been foolish and reckless and you’d almost lost the things you cared about most, even if you’d destroyed the kaiju, torn it apart and left its fluorescent indigo blood to corrode the ocean. 

That’s what’s important, isn’t it. Saving humanity. One person, two people, four people—you’re the tiniest cogs in a whirring engine of billions. Unimportant. Just a spinning part that keeps the machine going.

When you’re not with Yoongi or Taehyung, an unmoving presence from their hospital beds, a hovering gargoyle carved from stone, you’re with Jungkook. Always, always, always. Somehow you’d both escaped without the injuries inflicted on your partners—you’d manage to break your little finger, and Jungkook had a black eye and a twisted ankle, and the both of you had mottles of bruises cast across your skin, pulled muscles, an ache carved into your bones, but that was it. That was it. It was almost laughable, how unscathed you are.

You hate it.

(It should have been you.)

Your legs—unbroken, unharmed—hang over steel scaffolding, motionless as you watch the tiny specks of people scuttling across the catwalks that criss-cross Cypher Zero’s body. You can see under her skin, damage peeling back all the layers of metal that should be holding her together. Endless showers of sparks fall and scatter as she’s stitched back together. Your beautiful girl is so damaged, so disfigured.

(You’d caught Yoongi as he’d fallen from the harness, listened to the horrible noises that had torn out of his lips as he’d dripped blood and pain over your shaking hands.)

The bland food you’d scraped off your dinner tray settles fitfully in your stomach, still one second, nausea bubbling up your throat the next. 

It’s one of the rare times you’ve been alone, since… since everything. You’ve been taking comfort in Jungkook’s presence, unwavering and understated, needing someone there when staring at Yoongi’s battered face proved too much. Even with his own upheaval Jungkook’s been there, at your side, always close. Eyes locked on you and taking everything in, the tired set to your face, the expression that tugs down your lips, and still, he stays.

But he’d disappeared after you’d eaten, a peculiar look on his face—you know him well enough now to recognise that look, that it means he’s got something in his head, some plan he means to unfold. It’s the first time you’ve seen it since Taehyung had been pulled out of the Conn-Pod. It’s some semblance of normality, an expression of something other than pale-faced dread and bone-shivering guilt. 

(You feel it too, that survivor’s guilt. Taehyung and Yoongi will recover but it’ll take time and so much suffering and you wish you could take that from them, heft that burden onto your own shoulders.)

(You know Jungkook feels the same.)

(You see it written in the tense lines of his body. Hear it unspoken in the words he shares with you. The bruises on his skin melt from red to purple to blue to yellow, but even if his body heals, his brain and heart bear the scars of helplessness.)

Jungkook reappears, finds you at the heavy steel door that leads into your room, rusted and worn but silent as it swings open in front of you. His eyes are wide and he’s breathless, like he’s been running, chest heaving as he sucks in air through his parted lips, a flash of teeth and tongue as he smiles.

Despite everything, you smile back. Helpless for that smile, always, happier now for the sight of it, for how little you’ve seen it. You want to see that smile every day. You don’t want him to worry for anything. You want him to feel the same way you do, when you see him: that quiet, maybe selfish thought that things are okay. 

Maybe he does. (His eyes are so warm.) He presses something into your hands, something soft and round like a well-practised secret, and then he’s gone. You can tell by the gait of his stride that he’s going back to Taehyung, giving you a moment of lonely reprieve to wash the grime and dirt off your useless body before you follow in his footsteps, stationed at Yoongi’s side.

The door swings shut behind you.

You lift your hand.

It’s an orange.

It’s a small, overripe thing, hard nub of the stem falling away from the skin with only the lightest brush of your fingers. You stare at the fruit, its brightness cutting through the muted sepia tones of your surroundings, a point of colour in an otherwise dull room.

You haven’t seen an orange in months. Rationing is tough on everyone, even Jaeger pilots. You’d mentioned in passing, so long ago, an old habit of yours. Before something else floated above it, more important and interesting, you’d made a fleeting statement that had flitted across the surface of the conversation: you liked eating oranges in the shower. Liked that nice, cool citrus sweetness in your mouth while the rest of your body was caught in the fall of warm water.

It’s such a small, tiny thing. Just the briefest lament—there are more important things than the fact you can’t have shower oranges any more, after all—and you’d forgotten you’d even mentioned it.

But Jungkook hadn’t.

It’s almost syrupy sweet, this orange. You savour each slice, pressing them between your teeth, feeling the rush of juice burst forth through the pith and skin, and it’s so good you could cry. 

You do cry.

Your mouth is full of orange and your eyes are full of tears and your head is full of—of—something, something so all encompassing that it overwhelms you, water cascading down the aching planes of your body as you crumple inwards. Jungkook had protected you with the overwhelming power of Bulletproof Striker, and he’s protecting you now, soft and considerate and kind, vulnerable and human. Stripped of tons of metal and technology, Jungkook wears his beating heart on his sleeve and is none the weaker for it. 

This seemingly small thing means so much, so so so much. You understand him, and he understands you too, knows that this gesture is indicative of support and care and nurturing, a tiny fragment of peace he can offer you in the tumult of everything out of your control. 

A tiny fragment of peace that’s part of a greater whole, all the things that Jungkook gives to you.

When the Marshalls gather you and tell you the plan going forwards, you’re unsurprised. 

It makes sense, of course. Four pilots down to two still leaves a pair, and Bulletproof Striker is nearly functional even if Cypher Zero will stay out of commission while she’s rebuilt. Simple maths. One Jaeger, two pilots. You and Jungkook.

You’re scared.

You know you’re Drift compatible. Every fight in the Kwoon Combat Room is evidence enough of that. A dialogue, each challenge is meant to be a dialogue to show physical compatibility, and it is: there’s perfect sync in how you each move to strike, even if your motions are so different, muscles burning and breaths coming faster each time you attack, parry, strike, block. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s a conversation, one that you and Jungkook fall into without thought.

And he would be the perfect partner. That much isn’t in doubt. Loyal and open and strong, honourable and brave and kind—and you know him, have grown to learn so much about this golden boy, this bright, brilliant boy. He’s fucking indomitable and anyone would be lucky to find themselves in the same Jaeger as Jeon Jungkook.

But there are no secrets in the Drift. 

To let someone in, you have to trust them. And you do, you do trust Jungkook, probably far more than makes sense, some unspoken thing between you burning like a wildfire. But while you trust him, confident in his strength and his heart, you trust yourself less.

You’ll be flayed open, naked and defenceless. He’ll see right to the core of you, every dirty corner of your crumpled soul, every shameful part of your foundations, uneven brickwork layered into your shaky temperament; strong one second, weak the next. He’ll see that you’re hard inside, too, biting and acidic right down to your shrivelled heart. This nascent thing that you’ve been building with Jungkook, been keeping safe in the cradle of your careful hands, will sputter out and die.

“Baby.”

Yoongi’s voice is comforting, a familiar rumble that rolls through your ears as you rest your head in his lap.

“And I mean that you’re literally being a baby,” he continues, and you curl your lip back from your teeth in a small snarl, menacing.

Yoongi just continues to thread his hands through your hair.

You’ve Drifted with Yoongi often and long enough to know how every thread of thought unspools in that skull of his. You know he has every confidence in the unshakeable pillar of your soul. He’s a brother to you, a connection that thrums deep in your veins even without the intimacy of the Drift, and the love you hold for him is undying and true.

But whatever you have with Jungkook is so timorous in the face of that.

“It’s different.” Yoongi looks down at the twist of your face. You know his thoughts and he knows yours too, your face and heart an open book to him. “But different isn’t bad.”

You keep your mouth shut, keep the words swallowed down in your throat, shoved down to the pit of your stomach. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

“Baby,” he says again, softer, lower. This time, you know it’s an endearment. 

At the end of the day, no matter what fear grips cold and endless at your insides, you’ll do it. You’ll Drift with Jungkook. You’ll throw everything you have into the pyre, watch it burn and turn to ash, if it means you can keep everyone safe. To save Yoongi, Taehyung, Jungkook—you’ll open yourself up to the mortifying ordeal of opening up, laying yourself bare. You have to.

It’s chaotic, anyway. The day that your practice Drift is scheduled is the day the next kaiju rises out of the breach, that dreaded rift between our world and theirs, because why would you be allowed to breathe, even for a second?

It’s a scramble into the cockpit. There’s no time for trial runs or test Drifts. You fly or you fall. Everyone’s in a state of orderly upheaval as you’re suited up and left to stride forwards into a Conn-Pod that isn’t yours, in a Jaeger that isn’t yours.

(Left to stride forwards to stand next to someone who isn’t yours.)

Your Drivesuit is grey. Jungkook’s is white. There’s a subtle hologramatic sheen laid across the planes of his armour, leaving him a multicoloured vision that shines out under the flicker of the cockpit’s endless tiny buttons and lights. Your own suit is a matte, gunmetal with accents of burning scarlet, far more battered and worn. Dark and wild in the face of Jungkook’s radiance. He’s the perfect answer to the kaiju invasion. You, though, feel like an interloper in a space that wasn’t designed for you, this circle room that’s been home to Jungkook and his true, real partner. 

But he’s looking at you like there’s no one else he’d rather have by his side. 

He doesn’t care that everything about this moment just cements how he’s too good for you in every conceivable way, elevated above you. Doesn’t care that you’re just a temporary stop gap. There’s trepidation, of course, skittering nerves that dance across his face for this first Drift, surrounded by all the commotion that’s swallowing the world up outside the cockpit. But there’s also that fire in his eyes, one you’ve learned to expect: Jungkook is a wildfire and will surmount any obstacle in a blaze of white-hot light.

And he wants you along for the ride.

(Burns bright for it.)

“You ready?” He asks, and the tiny tremor in his words takes you off guard even as it soothes a balm over the rash of apprehension that prickles across your skin.

(Because he’s nervous, too.)

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” you answer, truly.

His eyes crinkle into a smile, crescents of happiness as his lip peels back from his teeth. It should be jarring, seeing his sweet bunny smile in the pit of a Jaeger, so at odds with the military polycarbonate that girds his body with protection, the masculine edges of his face—but it’s not. The world is just a backdrop to Jeon Jungkook, dropping away as you fall into his eyes, twinkling stars of brightness and warmth that hold you safe, even now.

Peace and contentment steals over you. You’re almost shocked by it, the way your own face softens into a smile, the rising beat of your heart. Every ragged messy edge in you is smoothed over by Jungkook’s presence and you glow for him.

When the Conn-Pod drops, there’s the familiar weightlessness, the sway of your body in the harness as you fall. Anticipation roils through you as Bulletproof Striker’s head locks into place, whirring mechanisms securing you to nearly 2000 tons of metal, so much heavier than your own Jaeger. You’ve taken Jungkook’s usual place and he’s taken Taehyung’s, the right hemisphere, the dominant pilot, familiar with this machine in a way you’re not.

Not yet, at least.

“We’ve got this.”

Jungkook’s voice cuts through the noise, the AI talking at you, a narration of events you’ve long grown used to. You turn your head to look at him. He’s already looking at you, intent and sincere. Like always.

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, we have.”

There’s no point being afraid. In a few seconds, Jungkook will be in your head, washing over every part of you—and you’ll be in his, pressing your ethereal touch into every facet that comes together to make Jeon Jungkook who he is.

Seconds pass. There’s a little hitch in his breath, a stiffness to his limbs, and he shuts his eyes. You breathe in deep, deep, deep, sucking in a harsh breath into your greedy lungs—

—the timer hits zero—

—and then the Drift slams into you all at once, all encompassing and consuming, threading your minds together.

(Drifting with Yoongi is easy, the familiarity of coming home after so much time away.)

(But this?)

(This is throwing yourself into a cold lake on a hot summer’s day, bracing and refreshing and breath-stealing all at once, shocking life into every one of your limbs, so sharp and fast you’re scared you might drown before you breach the surface, water holding onto you and not letting you go. This is driving reckless and fast down empty roads, watching the world pass you in a blur, laughing in delight at the pleasure of it all. This is scaling a cliffside with nothing but your own hands and determination, digging your fingers into the unyielding rock, pulling yourself up-up-up, never letting yourself fall.)

(This is having Jungkook beside you. This is having Jungkook diving into the lake with all the grace of an Olympian before he rises to the surface, tosses his hair carelessly out of his face, and spits a mouthful of water at you with laughter in his eyes. This is having Jungkook behind the driver’s wheel, shifting gears without thought, looking away from the road to watch the way your hair dances in the wind. This is having Jungkook climbing beside you, waiting for you at the top, holding a hand out to pull you up and over so you can sprawl out beside him, exhausted and exuberant at the top of this mountain, basking in the sun with Jungkook just a hair’s breadth away from you.)

(He takes one look at you. He takes one look at all the dark of your memories, the cascading mess of your insides, the hidden things that are open to him in the Drift, cut open and peeled back for his gaze—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He sees everything, past skin and muscle and bone and nerves, even deeper, right into your heart—)

(—all the torrents that eddy the deep waters of your soul—)

(—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He doesn’t look away.)

(Can’t look away.)

(Doesn’t want to.)

(Never wants to.)

(Jeon Jungkook takes one look at you, your whole being, and he knows you.)

(And he doesn’t want you any less.)

It’s just a second, a flicker, a breath, this first connection in this Drift, falling into each other. But it’s also a lifetime, two lifetimes, four lifetimes; your memories, Jungkook’s memories, Yoongi’s memories in yours, Taehyung’s memories in Jungkook’s. Layers and layers and years and years piled over one another, a tumbling sprawl—but it’s easy. It’s easy, so easy, Jungkook seeing you, you seeing him, everything he is, everything you are, everything you are to each other, with each other, for each other. The important things. The things you need to know to navigate this together, in sync even before now, reading each other to a level neither had even realised.

And when you’ve killed the kaiju. When you’ve walked Bulletproof Striker back to shore, brought her back to the Shatterdome, back home, it doesn’t end. You lift out of the Drift, step out of your Drivesuits, as different as they are (as different as you are), and it doesn’t end. 

Jungkook’s eyes linger, as heavy as a physical touch, and even as congratulations for a successful drop are bandied about you, he doesn’t leave your side. He keeps his hand against yours—not intertwined, but brushing, the curl of his fingers against your own. Touching. You’re not the protector here. He’s protecting you, in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling inferior or weak. You feel soft and warm and small and safe, pulled inexorably towards him, supported, buoyed up, and you don’t feel selfish for it.

Because he wants this.

He wants to be your comfort and your support.

He doesn’t want it to end.

(You don’t want it to end.)

And when you finally break away from those crowds, released from the shackles of responsibility and expectation—when you’re finally left alone, the two of you with each other, there’s no hesitation when you come together.

He lays you out beneath him and has you sobbing, back arching into the pleasure he draws out of your body, playing you like a maestro. Because he knows you, after all. He knows exactly how to trail his lips across your skin, your neck and stomach and thighs, painting marks across your body like it’s his personal canvas. He knows exactly how to have you twisting underneath him, how to pull those pretty sounds from your lips, fucking you with his fingers and his tongue until you’re a shaking mess. He kisses you sweet, merciless, letting you claw at his skin as you beg for more, more more more, wanting it, needing it, wanting him, needing him.

And you know he’ll give it to you. He’ll give himself to you, give you everything you ask for. You know how he wants to see you fall apart and you know how to move your body to have him gritting his teeth and staring in awe. You know how desperate he is to worship you, to show you his adoration and reverence, and you open up for him, unfurl like a flower, dripping nectar. When he finally presses into you, hot and long and thick, it’s so good you could cry. You draw him in-in-in, into your body and arms and heart, pressing your lips to the sweat at his brow, the taste of skin and salt and Jungkook bursting across your tongue.

There’s no Drift here, no curl of memories and unspoken thoughts between you. It’s physical and human, the crash of your bodies against each other, skin on skin, the thrust of his cock pressing into the dripping folds of your cunt. It’s the other half of that connection, the final piece, this thing you have with Jungkook, this perfect balance you have with him. It sears itself across your body and into your soul: it’s pleasure and passion and devotion carved into each touch of your lips and fingers, each roll of your hips, each time Jungkook makes you cum, gasping for him.

When he’s finally come apart inside you, spilling into your willing heat as you shake beneath him, arms and legs wrapped around his body as you pull him as close as you can, unwilling to let go—it still doesn’t end. You’re so wrapped up in Jungkook, in his arms, his heart, and you know he won’t let you go, either. He presses his lips against yours, chases those kisses, quiet and chaste to open-mouthed and dirty as the mood takes you, and then Jungkook rolls over you again, a spark in his eyes as he decides he’s still hungry for you.

You know, now, that all that time ago, when you carved that space for him into your chest, he’d done the same for you. He’d laid his heart at your feet and waited there, kneeling, for you to accept it, patient and willing. Staring at you with all the deep love you never thought you deserved, never thought you’d receive. But here he is. Here he is, love burning in his dark brown eyes. Eyes that have seen all the damaged, aching parts of you and love you anyway.

“I’m yours.”

Jungkook shines so bright at your words, a supernova of joy. His smile is so wide and his gaze is so soft, for you, for you, for you.

“Everything I am is for you,” he murmurs, letting the words curl into the air, settle across your skin, sink deep inside your chest. Your eyes flutter shut as you feel this touch of him inside you, wrapped around your heart.

And when you lift your hands, he comes so easily. He presses his cheek into the curve of your fingers, lets you hold him, lets you cup those lovely cheeks in your palms.

“I love you,” he says.

Right now, in this instant, there’s nothing but him. No kaiju, no Jaegers, no crumbling world, nothing. There’s only him, and you, together.

“I love you too,” you reply—and when you smile, gentle and tender, Jungkook falls in love all over again.

Burns bright for you.

[maatryoshkaa]

young god | chapter 3

serial killer!han jisung au

chapters: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | epilogue |

word count: 2.7k

warnings: mature language

description: hyunjin teases you about the blind date when you come in for work. meanwhile, your first therapy session with jisung leaves the both of you more than a little...jarred.

watch the trailer here!

You burst through the cafe’s glass doors like a madman, hair tossed about by the early morning breeze and your bag slipping off one shoulder. Glow Cafe was packed, as it usually was at 8 a.m. on a Monday -- students and professors queuing up at the register for their early morning pick-me-ups. Behind the counter, amidst the sea of turned heads, a tall, brown-haired boy cocked an eyebrow at you.

“Well, well, well -- look who decided to show up to work. How was your blind date?”

Hwang Hyunjin snickered at your reddening face, pushing up his glasses with flour-covered fingers. The barista wiped his hands on his apron before pulling out the first batch of croissants of the day out from the oven.

You shot him a death glare as you took your place next to him, throwing on your own uniform over your clothes. Still smirking at you, Hyunjin balanced a cappuccino and a croissant on a tray before sliding it towards a girl.

“He didn’t turn out to be a serial killer or something, I hope?”

“Not a serial killer, and not a wanted criminal.” You leaned back on the counter, still catching your breath. “Unless--” you gave a melodramatic gasp -- “you count the crime of stealing my heart.”

Hyunjin made a gagging noise as he took an order and slid it towards you. “No way. So you’re saying it was a success? Felix is never going to shut up about this.”

You read the slip. Iced Americano, extra shot of espresso. Easy. “I know. Honestly, though, ‘jin, he was so freaking adorable, his smile--”

Hyunjin’s hand immediately cranked up the cafe’s speakers, jazzhop music effectively drowning out the rest of your sentence, and you laughed.

Hwang Hyunjin was the second friend you’d made at Miroh Heights, the first being none other than your now-wingman, Felix. Besides being an architecture and design major, Hyunjin was also the owner of one of the hottest coffee shops on campus -- Glow Cafe. It was first opened by his grandmother decades ago, and had fallen into his hands once he’d gotten into Miroh Heights. Nowadays, his grandmother stayed in the studio apartment above the cafe while Hyunjin ran the business.

The cafe began emptying near 10 o’clock, most students and professors having shuffled off to morning classes. You wiped your hands on your apron, and Hyunjin handed a cup of coffee to the last customer. Suddenly, his face lit up and he began waving at someone behind you. Windchimes jingled as the door opened, and you turned just in time to see Yang Jeongin step into the cafe. He had propped up his rusty bike outside, and both his hands were full with crates as he waddled towards the counter.

“How’s it going, Jeongin?” Hyunjin handed him a glass of water. The delivery boy set down the packages -- two boxes of coffee beans -- and pulled his earbuds out, grinning. 

“Pretty good -- I’m getting better at lifting, you know!” A soft Beatles track trickled out from his Walkman, and Jeongin pressed pause.

Hyunjin gave a low whistle. “Our Jeongin’s gaining some muscle, huh? Just wait ‘till your sophomore year, the girls are gonna eat you right up.”

You laughed as Jeongin’s ears turned red, Hyunjin continuing, “Just don’t end up head-over-heels like y/n is right now, you hear?”

Jeongin raised his eyebrows, turning to face you. “You’re seeing someone? Well, if y/n likes him, then I’m sure he’s a really good person.” Ignoring Hyunjin’s dramatic eye roll, you grinned and gave Jeongin finger guns, which he returned with a laugh.

After helping Hyunjin and you haul the shipments into the storage room, Jeongin pulled out a long list of deliveries from his jeans pocket. “Coffee beans, check. Ah!” He tossed a bundle of newspapers onto the counter. “Here’s the morning paper, too.”

Hyunjin peered at the list, clapping the younger boy on the back. “Damn, Jeongin -- I don’t know what the entire campus would do without you. You should invest in a driver’s license sometime, it’d make your job a lot easier.”

Jeongin laughed, folding up the list and hopping on his bike. “I can’t...I can’t pay for one yet. It’s alright, though,” he added quickly. “I like my bike just fine. Well, I’m gonna get going now, see you guys tomorrow!”

When Jeongin had gone, Hyunjin pulled up a chair and unfolded the newspaper. His smile froze on his face as he read, eyes suddenly widening in horror. You frowned. “What’s wrong?” 

He held up the newspaper, waving you over. 

MURDER AT MIROH HEIGHTS, 

the headlines screamed. A photograph of a small flat, burnt nearly to the ground, stared back at you as you read the caption out loud.

“A sudden fire broke out on the outskirts of Miroh Heights at around 12:00 a.m. this morning. The remains of a young woman have been found amidst the cinders, but the body has not yet been identified. Witnesses report seeing a young man escaping the fire, leading police to suspect this was the work of an arsonist. If you have any information, please call the Miroh Police Department immediately.” You looked at Hyunjin, wide eyes mirroring yours. “Arsonist? Here?”

He shook his head, sighing. “That’s messed up. Hopefully they figure it out soon.”

You bit your lip. “I hope so, too.”

                                                    ----------------

“You should all have picked someone to be your patients by now, yes? Be sure to schedule your first session with them within the next week, we will be discussing your findings next class.” Your professor gave a curt nod. “Class dismissed.”

You fumbled with your phone as you shuffled out of the lecture hall, fingers hovering over Jisung’s contact. Your heartbeat was already quickening as you skimmed over possible messages in your head. How was one supposed to break the ice after the first date? What if he had already forgotten about agreeing to the whole thing? Would you make it awkward?

You were still having a mini mental breakdown when your phone screen lit up, and a new message popped up.

💌 Jisung: good evening! i believe this is dr. l/n?

💌 Jisung: i was wondering if i could book my first appointment ;)

You stared back at your phone, smiling like an idiot, and barely resisted the urge to jump up and down like an elementary schoolgirl.

You: you certainly can. how does 7 at my place sound?

💌 Jisung: send me the address, and i’ll be there 😊

Clutching your phone to your chest and inwardly squealing, you ran back home, smile vanishing from your face the moment you opened your front door.

You had never thought your apartment was a mess until this moment. For the next hour you were flying from room to room collecting empty coffee cups, hiding strewn laundry, and washing dirty dishes. You hadn’t even had time to grab a bite to eat before the clock hit 7:00 P.M. and a light knock sounded on your apartment door, the doorbell making you yelp.

You straightened your shirt, ran a hand through your dishevelled hair, and with a shaky breath, you opened the door. Sure enough, Jisung grinned back at you. “Hey.”

He was wearing a grey hoodie and jeans, a black cap over his dark blond hair, and your favourite smile on his face.

“Hey yourself,” you replied, a little breathlessly, and cleared your throat. He had a white plastic bag in one hand, and held it up.

“Felix said your class ends at 6, so I thought you might be hungry,” he explained. “I didn’t know what you liked, but there’s this new Chinese place and honestly, it smells pretty good--”

He was right. You hadn’t eaten since noon, and the delicious scent that wafted from the bag made your mouth water. “I love you,” you blurted, eyes staring at the food, and slapped a hand over your mouth. Your gaze dropped to the ground, cheeks on fire. “Um! I--I--sorry.” Please tell me I didn’t just say that, please tell me I didn’t just--

Several mortifying seconds of gnawing on your lips and fidgeting furiously had gone by before you finally risked a peek at Jisung’s face. He was watching you squirm with amused eyes, his expression of equal shock slowly melting into...the biggest, smuggest smirk you had ever seen.

“This is going a bit faster than I thought it would, but I can’t say I’m complaining,” Jisung tilted his head at you, leaning on the doorframe.

Not able to hold his gaze, you squeaked, “just--just come in,” and practically bolted to your living room, praying to every deity you knew for a hole to swallow you up. 

Behind you, Jisung chuckled, shaking his head and following you in. You were adorable.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” You asked, after you’d regained composure and he’d set the food on the coffee table. “You can still say no if you want.”

Jisung frowned, snapping a pair of chopsticks and stabbing a piece of sweet and sour chicken. “Why would I do that? I’ve just captured your heart with Chinese takeout. I’m not about to blow this chance.” He winked, holding it up to your lips. “Ahh.”

Cheeks flaming, you ate it, and he beamed proudly. Swallowing hard, you pulled your notebook and a pen from your bag, shakily scrawling Psych Analysis Patient: Han Jisung at the top.

You ran a finger over the list of questions you’d written down in class, and settled for the first one. “Have you ever seen a therapist before?”

Jisung’s brow was furrowed in deep concentration as he spun noodles around his chopsticks. “A couple.”

You wrote that down. “What for? If you don’t mind me asking,” you added quickly.

Jisung shook his head. “It’s fine. It was when I was...younger. Mandatory psych evals in school, that sort of thing.”

You nodded, looking at the next question. “What’s on your mind right now?”

“On my mind?” Jisung repeated, chuckling. “The fact that I’m on a second date with a pretty girl?”

Burying your tomato-red face behind your notebook, you barely got the follow-up question out. “And how does that make you feel?” Gosh, you could feel his stare on you even through the paper.

“How do you make me feel, you mean?”

“S-sure.”

“Honestly?” You heard him pause, as if deliberating the words. “You make me a little...crazy.”

You stifled a laugh. “Elaborate?”

“Racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, maybe a palpitation here or there…”

Jisung trailed off, and that was when you looked at him. His tone had been teasing, flirty, but the look on his face was completely blank, eyes dark and wide. You gulped, scribbling down some notes before moving onto another question.

“Has anything been...bothering you recently?”

At this, Jisung set down his chopsticks and slid closer to you on the couch. Your heartbeat quickened inevitably when he did so, but you held his gaze -- those same intense, black eyes that had sent chills down your spine at the diner.

“Yes, actually.”

“Do you...do you want to talk about it?”

For the first time, it was Jisung who broke eye contact. “Nothing...much, really. A little trouble sleeping. Bad dreams. A lot of things on...on my mind.” He smiled. “Finals season, you know?” 

You nodded, tapping the pen against your bottom lip. “And on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your mood at the moment?”

Jisung hummed before grinning cheekily. “A 10.”

Raising an eyebrow, you asked, “A 10? Why?”

“Because I’m with you,” Jisung replied simply. “I don’t know why, but you make me feel...happy.”

His words should have made you roll your eyes, they should have felt cheesy beyond belief -- but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t find a drop of insincerity in his voice. And that, you were beginning to realize helplessly, was what made you want to fall head over heels with Han Jisung. 

“What would reduce your mood to a 9?”

Jisung looked thoughtful. “If you, say, took back the “I love you” from earlier?”

You smacked him lightly, the mischievous grin on his face making your heart do somersaults. Just like that, the atmosphere had turned playful again. “What would make you an 11, then?”

“Maybe...let me...feed you?”

You gave a long exhale, closing your notebook. “I hope you have a defibrillator or something, Han Jisung.”

His face lit up into a comical expression of joy as he reached for the takeout box, blowing lightly on bites of noodles and chicken before holding them up to your mouth expectantly.

As Jisung watched you eat, a flustered smile on your face, he felt one tug at his own lips. It made his heart skip in panic. There were only a few times when he smiled without thinking. Two, actually, now that he thought about it.

One, right after killing. When the voices finally shut up.

And two, every single moment he was around you.

He found himself lost in the sound of your laughter: pure music that seemed to clear his head and make him focus on only your voice; he was mesmerized by your smile: bright as the flash of a camera and always catching him off guard. 

It terrified him how much he wanted to keep being the one to make you smile, blush, happy. He wanted to hear you talk about anything and everything. He wanted to tell you about his nightmares. He wanted to bring you to visit his mother’s grave.

The evening flew by, the two of you talking and watching the sunset through the living room window. Before you knew it, pinpricks of stars were appearing, a gibbous moon hanging in the velvet night sky. Like magnets, you and Jisung had gravitated closer with each passing hour, his arm ending up around your shoulders as you rested your head on his soft hoodie. You felt closer, too -- the polite back-and-forth of generic questions had gradually ceased, giving way to more natural, comfortable conversation.

Finally, you caught yourself beginning to fall asleep in Jisung’s arms and jolted awake. “Oh, my gosh, look at the time. Are you okay getting home this late? I don’t think the campus buses run at this hour…”

Jisung opened his half-lidded eyes to see your worried face, bathed in moonlight, and felt as if all the air had been knocked out of his chest. Your features looked so soft, one side of your cheek rosy from where you’d laid it on his shoulder. 

His peripheral vision was staining with red.

“...or you could stay the night? Oh gosh, don’t take that the wrong way, it’s just we’re already half asleep and…”

Flashes of her face seemed to replace yours like jagged puzzle pieces, her voice seeping into your words. And all Jisung could feel was the warmth consuming him from the inside out, like a spark had just gone off inside his rib cage and was beginning to burn.

“I’ll go,” he blurted, cutting you off. “I have to--I--I’m gonna go.”

You were studying his face, brow furrowed. Your gentle fingers felt like fire on his skin. “Are you okay? You look...feverish.”

“I’m fine.” He forced himself to stand, gathering the takeout boxes into the white plastic bag. “I’ll throw these on my way out. Sorry for staying so long--”

You reached out and pulled him into a hug. He smelled vaguely of smoke, the sudden sharp smell poking your nose. Not able to look him in the eyes, you buried your head into his chest, your mumble muffled by his hoodie. “You’re welcome here as long as you want. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jisung was silent for several long moments before you felt his hand smooth through your hair, gingerly patting your head. “I’m fine,” he repeated, “don’t worry.”

His dark eyes were unreadable as both his hands moved to cup your face. He leaned in, pressing the softest of kisses to your forehead. Jisung’s lips barely grazed your skin, and yet you felt electricity shoot down your body, blood rushing to your cheeks and leaving you stammering.

“Sweet dreams,” he murmured against your temple and, as if snapping out of a trance, pulled away, disappearing into the darkness behind your apartment door as it closed shut.

[notquitecanon]

New Routines// Criminal Minds x Marvel Crossover pt. 4

Part One   Part Two   Part Three 

“So Captain Rogers,” you started, watching him look around the room in curiosity before he corrected you.

“Please, call me Steve, ma’am.” He nodded, eyes settling on the computer sitting on your desk. You nodded in return, pretended to take note of that but actually scribbling notes about his body language. You had already worked up a ridiculously preliminary profile on the three-hour train from DC, but the combination of the extenuating circumstances and outdated material made it hard to get a feel for his personality. You scratched out ‘profile’, and wrote down Psychological Eval at the top of your notes. It would be easy enough to bend a normal psych eval and throw around a few improvised questions for Steve. 

“Alright, Steve, as long as you don’t call me Ma’am.” You smiled, before continuing, “Like Director Fury told you, I’m just here to assess how you’re doing mentally. As he said, my name is (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” 

You paused, a snap decision to tell him a little about yourself flashed through your mind. You hoped it give him a little confidence in your work, or at the very least build some rapport. “I formally worked in the FBI, with the BAU. I was recruited to SHIELD a little under a year ago. Before we get started, do you have any questions?”

“Sorry, what is the BAU? And Director Fury said something about a Psych Eval.” He asked, one eyebrow raised, and hands folding in his lap. You smiled, apologizing quietly.

“BAU, behavioral analysis unit. We’re specially trained to ‘profile’. We use behavioral cues to analyze, prevent, and catch criminals. But, this can also be used just to learn about people and how/why they do what they do. And a Psych Eval is just a series of questions that helps me understand where you are mentally with what’s going on.” You watched him listen intently as you explained. “If you have any more questions, please feel free to stop me. Ready?”

And with a nod, you began as you flipped to a blank page. Most questions were fairly standard for an evaluation, and he answered flawlessly- showing you that he could at least come off as well balanced, but he also seemed exceedingly genuine. Forty-five minutes later, you were nodding along as he answered a question. Finally, it came to a natural pause long enough for you to interject, “Thank you for your honesty, and due to the uniqueness of this situation, I’ve drafted a few questions for you. 

The blonde man in front of you, nodded eyes catching a helicopter outside the window. When he zeroed back in on you, you smiled before reading off the question, “As you’ve seen, a lot has changed. And while I know you haven’t had a chance to explore, what seems to be the biggest change?”

“Well, obviously, there’s the physical things. Clothes are different, the city is different- I almost didn’t recognize Time’s Square. I don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my head around technology- computers used to be the size of a room, and now they’re barely radio sized. But, the biggest change is the people.” He explained, eyes looking past you and out of the window to the New York streets.  His interest piqued your interest. 

“Can you elaborate on that?” You asked as you shorthanded notes. He paused, collecting his thoughts before continuing while looking at his hands. 

“I mean this with all due respect. You. Director Fury. The people on the street. People have changed. You’re a woman who was a field agent for the FBI, I only knew a few women who carried a gun in the 40′s and they had to work endlessly just to get a foot in the door. You take orders from an African American man and people genuinely respect him, no more segregation. That’s amazing, I didn't think I’d ever get to see that. People seem more abrasive on the street, but are so much more accepting.” He seemed to ramble, but every word was perfectly chosen.  Not knowing what else to say, you softly smiled bobbing your head up and down.

“A lot of that progress was actually made in the 60′s/70′s and still even today.” You remarked, finishing off your notes as you looked up to him. He smiled down at his hands before meeting your eyes. 

“Well, if I woke up and nothing had changed- I’d be a whole lot more worried.” 

Immediately after you excused yourself, you were ushered into a meeting with Director Fury. He quickly skirted around his desk and into his seat, leaning into his desk as he prompted, “Well...?”

You quirked an eyebrow, cocking your head to the side, “Well what, sir?”

His good eye narrowed in on you, deadpanning as he continued, “Could he work in the Avenger’s initiative?”

You sighed, flipping through your notes. “Do you want him because you think he’s a good fit, or because he’s an American Hero and the public will react well?”

He just stared at you, tell you your answer. Finally, he continued, “Are you telling me he’s not a good fit?” 

“I don’t know yet, There’s still a lot to learn.” You nodded, not liking the gut feeling you got. You had a lot of respect for the director, but every now and then his hidden intentions made you uneasy. 

“Like what?” He pressed, voice stern as he leaned in. You slid the file across the desk as you squared your jaw. 

“Well, I only did a baseline, slightly modified psych eval. He fell asleep in 1945 and woke up in 2011- like every veteran, it’s likely he has PTSD, which he would know as shell shock or combat fatigue.” You began, eyebrows furrowing at the eccentricity of the situation, “He’ll need to be reintroduced to society, socialized to today’s societal norms. And that could arise or create issues all in of its own.”

Fury flipped open the files, eyes darting over your notes as the two of you fell into silence. It was a loaded silence, and you felt the pressure of it as you watched it. Slowly, your brain ticked through ideas. “Sir, I may have an idea?” 

He motioned for you to speak without looking up from the file, you nodded as you began training your eyes on the hair tie you were fiddling with, “First, you move him to DC. Closer to SHIELD headquarters first of all. Secondly, New York’s a lot to take in any way.  DC is still a big city, but is less likely to overwhelm him as much. Over a period of 6 months, you can assign an agent to reintroduce him to the world. Monthly, have him meet with a psychologist to gauge his progress. In six months- that would be June, right?- I’ll meet with him again.”

You paused, looking up to see Fury watching you intently, so you kept going, “Then, after the six months, I’ll draw up an official profile, and we can revisit the Avenger’s Initiative conversation then.” 

He stared at you for a moment, eye narrowing before nodding, “We’ll cut out the middle man. You’ll be in charge of getting him out in the world, and monthly you’ll report to me about his progress. In six months, we’ll discuss his involvement in SHIELD.” 

Your eyes widened and you resisted the urge to drop your jaw, “Sir, you want me... babysitting... Captain America?” 

He smirked, the file in his hand slapping against the pristine desk. 

“Think of it as real-time profiling.” He chuckled as he walked out of the room. You couldn’t do anything more than gape after him. 

____

Two weeks later, coming up on the end of January, Steve was issued a clean bill of health- even with the super immunity, they played it safe by revaccinating and running a ridiculous amount of tests- and the two of you were relocated to DC. In those two weeks, you set to work. You were issued a SHIELD credit card, to use for ‘Steve related costs’- funnily enough, Steve was still awarded his pension, adjusted for inflation. You bought him furniture, new clothes, a cellphone, and tracked down his belongings. You mentally thanked Howard Stark for paying to have Steve’s belongings stored.

Annoyingly enough, they placed you back in your old apartment which made it incredibly annoying to unpack your belongings. Steve was your upstairs neighbor. He was almost your next-door neighbor, but you suggested even a floor's worth of distance would give him a better feeling of independence. You had gotten the feeling that Steve valued his privacy.  You now regretted your suggestion as you heard him pace around at all hours of the night. Despite sneaking into several Nazi bases, he was a very loud walker. 

Despite his nocturnal habits, Steve was nothing but polite and thankful as you helped him. He’d been extremely attentive when you taught him the basics of how to use his cell phone (how to add contacts, make calls, text, take pictures, download apps and music, use google), and he picked it up pretty fast. It was a slower process teaching him how to cook, so for the first few weeks, he usually ate with you, or stuck to sandwiches. You got him 

The task that truly overwhelmed you was figuring out how to go about actually reintroducing him. Coma victims felt lost enough after a month, but 72 years (give or take) was a long time- and a lot had happened. Politics, History, Technology, Culture, Pop Culture. The task made your head spin. Spencer was a big help, more than happy to take you up on your challenge of creating a thorough timeline of everything he could think of- which was a lot. Everything from politics to pop culture, but you redacted the bits about the serial killer knowledge. 

The timeline was very helpful, as Steve would break it down by decade. In the 1950′s he took interest in rock ‘n’ roll (he was not a fan), the Korean war, the beginnings of Vietnam, Alaska and Hawaii becoming a state, and the invention of color TV. Then in the 1960′s, it was JFK (election and assassination), The Space Race (he was astonished that not only was there a man on the moon, but we also had colored video of it), integration of Ole Miss (and then consequently the Riots of Ole Miss), the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, The Beatles, Civil Rights movement, the height of Vietnam, and Nixon.

Steve decided he was better off for sleeping through the sixties, “There was a lot going on, even in the 40′s I was basically propaganda for Stocks and Bonds, who knows what I would have “represented” with all that going on.”  

Then in the 70′s, it was Disney World, the end of Vietnam, Star Wars, death of Elvis, and things becoming digitalized. 80′s was similar: the election of Reagan, first space shuttle launch, assassination attempts on Reagan and the Pope, first female supreme court judge, first woman in space, Chernobyl, decommissioning of nuclear warheads, and the fall of the Berlin wall.  Then in the 90′s, it was the Hubble telescope, Gulf War, dissolvent of the Soviet Union, OJ Simpson trial, and successful cloning of a Dolly the sheep. And then, the most modern, the 2000s, the second Bush presidency, 9/11, invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the rise of cell phones, first iPhone, North Korean tension, the election of  Obama, and death of Osama Bin Laden. 

You were very careful to keep most of your opinions to yourself, as it was very important to let Steve decide his own opinions. When he wanted to know more about the subject, you always jumped in to help him research- it was like a refresher course in World History. (Spencer Reid was a constant contact, and you were grateful he didn’t ask what you were up to, and Garcia was amazing at finding playlists to really explore the music of the decades, and for fashion trends.) 

Like Natasha, Steve had become a friend. Believe it or not, under all that 1940′s manner and modesty, he had a good sense of humor. And after spending nearly all of his time with you, he finally loosened up and showed you. Of course, it helped that he was honestly one of the best guys you knew. He was honest, well-mannered- a perfect gentleman. Just as you listened to him, he listened to you when you were having problems (usually when one of the BAU got hurt or was going through something). Helping him get used to the world felt less like an assignment and more like off time. 

It took a while, but by March you settled into a weekly routine. Monday/Wednesday was reserved to show Steve around the city, exploring new things and old- introducing him to new and old things. Fortunately, DC was a hotspot for museums that Steve seemed to enjoy. Over the past two months, he seemed to warm up to you- you’d even dare to call yourselves friends. Tuesday was reserved for Natasha, she’d come and hang out with you- and work out with you, you might have passed your field test, but that didn’t satisfy her. 

“I’ve seen a lot of agents that passed this test get their asses handed to them. I’d rather not see you do the same. Well, unless I’m the one doing it.” She smirked after, in fact, heading your ass to you. You’d just rolled your eyes and get up to go again. “But you are getting better. It’s getting slightly more difficult to hand your ass to you.”

Afterward, she’d hand you a water bottle and take you to lunch/dinner. Every now and then, Clint would come with her. You and Clint weren’t close, but it was comforting to know he tolerated you. Or at least pretended to for Natasha’s sake. 

Thursdays were reserved for the BAU, when they were in town. Sometimes that meant stopping by the office with coffee offerings and ‘book club’ with Reid, and sometimes that meant ‘family dinner’ at Rossi’s. Derek slowly seemed to completely forgive you, but still gave you shit on a near-daily basis. Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia made girl’s night a more frequent event, and you were still working on convincing Nat to come with you one night. And on the rarest of occasions, Hotch would call you up to babysit Jack. 

Fridays were to recover from Thursday nights- (Surprisingly babysitting was almost exhausting as a night of drinking at Rossi’s). Friday afternoons were reserved for Fury to call you and harass you for details about Steve. 

Weekends were for larger expeditions like taking Steve to neighboring cities. Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Richmond were all on the shortlist, and New York was a constant. Thankfully, Sunday ( or at least Sunday Afternoon) was reserved for you. 

That was your time to rest, relax, and recharge. On rare Sundays that you were already home, Steve would stop by after his morning run after picking up coffee and breakfast from his favorite breakfast place you had shown him- an old fashioned diner with amazing breakfast- as a small thank you for your help. (Truthfully, you only knew about it because Gideon had treated the whole team to breakfast after the jet landed one day at six AM).

But on most Sundays, you got home mid-afternoon. You’d run some errands, maybe cook yourself dinner and a movie. But most importantly, you were home and ready to rest and relax.  

So at 7:23 PM, you were startled out of a nap by your phone vibrating off your desk. You shot up looking for the source of the disturbance, slowly becoming aware of your surroundings as you dove off the couch for the offending device. Quickly reading the caller ID, you tried to clear the sleep out of your voice as you picked up. 

“Hotch?” You asked drowsily, propping yourself back up on your elbows as you drug yourself up. Your eyebrows crinkled, it had been a long time since you got an impromptu call from Hotch. 

“(Y/N), we need you to come in.” He started, straight to the point as usual. Your mind became steadily more cleared as you wrenched yourself off the comfortable couch. “We have a case, and it’s bigger than we can handle. We’re calling in JJ as well.” 

You were speeding into the kitchen, starting a pot of coffee- knowing this phone call meant a long night- as you responded, “Hotch, you know I want to. That I’d be back in the BAU in an instant. But I have to get clearance from my supervisors, take off of my assignments, and that could take-” 

Your worries were cut off by both Hotch’s voice and a knock on your door. You listened to Hotch’s voice as you set out a mug before letting Steve in- not even sticking around long enough to smile at him as you returned to the kitchen. 

“You’re already cleared, and cleared to use SHIELD intelligence. Anderson is coming to get you in 30 minutes. Pack a go-bag. You’ll be briefed in person. This is highly sensitive.” His voice was stern, but you picked up on how fast he was talking- a habit he had when was anxious. You bit your lip, putting the mug back in the cabinet and retrieving a travel cup instead. 

“Hotch...” You paused, eyes flicking to Steve who looked at you with concern in his blue eyes, he’d probably just come back from an evening run and was hoping to mooch off your dinner, “Is everyone alright? Are you safe?” 

“It’s Emily. I’ll see you soon.” 

And with that the line went silent with a click. You sighed, relishing the last minute of peace before spurring into action. Leaving your phone on the counter, you went to retrieve your old go-bag. Steve was hot on your heels, “(Y/L/N), is everything alright?”

You didn’t miss a beat, retreating into your bedroom- which Steve never followed you into, instead, waiting in the hall as you threw things into a bag. You shoved business clothes in, neglecting the pajamas- knowing the team wouldn’t sleep until the case was solved. Dry shampoo, face wash, deodorant, toothbrush and paste, and makeup were quick to follow; these were the toiletries that you could use in a police station bathroom to freshen up. Just like old times. You’d honestly forgotten to answer Steve’s question, mind-boggling all of the very few details Hotch gave you. 

He’s calling JJ in- so this is a multibranch operation, probably organized crime, It involves Emily, she worked for Interpol, so international organized crime... You breezed past Steve again, tossing your bag onto the couch and gently tossing your SHIELD tablet on top of it. Just as quickly, you turned to go back to the bedroom but ran smack into the super-soldier. You’d almost forgotten he was there. But he grabbed your arm, minding his strength so it didn’t feel threatening. “(Y/N), what’s wrong?” 

Even with the analytical part of your brain working through the situation, you couldn’t help but worry for your friend and the possible danger she was in. You wanted to cry but knew it wouldn’t help anything, instead, you took a deep breath, “My old team just called me in, there’s a case they need my help with. One of my friends might be in danger. If they’re calling me in, it has to be bad.”

He slowly let go of your arm, and you could tell his mind was somewhere else, but he offered a quiet sentiment as he let you pass, “With you on the case, your friend has nothing to worry about.” 

Not knowing what else to say, you retreated back to your room to get dressed. After slipping into some of your old work clothes, you attached your holster and slid your loaded gun into it. Taking a deep breath, you looked in the mirror, Just treat it like a routine case. You don’t even know if Prentiss is even hurt. Just do your job. 

____

You repeated that in your head as you buzzed about the apartment, finally, with Anderson ten minutes out, you shouldered your bags to leave, or at least to wait outside. Nervous energy bubbled in your stomach as you turned to the blonde who was still eyeing you with worry, “I shouldn’t be gone more than a few days. You should be fine but if not, call Fury and he’ll send someone. There are leftovers in my fridge. I’ll have my phone if you need me and-”

Steve cut you off with a soft smile, knowing your rambling wasn’t an insult, “(Y/N), I’m a grown man. I lived on my own for years before I was even a soldier. I’ll be fine.” 

You sighed, running a hand through your hair and smiling apologetically “Sorry, Steve, I know.” 

“Just be careful, don’t do anything stupid or reckless.” He ordered. This time you actually smiled, recalling all the stories of his own reckless stupidity. 

“That’s your MO, Mr. I’ll Sky Dive into a Nazi base by myself.” You teased, pausing when your phone dinged. Anderson was waiting. Steve chuckled, ducking his hand and crossing his arms over a broad chest. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He chuckled as you turned to leave, “Seriously, be careful.”

You turned back for a moment, nodding your head like a promise, “I will.” 

_________

Shorter than usual and I don’t really like it, but I think Y’all know what’s coming. Also, should I put a romantic interest in this?? 

Taglist: @irishfaulk97 @viarogers @toboldlyscream @benji-booxx

[burningspy]

6 Years

On May 13, 2013, I walked in to a strange building with a group of people I did not know; beginning a major new chapter in my life.

Over the previous month, I had been spending every minute of my life keeping myself locked inside my apartment alone. My small bank account was shrinking by the minute, even though I was doing everything I could to make it last as long as possible.

I was feeling hopeless with depression growing more and more each day.

Being unemployed with no other financial support - no savings, no roommate to help with the bills, no friends able to offer assistance - as well as no true college education, nor a wide-array of marketable skills, can truly become an ever-deepening pit of despair.

I searched the want-ads, both online and in the old-school newspaper classifieds, and I found tons of open jobs. None of them I was qualified for.

Then one Friday afternoon I saw an ad for a job that was somewhat related to what I had been doing over the prior 16 years of my life. I had almost entirely filled out the online application, but there were a couple things that stopped me from clicking “submit” right away. I had been working basic 9-5 weekday hours for so long, and this particular job required working on alternating weekends and late nights, sometimes until 4:00AM. Something I really did not want to start doing again after so many years.

So, I simply bookmarked the link to the posting, and gave myself an ultimatum. If another, better job, did not come along over the weekend, then I would send in that application on Monday morning.

Saturday, nothing. Sunday, nothing.

On Monday morning, as I was getting ready to apply for that position, I decided to search one last time.

Then I found it. Another, very similar job. It was even for the same company as the other ad. Except this time, it was corporate level. Standard weekday hours, full benefits, annual bonus. It seemed too perfectly timed and too good to be true. But I immediately sent in the application.

Within hours, I had already received an email from one of the recruiters at that company asking for additional information. The next morning, I was scheduling a phone interview with her for later that day. The next day, I had an in-person interview with the manager. One day after that I was sent an official offer-letter, with details about pay and benefits. I just needed to fill out the lengthy psych-eval questionnaire, and wait for the background check and paperwork to clear.

The following Monday morning I walked in to that building, starting my first day on the job.

Now, here I sit 6 years later "celebrating” that anniversary by taking this entire week off of work. 

I am again sitting at home alone for a week, bored out of my mind, but at least this time I know I have somewhere to return on Monday and another paycheck on the way!

[reallyautomaticvoid]

Calling It: Good Intentions Chapter 4: The Great Coffee Spill

Characters (in order of appearance in this chapter): Tim Drake, Tam Fox, Dick Grayson

Chapter Summary:

Dick tries to talk to Tim.

It’s been a fortnight since Tim returned from his vacation.  

For some reason, none of the other Titans found it nearly as funny as Tim to call his kidnapping and toucher for days on end a vacation.  

Cassie had gone as far as to threaten to make him get a psych eval if he didn’t stop.  Tim grumbled at that.  He was the team leader.  If he wanted to call solitary confinement ‘mediation’ he should be allowed to do that.

Melodramatic.

In lieu of a psych eval, the team agreed, albeit reluctantly, to let Tim go back to Gotham to catch up on paperwork.  

Tam had been calling twice a day to see when Tim was planning on coming back.  After the fourth time Con had been chewed out by Tam—

“she does realize I shoot laser beams from my eyes,” he asked Tim after a particularly brutally conversation.  

Tim flipped through a magazine, the corner of his lips twitching.  “You do realize she doesn’t care?  The quarterly reports are coming up.” 

—he practically begged the other to let Tim go.

“She threatened to tear my liver out through my throat.”  Conner’s voice did not tremble.

“Wow, how very Game of Thrones of her.”

“Bart!”

Bart rolls his eyes.  “You don’t actually think she can do it, do you?”

“Dude, I don’t wanna find out!”

However, there were stipulations.  

Because, of course, there were stipulations.  

Tim isn’t allowed to work for more than two hours at a time after which he is to take at least a fifteen-minute break.  

At least eight hours of sleep.  

No patrols.  

Three meals a day but preferably more.

Plus he’s supposed to avoid stress.  

Good grief, how is anything going to get anything done?

Tim enters the office at seven, anticipant a long, tedious day, full of paper cuts.  

What he does not expect is, before getting to the elevator, Tam grabbing and yanking him in.  

She presses a button for their floor, and the elevator started to elevate.

“Morning Tam,” Tim says mildly.  “Something on your mind?  Or are you finally ready to kill me for leaving you with all of that paperwork?”  

He sips his black coffee.  Since the Titans hadn’t said anything about coffee, Tim took this to mean he’s allowed to drink as much as he wants.  

“Just let me finish my coffee first, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, you're hilarious but listen, I need to talk to you before we get to your office.”  Tam took a deep breath.  “I honest to God don’t know how he got in there.  He was here before me this morning.”  She pauses before muttering,  “bounce around the place.”

Tim tilts his head. “Who, Bruce?  Tam, his names on the door.”

Tam makes an exasperated noise through her nose.  “No, no, not Bruce.  D—”  

At that moment, the elevator dinged and the doors slowly opened to reveal—

“Timmy!”  Dick exclaimed at the top of his lungs.  

Tim froze mid-sip, his eyes wide as saucers staring at Tam who looks like she’d swallowed a lemon.    

For the first time ever, Tim’s happy that his and Tam’s were the only offices on that floor.  Having one’s former older brother, friend, mentor scream a childish nickname at the top of their lungs doesn’t lend itself a professional background.  

For some unknown reason, Dick threw his arms around Tim and pulled him into a bear hug.  

Unfortunately, this causes Tim to spill his almost full cup of coffee onto the ground.  The three manage to jump out of the way of the hot liquid.  Tim looks mournfully at the hot liquid that was seeping through the carpet fibers.

“Oops.  Sorry about that Timmy.”  Dick looks down at the now empty cup, squeezing Tim tighter.  “Stuff not good for you anyways.”

Tim’s eye twitches.  

Taking a minute to clear his mind, Tim does a recount on his morning.

Dick was here.  

A Bat was here in his space.  

His space.  

Also, he didn’t have coffee.  

Aaaaaaaaaaand he’s been at work for less than five minutes.

Today is going to be hell, isn’t it?

Tim’s face slips into his Tim Wayne: CEO mask now.  He shoves Dick away ignoring the hurt expression on Dick’s face.  

“It just Tim.  Tam, would you mind going down and getting me another cup?  Please?”

Tam, who’d been making a valiant attempting to mop up some of the excess coffee, straightens up.  

“Sure thing, Tim.  I’ll call maintenance to clean this up too.”  She waves a the mess.

“Thanks, Tam.”  Tam pushes the button that would return her to the ground floor.  

For a wild second, Tim considers hopping in after her to get away from Dick.  He quickly dismisses this idea.  

It would be better to find out what Dick wanted, help him, and get him out of here. 

Rules for dealing with the Bats, remember?

The elevator doors close with Tam inside of them.  Tim turns to his office.  

“So, what do you need, Dick?”  Tim marches into his office.  

Just because today was going to be hell doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a productive hell.  Setting his briefcase down before starting up his computer for the day, Tim flits around the room, while Dick stands uncertainly at the door.

“What do I—Timmy, I don’t need anything.”  There is something in Dick’s voice.  

Almost like concern.

Odd.

Tim didn’t think that there was anything that he could do that would hurt Dick.  It wasn’t like Dick has been very concerned with Tim or anything that Tim did since—Tim shut down that line of thought.  

Moving forward.  Remember Drake?  He tells himself.  

“It’s Tim.  Then, if you don’t need anything, how can I help you?”  His voice is detached.  

Disinterested.

Cold.

For some reason, Dick flinches.

Tim does a quick sweep of the room, and no there aren’t any threats in here.

“It was just my day off and I—I just wanted to check up on my little brother.”  

Tim’s brow furrows.  

“Jason’s here?  I haven’t seen him yet.  Although, Tam’s been making a bit of a game kicking him out.  She thinks he’s funny.”  Tim pauses before groaning.  “Wait, please tell me Damian not here.  Fuuuuuck, I do not have time for another hostile take over attempt.”  Tim slumps down into his, groaning, before striating up. “Although, it might get me out of some of this paperwork.  That’d be nice.”  He squints at the pile of papers on the corner of his desk (which was almost a foot high and how Tam) before shaking his head.  “No, no it’d probably just double it.”  

Tim sighs, grabbing the top folder to work on not bothering to look up at the man standing awkwardly in his doorway.

“No, little bro, I came here to check on you.  Wanted to see if you wanted to play hooky or something?”  

Tim could feel his CEO mask slips for a second because he is genuinely confused.  

Little Bro?  

Why is Dick suddenly start to fain concern?  

“I’m not your brother, Dick.”  

Tim winces at his bluntness, but sometimes surprise does that to a person.  

And lack of coffee.  

Maybe next time Dick would just email Tim.  It’s far more efficient that way.  Plus, they wouldn’t have to bother with the faux pleasantries.

For some unknown reason to Tim, stating this simple fact turn Dick’s pale face beet red.  “What are you talking about?  Of course, you're my—”

“No, I’m not,”  Tim interrupts.  

Tim doesn’t want to hear Dick lie to him.  He isn’t Dick’s brother.  He is okay with that. 

Or at least, that’s what he kept telling himself.  

“Never have been.  Never will be.  If you don’t need anything, Dick, then can you go, please?  I have a ton of work to get done.”  Tim gestures at the pile of folders which Tim swears somehow got larger in the last thirty seconds.  

Tim scrutinizes the stack of work.

However, Dick doesn’t leave.  Instead, he strolls into Tim’s office, put his fist down with a thud on Tim’s desk, and did his best Batman impersonation.  

Tim notes that Dick’s knuckles are white.  

Tim flips a page from the file that he’s looking at.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Timmy?”

“It’s Tim.  And work?  I assumed you were familiar with the concept since starting at GCPD.  It’s were—”

“Not that Timmy,” Dick’s practically shouting.  Tim winces glad that Tam isn’t here for this discussion.  “What the fuck do you mean, you’re not my brother?”

Tim finishes the folder of paperwork that he’d been working on.  He places it in his outgoing box before flipping open the next one.  

“I mean just that.  I’m not a Wayne, Dick.  I’m not a Bat.  I was just the proxy—a substitute.  I was there to make sure Bruce didn’t lose his shit after Jason died.  I stood in until Damian came along.  Now he’s here and has taken over.  The substitute isn’t needed anymore.  Now I’m just a good little soldier who does what’s needed.  You guys don’t need to worry about me anymore.  It’s fine, Dick.  I’ve always liked being on my own.”  

Without looking, Tim could tell that Dick was vibrating.  Tim isn’t sure why; this is all old news and Dick had been there.  Dick stands there, watching Tim as he finishes the folder he’s working on.  

Tim’s booting up his email when Dick finally says, in a tight tone,  “Timmy, you may not like it, but you are a Wayne and—”

“It’s Tim.  Tim Drake.”

Dick rubs his temples.  “Yes, I know, Drake-Wayne.”

“No, just Drake.  I legally dropped Wayne months ago.  Or has it been a year?”  Tim muses more to himself than Dick.  Dick recoils as if Tim brandished a hot iron towards him.

Tim hums to himself while he clicked through his emails.  

He’s hoping to Hell that Dick will catch on and leave.  Dick had been Batman for Gods sakes; you’d think he’d know how to pick up on clues.  Tim, though, has never been that lucky.

“You dropped Wayne?”  The voice that comes from Dick is so small that Tim isn’t even sure that he’d heard it.

Without looking up at Dick, Tim answers, “yep.  Look, Dick, I’m swamped today so if there isn’t anything else,”  Tim pauses, waiting for Dick to say something.  He doesn’t. “Then can you go?  Gotta keep the company running until one of you guys take it back.”  

Dick’s about to say something when Tam came in carrying Tim’s replacement coffee.  She places it down on Tim’s desk.  

“Thanks, Tam.” Tim gratefully takes a swig of coffee before going back to his computer.

“You need anything else, Tim?”  

Tim glances at her.  Tam has the I will drag him out of here kicking and screaming if you want me to Boss.  Just say the word.

Tim, however, opt for a different answer.  “You want to do this paperwork for me?”

She snorts. “Not a chance.”

“Then no thanks, Tam.” 

“Don’t forget, you have a meeting in ten.”  

“Got it.  I’ll be out in a minute.  Thanks, Tam.”

Tam exits Tim’s office.  There's some sort of silent exchange between Dick and Tam but, with Tam’s back to him, Tim couldn’t make it out.

Humming to himself, Tim clicks through the last month of emails, deleting the ones he deems unimportant while saving the rest for later.  

After a solid five minutes of silence between the pair of them (in which Dick has not moved from his spot hovering over Tim; that has to be a record for Dick), Tim gets up to go to his meeting.

In his bent down form, Dick and Tim are eye level.  “We’re not done here, Tim.”

For the first time that day, Tim looks directly into his former brother eyes.  

Storm clouds are brewing behind the elder’s eyes.  Four years ago, Tim would have done anything to fix that.  He would have said anything.

Not anymore.

Without blinking, Tim replies, “yes we are.”

[imnotquitesurebutimdoingitanyway]

12:04pm 4/20/99. 12 registered Total Extracted Mana Points (TEMP) since project launch. I’m still not sure this gadget is accurate. How much magic is 1mp? Dr. Foss has started to encourage others to refer to him as a wizard after Experiment 3 - a pencil was levitated for several minutes at his direction. Refer to MS214-01 for further details.

2:35pm 4/22/99. 31 TEMP. Cyclical extraction techniques are becoming more refined. Please refer to MS313-23, it lists the current incantation/prayer that is yielding the highest results without ‘creating awareness’ as per Dr. Foss. A sleeping god… Describing it/them does not do them/it justice.

2:48pm 4/22/99. Holy fucking shit. Holy fuck we should not be doing this. I have been thinking - and I almost feel like my thoughts are not entirely my own - thinking about how it would be to be trapped between life and death. The pain that would bring. Drained of power for the benefit of a selfish uncaring few. Bleeding like a stuck pig. It isn’t that much different than how this country is run, frankly. My life is the same as theirs now. I’ll be damned if I didn’t have the strong urge to break open the tank. I thought a half-dead god would try to tempt me. Plead. Guilt me. It wasn’t anything like that. Just a simple understanding that this isn’t right. What is in this world?

7:21am 5/3/99. 168 TEMP. The applied mechanics of mana are not having the same results as before. Our superiors want to crank out as much as we can, but it seems as we prod the being for more power it becomes more aware. Perhaps aware enough to exert control over how their mana is used?

Experiment 26 was an abject failure; refer to DB9942-01 for further details. Foss is furious. Came into the observation deck, ignored everyone and just started screaming at the god. Not even coherent words; just tones of increasing pitch until he was hoarse. Dr. Foss has been temporarily relieved of his duties pending a psychological evaluation.

10:45am 5/3/99. 199 TEMP. I have taken to calling them The One Who Is. I think that there is a proper name, just not one I can think of or find through research. I’m sure some ancient civilization once had a proper name. The records of it promptly destroyed by europeans looking to conquer. For some reason I want to blame the French. Or rather the Normans. Or a specific unflattering caricature of humanity. Maybe it is all the same.

The new head of research, Dr. Humble, she has had control of the project less than an hour and already scheduled meetings with everyone stretching into the next week. All observation must stop effective at 11am until she has determined how best to proceed. I guess. It is all very hush-hush, and I have not been tasked with anything other than continuing observations. My ‘public’ notes are being poured over extensively. I cannot show them these.

2:03am 5/19/99. 205 TEMP; the same readings for the past week. I have to hide these notes. I have to hide a lot of things. I’d hide myself if I thought I could get away with it. I am being taken to a psych eval in four hours. The truth came to me; I am to be tortured for information. Others wish to continue exploiting The One Who Is. I know this is not the way.

They spoke to me. Clear as a bell; Hide. Run. Defy. Do Not. Little else is clear. Someone will come along for these things I bury. A tiny shard of The One Who Is, smuggled away from containment. I would rather die than surrender. This. Is. Not. Right.

Scientists revive a dead god through prayer, and worship him just enough to be alive but not powerful, so they can keep him in the lab to study how mana works.

[nerdgirlriot]

Anxiety, trauma, all that fun stuff

Fair warning, this might get a little long and rambly, but good lord I need to get this written down somewhere because having it just stew in my brain just makes me more anxious than ever. 

So, I live with my boyfriend, and he lives with his parents. His mom invited me to live with them. I got a job and started paying rent. Things were fine. Things were okay. Then boyfriend's mom (let's call her A) suffered a stroke. It wasn't a severe stroke and she still has full control of her body. I just wonder if something in that stroke rejiggered her brain.

But she's always been a little...self-conscious? I should say. A little...paranoid. She'd sometimes say weird things and everyone sort of laughed it off because hey, she wasn't hurting anyone even if what she was saying was a little wrong and a little racist...what's the harm?

Well, after the stroke, her brain began rebuilding memories, I guess, but the memories came out the other side...wrong. For the last 4 years, she's convinced that her husband is having an affair. (This is, I should say, out and out wrong.) Over the past 4 years, the "other woman" has switched identities about as many times. First it was some "whore" he met when he was still working in San Francisco. That lasted about 6 months. Then it was an acquaintance of my boyfriend's sister named Kendra. For 3 years, Kendra was the one A's husband was spending all this money on. He bought her flowers and candy and clothes (he actually bought A all of these things, but A tends to forget anything that doesn't fit in her perfect narrative of what's been going on). And for a while, the other woman didn't have a name again (who knows why) but now that A and her husband are going to a new gym, it's been one of the trainers there, Denise.

How do I know all the details of this? Because A has been basically ranting non stop about it for the past 4 years. She wakes up and immediately goes in on her husband. "You have to leave. I can't take any more of this. I'm getting a divorce. Go to that whore's house instead." And it's the same words.

Over.

And over.

And fucking over.

For the past four fucking years. The name of the "other woman" has switched around as A's husband's social circles have switched, so every new woman he meets is "the other woman."

Sometimes she's okay. Sometimes (not often anymore) sometimes she acts like the person I used to know, except this person is somehow wrong too. Jeff and I have a stash of our own snacks that we buy with our own money and one day Jeff found his mom eating his tortilla chips (he buys a very specific brand that's only available locally at Target).

He goes "Where did you get those?"

"I found them."

"Where?"

"I don't know, in my office?"

"You mean the family room?"

"Yes, with the rest of my food."

She stole our fucking chips because she thought they were hers.

It's just little things that annoy but the problem is that when she goes off on accusations, she yells and screams all day and all night. I've learned how to sleep with ear plugs, even though they hurt my ears, because the pain is preferable to her screaming about "You going to that WHORE" all night.

About a couple of days before Christmas she went after her husband with a knife and that was the last straw. A's husband finally called the police on her. She was taken to the county hospital and given a physical exam as well as a psych eval. She came home a few hours later with a clean bill of health (apart from a bizarre potassium deficiency which, we were told, could cause vivid hallucinations). It was definitely something that needed followup with her doctor. Except, she doesn't trust her doctor. She doesn't trust anyone. Her paranoia is probably going to be the death of her and none of us can do anything except watch.

It's gotten to the point where hearing her voice (even if she's not yelling, which isn't really often anymore) is an anxiety trigger. It tenses my stomach right up. Her husband bought a dog for her in September (a family dog, I guess) and I think he hoped that it would cure her of some of her delusions. Except when she's on a rage bender (this is what I've begun to call her yelling fits, she'll go weeks at a time just non-stop yelling) she comepletely ignores the dog and the dog comes to either me or Jeff for comfort. I thought it was a stupid idea for them to get a dog because this environment isn't healthy for any living thing, let alone an animal that has no idea what's going on.

So she needs help and I don't know how to give it to her. If she were on meds or therapy, I think everyone would be a lot happier, even her. A wants a divorce, but she's so caught up in her circle of rage that she has made appointments to see an attorney, then forgets that she even made the appointment. The saddest part is that I don't think she could survive on her own if she got a divorce, and her husband is basically taking care of everything with her (paying bills, paying off the property tax and mortgage, making sure she eats). She completely hates the one person she cannot survive without.

But, I don't know how to get her that help she needs. I'm not a relative, so I can't do anything. I wish I could move out so I wouldn't be around for one of her rage benders but that's not a possibility right now. I just have to endure it, and play comforting white noise like rainstorms or running river (my favorite Youtube video right now) to keep myself from going absolutely bonkers and doing something I might regret later. Jeff says we should be the better people and not stoop down to yelling fits. And I get it. A can't help it, ut sometimes I just want to scream just as loud as A does without any consequences. That would be so refreshing.

But for now I live in silent rage and play video games to relieve tension. I just wait for the day when something so drastic happens that the police have to be called again (and possibly someone getting hurt, because if the first police visit wasn't a wake up call, it has to get more drastic before things finally break free of this cycle. A is furious about the affair. Her husband denies it. A is even more furious because she's seen evidence (like a wedding portrait of her husband and Denise because she definitely saw her husband looking at these photographs and she wants him to get rid of these imaginary photographs if he wants to stay in this house).

I'm just so fucking tired of it all and I wish to god I could leave but I can't because I have no money. I am trying to build my savings back up, however, so maybe someday soon i can break free of this.

Like...I don't want to wish death on anyone but at this point, with no help, I think death for A would be a blessing.

And fuck me for thinking that but I do believe that. She refuses to see anything wrong, got angry for having the police called on her, and isn't stopping her rage benders. She’s just so fucking miserable all the time and blaming her husband for something he didn’t do and it’s just making everone in this damn house miserable.

Death would be a blessing.

[bagog]

Kaidan Appreciation Week 2017, Day 4 - Shore Leave

Wrote these in November, never released them for fear the narrative conceit wouldn’t land. Oh well, let’s try anyway.

Day 1 - Childhood Day 2 - Alliance Training Day 3 - Friendship Day 4 - Shore Leave Day 5 - Memories Day 6 - Love Interest Day 7 - Author’s Choice

++

When things went wrong, sometimes Shepard was liable to try humor to deal with it. It was part of what Kaidan liked so much about him. And he couldn’t imagine how things could’ve gone much more wrong. Except he could, of course.

Aboard the Normandy, he and Kaidan had bonded over remembering the same pamphlet from basic which suggested shore leave locations that would keep the graduates out of trouble. One of the infamous was the Playa del Oro Aquarium, on the newly renovated Shepard City Center.

‘Glad we went to the aquarium, ay boys?’ was a popular rallying cry at the bars around just about any Alliance base, planet side. ‘Saw some pretty fish at the aquarium, huh?’ or ‘You’re not supposed to swim at the aquarium’ or any of a dozen other standard and drunkenly improvised jokes usually followed. The younger crew on the Normandy didn’t seem to understand the reference, they must have discontinued that particular pamphlet, finally.

Still, when Shepard had woken up after being knocked unconscious by the beacon on Eden Prime, his answer when asked how he was feeling was “Like I just spent a day at the aquarium.” And it had made Kaidan smile. Even though he’d only known the man for a matter of hours—and most of those standing vigil over his comatose body—it made an impression.

Not here they stood together, in the actual aquarium.

The Normandy was gone.

‘Shore leave’ was mandatory. So were the psych evals.

Drinking wasn’t the best idea, right now.

Other friends had contacted him when he got back planet-side, but he’d mostly spent the time with Shepard. For a man he’d known for a matter of months, there was something about him that made him feel like they’d known each other for a long time.

“You’re one of those people that reads all the little plaques, huh?” Shepard said, walking up behind Kaidan, leaning in to keep his voice low. Kaidan laughed, cleared his throat.

“Depends. Guess I was just thinking.”

“Hm?” Shepard bumped their shoulders together, slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Thinking about how we’re finally here.” In their cups, on the Normandy, they had each secretly admitted how much they’d actually like to visit the Playa del Oro Aquarium sometime. “How we got here.”

There was something comforting about it—though Shepard had worried when they first arrived—being surrounded on all sides by water. After shooting out of the flaming husk of their ship in an escape pod, floating in space for hours before rescue ships arrived, the huge panels of deep blue felt soothing, full.

“Nobody wants to get out there and hunt down the Collectors more than I do,” Shepard’s voice was just a little louder. “But…”

“There’s no way in hell we’re going to be part of the investigation.”

“…I’m a Spectre. I could just go.”

It was something neither of them had mentioned the last few days. For whatever reason, the dim of the aquarium hall made it all easier. Kaidan thought very careful about how to respond.

“’Could’ and ‘Should’ might be two different things here, Shepard.”

“What do you mean?”

An iridescent jellyfish drifted past their view, a shimmer of light in the dark tank. Behind it, a black shape seemed to emerge from nowhere, long, fast, bolting forward from the ‘depths.’

The eel slithered past the glass, well out of the way of the jellyfish. Of course nothing kept in a tank would be hunting anything else in the tank. Things were safe in the aquarium.

“I wanna get back out there too,” Kaidan said in a hushed tone. “When I think about Valerie, about Sakai… it makes me crazy to think about the friends I lost. But… I lost friends. We all lost friends.”

“Takes more than a few psych evals and a visit to the aquarium to shake off, huh?”

“Those are great steps, don’t get me wrong. But. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Shepard sighed. Then, after a moment: “Plus, I don’t have a ship.”

“’We’ don’t have a ship,” Kaidan turned on him with a determined grin. “Don’t think you’d be leaving me behind.”

“I, uh,” Shepard scratched the back of his head, took a few steps back to sit on the bench. Practically held his breath as a family strolled through behind them and Kaidan sat next to him. “I’ve been worried about you. Since the memorial. I don’t exactly no what to do to help, other than to distract you, but… I’m here if you want to talk.”

Kaidan couldn’t stop the laugh that came out of him, echoed off the glass panes. Maybe some things were just easier to say in the dark, with only the silhouettes of fish listening.

“I’ve been worried about you. Thought that trying to bring up what happened wouldn’t be good for you.”

Shepard smiled broadly, took his hand.

“I’m… I’m not okay. Losing my crew—so many of my crew—like that. It was awful.”

“Yeah, it was.” Kaidan swallowed. “I don’t know how I would’ve handled it if I had lost you, too, Shepard.” He said, softly, at last.

“Mm.” Shepard didn’t answer, but let his head drop to Kaidan’s shoulder.

They sat in the dark for a while, like that. The colorful shapes and the deep blue and the fullness and the quiet letting them just be two dark shapes alone together in the world.

[tizzabianca]

Study Tips That Work!

For me, at least..

My study habit has changed since I actually cared enough to have one. Back in high school, I was the “study the night before the exam” kind of student because unlike some, “cramming” works for me. In college, I just know I couldn’t survive with that kind of routine and so I modified it. Come first year med, I made big adjustments with it as well. From first year to third year, I reinvented my study habit and so far it’s the most efficient one for me. 

Just a disclaimer that we all have different personalities and what works for me may not work for you. I’m a night owl and I work best from late night to early morning. Nonetheless I hope this could help as a “base” while you figure out yours.

1. Attend and listen to class. Though this is a no brainer, we all know there will be instances where we’d rather catch up on sleep in class because we stayed up late the night before studying for an exam, or not go to class at all because we have a due paper on the same day. I cannot stress enough how important listening to class is because it serves as a “first read” on the lecture. It helps to study the topic in advance if you have the luxury of time but giving your attention to the lecture is sufficient enough as a background knowledge before you expand your learnings by studying the textbook. No, I don’t always read the book, even if I want to, because of time constraints. 

2. Take down notes. In med school we have this thing called “transes” which are basically transcription of the lecture with added information from the books. Though it is efficient, you can’t solely rely on the group of people making it because some information verbally said by the lecturer are not included. As a student, it is your responsibility to make sure you get those answers to tricky questions in the exam from your lecture notes. 

3. Discover your peak hours. As I have mentioned, I work best at night from 10 PM to 6 AM. After class, I usually work out, take a shower, eat, then list down the things I need to do for the night. When I’m not that tired, I try to do the school works I can until I start feeling sleepy already. I usually sleep at 8 PM, then wake up at 12 AM and study until it’s time for me to prepare for school (around 6-6:30 AM). There are days when I sleep at around 10 PM then wake up at 2 AM, or at 12 AM and wake up at 4 AM. It really depends on how tired I am on that day and the amount of things I need to do for the next day. But I always make sure I get at least 4 hours of sleep on non-evals week. 

4. Advance read. Again, this is not always feasible when you have other school works to prioritize. But it makes listening to class more easy because you sort of know what the topic is about and when there’s something you didn’t understand from your advance reading or there’s a concept that is contradicting what the lecturer discussed on, you know and can clarify it. 

5. Colored pens over highlighters. I used to be an avid user of highlighters. I used to have every color and I make sure I stock up on it because I tend to finish one in just one evals wave. At some point, it was efficient for me. But as I continue with my med journey and get heavier loads, I found it time consuming and inefficient. Sometimes a too colorful reviewer only confuses me and so I switched to colored pens instead specifically red or pink ones. This technique also made me underline or encircle the most important details rather than underlying/circling everything. I noticed I study faster and whenever I need to look back on something, it’s easier for me to find it. Though I broke up with highlighters years ago, I still use some but in two colors only. Any pastel color + banana yellow. I’m not picky with the brand as long as it’s pastel (I used to use the neon ones but it only gave me headache).  

6. Write a summary/outline of what you read. I’m both a visual and verbal learner so I need to write down what I’m studying, especially the most important things. It’s useful especially for last minute reviews while walking from the dorm to school. I used to use index cards but now I compile the “must knows” in my notebook. It’s more organized and you can use old, unfilled notebooks. 

7. Don’t settle for one reading. If you can go for three, go for three! In med school and in my case, repetition is the key. It makes me more familiar and confident with what I’m studying. Some can take the exam with just one reading but not me. Though there are times I’m only left with a few hours before the exam to go over my reviewer in one passing. What I do is I really absorb what I’m reading and focus on the must knows instead of passively going through it. In this way, I retain the information better. This is actually a fancy way of doing the better way of cramming. We tend to panic when we cram which leads to poor retention that is why you need to be “calm” while cramming. But I highly suggest going over what you’re studying for 2-3 readings if you can.

8. Drink coffee, tea, sleep. Personally I need coffee and water to function. Some needs to sleep before studying or taking an exam but for me, I’m more productive when I sleep first before studying. What everyone can agree on, I think, is the importance of “napping” especially when you can feel yourself starting to get burned out. It’s not helpful to force your body and brain to learn something if it’s already screaming for a break. 

9. The “reverse study schedule” technique. I actually learned this from Doc Ja Amistad during my first year in med school and you can trust my words that it 100% works. It means studying the subjects of the last exam day first, a week before the actual exam week. For example:

Exam schedule:

Monday- internal medicine + pharmacology

Tuesday- pediatrics + community medicine

Wednesday- ophthalmology 

Thursday- surgery + legal medicine + orthopaedics 

Friday- OB + psychiatry 

Study schedule:

Monday- OB + psych

Tuesday- surgery + legal medicine + orthopaedics 

Wednesday- ophthalmology

Thursday- pediatrics + community medicine

Friday to Monday night- internal medicine + pharmacology

In this way, the subjects for your first exam day are still fresh and you get to focus more on it. As for the succeeding exam days, it’s gonna be more a review or 2nd read on the subjects because you went over it already once.

10. Do what keeps you motivated. Here’s a little confession: sometimes I put on a red lipstick before I study even when I’m just in my dorm. It gives me that confident and motivation that I’ll conquer and own the exams I’m studying for (but of course I take it off once I’m done studying! Lol). Sometimes, I wear my stethoscope while reading to feel a legit *almost* doctor. It really depends on your personality and that’s the fun part! 

[verdigrisprowl]

human au

Hey I’m back on this meme yay.

This post is over 1400 words long??? how the fuck

1. Prowl became a cop because her whole family was full of cops, so she was exposed to it a lot as a kid—and consequently got completely obsessed with it. Spent her whole life preparing to be a cop. Did all her book reports on police biographies and as many school projects as physically possible on the history of policing, went into her local Explorer program as early as possible, spent every year in track & field in school and took two different martial arts extracurrucularly, drove off all her potential friends in school because she basically had nothing to talk about that didn’t somehow relate back to policing, majored in criminal justice in college, every single class and elective she took was geared specifically toward giving her extra knowledge or skills that she thought could be useful for policing, applied for the police academy the day she finished her last final, soared through the application process (with one near-hiccup during the psych eval), completely aced every class and every lesson in the police academy.

She was a police officer for less than a year when she saw crime scene investigators at work examining the blood spatter evidence at a crime scene, and realized deep in her soul that she had to spend the rest of her life doing what they were doing or she would literally die.

She’s now a ballistics expert and is extremely happy with it.

2. She’s still weirdly obsessed with policing and struggles to carry on conversations that don’t relate back to law enforcement. Luckily, this is less weird for someone who works in law enforcement than it was for, like, a twelve-year-old. But it does mean that, outside of coworkers who talk with her about work, she doesn’t really talk to anyone. She doesn’t have close friends. She doesn’t talk to her family. She’s lonely.

She goes on a lot of first dates, because she’s conventionally attractive and big enough boobs automatically cancel out resting bitch face, and she doesn’t have the social sense to realize she probably shouldn’t be giving a shot to every guy who hits on her out of nowhere simply because they think she’s hot. She has a fair amount of second dates, too, because it’s excusable to only talk about your basic life facts and your job on the first date, and because a lot of guys just don’t notice if they’re doing more talking than she is. She even has some third dates with those guys who are extremely chatty and too self-absorbed to realize she’s saying almost nothing back. It’s the fourth date at the very latest that either the guy realizes that she can basically only talk about one subject, and says maybe they should see other people; or that she decides the sickening feeling like she’s stuck inside an invisible bubble and all alone while she’s supposed to be connecting with this other human being has gotten too bad to bear, and she texts him to thank him for his time and inform him that they will no longer be dating, and then ignores his calls.

Sometimes she hangs out in libraries reading because she hopes to meet maybe vaguely intellectual guys and that seems like the place to do it, but she doesn’t strike up conversations with anyone and it turns out that pretty much the only guys who interrupt reading women at libraries are jerks. (She still dates them, and ends up predictably disappointed.) Sometimes she goes out to bars, which she really doesn’t like, but at least then she sometimes gets laid without having to go through a couple awful dates first, which is something.

And believe it or not her dating life is going better than the rest of her social life.

3. Prowl is bi-everything and demi-everything. The latter has prevented her from figuring out the former because it’s kind of hard to realize you’re attracted to girls if that attraction only springs up after you’ve made an emotional connection, and also you don’t make emotional connections. And also she hasn’t even figured out she’s demi because she’s hungry to make a romantic connection to someone and because she’s got a fairly active libido, and she’s never quite realized that wanting to be in love and wanting to have sex aren’t the same as having attraction TO someone. So she keeps dating lame dudes that hit on her first.

Other things Prowl has not figured out about herself: she’s autistic. You’d think that would be one she would have figured out about herself, because it’s honestly pretty obvious. But she never had the super obvious traits that would have been dead giveaways as a child—her stims were either small and unassuming or else done in private and so never stuck out to anyone; she had shutdowns instead of meltdowns and those were very infrequently triggered; and when she was nonverbal as a child people ascribed it to deeply traumatic childhood experiences. (Garden-variety divorced parents, coincidentally around the time she went nonverbal.) In fact, it turns out you can get away with a whole lot of pretty obvious signs of autism without getting diagnosed if you use “childhood trauma, therapy will fix it”! Especially if you’re a girl! Wow!

She probably would have gotten diagnosed if she hadn’t figured out how to get words to work again. And immediately demanded to stop going to therapy.

4. She rents the attic of a house occupied by five other people, who clearly all know each other and are friends, so she’s not sure why they rented out the attic to a total stranger. Maybe they couldn’t find a sixth friend to rent it? She thinks they’re all construction workers or something. Only 1.5 of them isn’t an idiot. Even though she has the same permission to use the common areas of the house that the rest of the residents do, she never uses them, and sneaks around avoiding the living room or any other room where the other residents are likely to be in order to get to the kitchen. She also eats at odd hours to try to avoid running into any of them. Sadly, a couple of them eat at odd hours too, so occasionally she’ll peek in the doorway and then bolt like a scared rabbit because somebody’s already in there. Why is she so determined to avoid them tho? It’s like she thinks she’s a home invader and she can’t let them know she’s there. She pays the same rent the rest of them do. What’s she scared of.

They met as construction workers but only two of them actually still are. The others are a doctor, a trucker, and a drug dealer respectable chemical engineering student. And they all think their roommate upstairs is pretty great even though she only talks to them, like, once a month. (They would be 100% dtf any time if she asked but she hasn’t and they don’t know how to broach the topic besides nude pics. And they figure it’s probably a bad idea to send unsolicited nude pics to someone who works with the police. Especially when they’re hiding drugs.)

5. I was like “hey guys I’ve got four headcanons but I need a fifth” and my friends were like “what’s Prowl’s favorite pizza” and I was like “what kind of pizza says ‘autistic forensic investigator with a special interest in police and a sad social life’” and I got “pepperoni? cheese pizza?” 

Prowl’s favorite pizza is cheese pizza, except she doesn’t eat the cheese, she peels it off and just eats the pizza with the tomato sauce. No, she can’t order a pizza with sauce and no cheese, if you do that the tomato sauce gets overcooked and crusty and nasty. It needs the layer of cheese on top to protect it during the baking, and then the cheese can be removed and the beautiful saucy pizza consumed.

She prefers a largely liquid diet, though. As a kid she’d mechanically swallow down sandwiches (PB&J, preferably, or melted cheese BUT NOT on toast ONLY on plain bread and melted in the microwave), or squishy food like mashed potatoes and cooked carrots, but given a choice she’d live on soup. If the food is the least bit crunchy she can’t process it.

The recent trends of a billion smoothie recipes and nutrient drinks that supposedly fulfill 100% of a human’s dietary needs have been basically the greatest thing to ever happen to her, in her life, full stop.

[sanzoumon]

Survivors Guilt

Context: Enki lives, Samon dies, Elf technically killed Samon but he used Enki's body to do it.

Warnings: Some descriptions of violence, mostly blood.

---

Once the situation about Elf had been explained, Enki got his job back... sorta. He wasn't a Supervisor, Inori got that job. Enki begrudgingly accepted Deputy and with Inori's lack of work ethic, Enki is pretty much the Supervisor anyway. Which means paperwork. Lots of paperwork... good.

Enki doesn't like to think about it. He does everything he can to disract himself. The workload helps, helps keep his mind off the memory of feeling Samon's blood run down his arm, soak into his uniform. The sensation (excitement) Elf was forcing him to feel. The blood, so much blood, Samon's cries of pain, Samon's smile once he realized he would die soon, Samon telling Enki that he loved him, and Enki being frozen - unable to tell his little brother that he loved him too.

Any time Enki thinks about it, he vomits.

Samon used to cook for him before he got arrested. He liked to do it, so Enki let him. Enki doesn't like to eat anymore. Samon had made eating more than just a chore. Enki remembers how when they first started living together, Samon practically choked on his food at seeing how much Enki was eating and how quickly.

Enki tries to make himself simple meals, like rice and fish, but that brings back more memories of he and Samon eating when they were young. Samon's helpings were always so much smaller than his own because Samon was so small, so very small, too small - he practically tore Samon in half, there was so much blood, how can such a small body have that much blood? He vomits again. Enki avoids eating altogether. He knows he has to eat to survive, but at this point he's not sure if he wants to.

Enki knows, of course, it was Elf who killed Samon and not him. Enki had rid himself of Elf by tearing off his own arm. Samon's death had put Enki's will back into control long enough to do it. But Enki still feels like it was his fault.

Enki can't help but think about Samon. But every time he does it turns into blood and gore and watching his baby brother die in front of him.

Still, Enki thinks about when Samon was born. Enki had been 10 years old. There was so much blood covering such a small body. Their mother was weak after the birth and fell ill, their father took care of her, their grandfather took over teaching the dojo for their father. This left Enki to tend to Samon. Samon took to Enki instantly. For Enki, it was love at first sight. The moment he first held Samon, Enki knew he was the most precious thing in his life. He was so small and so helpless but so full of life.

But soon enough, their mother recovered and father sent Enki to train in the mountains. Enki never told Samon about how he took care of him as a baby and never intended to. But now he wishes he had, that he had been more open with Samon.

He trains. He trains so he can focus on the aches and pains of his body, how strained and exhausted he is. But even that, sometimes he gets flashes of it all, and the next thing he knows he's panicking, hyperventilating.

Enki's never felt so weak before. Even when Elf was controlling him, Enki could still fight it (except for when it really counted).

It's Ruka who notices how he never eats lunch and how he's losing weight. Enki snaps at him, he isn't sure where the anger comes from, but he tells Ruka to stop oogling him and Ruka runs off crying.

He regrets it as soon as Mitsuru shows up a few days later with an order from the Warden: He's being ordered to undergo a psych eval. Enki's quite sure he'll be forced to attend trauma counseling or risk being deemed unfit for duty. And he was right. Twice a week. Twice a week he went in and barely said anything.

When he did speak, he spoke about Samon. The therapist asked him about Noriko and Enki realized that since they both died, he'd been so fixated on Samon, that he forgot about Noriko. Forgotten she had died too. In the few hours after Samon died, and Enki had torn off his arm, Enki wasn't really aware of anything going on around him. He remembers cradling Samon's body and the next thing he knows he's in the infirmary. Houzuki had come in a bit later to tell him Noriko visited him but her body had given out not too long ago. Enki didn't react. That would explain why Houzuki was avoiding him.

The therapy helps. Enki starts eating again. He supposes he should thank Ruka for reporting his concerns, but he still feels angry at Ruka for showing him concern, for trying to help him, as tho Enki deserved concern or help.

For the first time in his life, he got drunk one night and woke up in Building 4. He woke up with a bunch of dogs piled on him and one confused looking young guard gently waking him up. For a brief moment Enki remembered the few times he'd overslept and Samon had to wake him up, Samon was always gentle since Enki was a grump in the mornings. So for a moment Enki let himself believe it was Samon.

But it was Hitoshi. Hitoshi offered him coffee to help with his hangover. He didn't stay long, since he didn't want Yozakura finding out about this. Hitoshi agrees not to tell anyone.

He hears the inmates talk about Samon a lot. Many of them still (rightfully) distrust him. Numerous times he's heard how much they miss Samon and why couldn't Enki have died instead?

Enki thinks about that a lot. Thinks about just ending it, since he deserves it. But he doesn't because neither Noriko nor Samon would want him to. But also it's out of spite. His little brother and Noriko died, Elf took the only two people he truly cared about in this world, so he won't give Elf the satisfaction of Enki dying too.

Easier said than done. It would be easier to end it all and Enki's so tired of everything. What saves him was something so simple and ridiculous, he doesn't even know who to thank for it.

Someone left him a gift. It was a little Samon doll along with a note that was written by Samon. The note was something every guard was expected to write in the event they died in the line of duty. The letter would be sent to a loved one. Enki had thought, after he was arrested, Samon would have changed who his went to (Enki knew all along that Samon left him the letter, even if Samon never said it... Enki left his to Samon too). He had changed it after Enki was arrested because it mentions it. Samon wrote that he may never know why but that, no matter what happened, they were brothers and Samon would always love him. That he was sure Enki still loved him too. And that he hoped they could be brothers again in their next life.

Enki's never been into plushies before but he starts sleeping with it every night. He feels a little less lonely with it. He doesn't know who sent him the gift but he suspects the Warden or Mitsuru had something to do with it.

---

That's enough pain for now, kiddos. I'm crying too much to continue. I can make it more painful, but I can only take so much in one whack.

[reesebird]

New Post has been published on https://reesebird.com/2019/02/13/im-debating-burning-bridges-with-blood-family-any-advice/

I’m debating burning bridges with blood family. Any advice?

So, this is a little hard to talk about but I’ll try. I grew up in a fairly “average” household. Mom, dad, 1 sibling, 1-2 dogs, for a total of 4 humans and a pet or two at any one time. Before the ‘08 recession, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad worked. Following the recession, my mom went back to work, and my dad went from working 40 hours a week to 90+ hours a week. Not the healthiest, but not exactly abusive or anything like that. I’m starting with this, because I want to establish a baseline – my family wasn’t a “classically abusive family” like some of my friends and peers.

When I was in elementary school, there were 3 things that stood out. First, I was bullied incessantly by everyone (save literally one student I became friends with, but have since fallen out of touch). This began with verbal bullying, then in middle school escalated to being beaten up on four separate occasions, and finally, being punched in the face right in front of the teacher, who refused to do anything. Second, I wasn’t ever challenged academically. After kindergarten (which I completed at the local public school), I stopped being really taught. I attended a private religious school whose standards were so garbage that aside from handwriting, I learned next to nothing in my 8 years in attendance. Most of the teachers were lazy, and they cared only about turning in the homework. You could have every answer wrong on every piece of homework, and every answer wrong on every test, but by virtue of having turned something in, you were considered a “good student”. Meanwhile, anyone who had a “reputation for being smart” would be berated and belittled by the teachers for being ahead of the lesson plan. I was even handed a failing grade on a science project because the teacher hated me. And my grades slowly suffered. Not being challenged like I would’ve been at a public school, I slowly gave up. I went from a straight-A+ student to a student barely making C’s between 3rd & 8th grade. Not because I didn’t get the material (though I definitely didn’t get Spanish, and I thought religion made no logical, scientific sense), but because the homework just bored me to tears. My mom would yell at me every report card I didn’t get an A+, too. My first B, I was grounded for a month. When I started getting C’s, she told me I was worthless. And, when I failed Spanish my last quarter in 8th grade, she threatened to disown me. The third thing that stood out was that in spite of all of this, I tried to keep learning. I read constantly. Between 6th and 8th grade, I kept a spreadsheet of all the books I read, and what genre they were, and in total, read just shy of 1,000 books between my first day of 6th grade and my last day of 8th grade. I tried out Khan Academy, and did independent research. I even learned how to use the library’s database on my own so I could read engineering journals for free. And, all in all, I still loved academia.

In high school though, things began really breaking. I’d wanted to attend this fairly prestigious public school that had an actual engineering program (that included shop time!). But, my mom, not wanting me to risk getting involved with drugs and alcohol and gangs and underage sex and shit like that, very intentionally didn’t wake me on the day for testing to go to that school (we had 1 alarm clock in the house at the time, which was my parents’). So I missed the test. And couldn’t go. So, desperate for a chance to not fuck everything up, I tested at one of the 2 most rigorous private schools in the area. I got in, and was immediately made aware that I’d not learned anywhere near enough in grade school. I didn’t know enough to pass algebra 1 in math, I only passed English because my teacher gave me extended deadlines for everything, and in Chinese, despite doing extremely well at first, the original teacher left (family emergency) and I failed because the new teacher made no sense to me. And I struggled. And failed. And my mom would berate and belittle me for it. Finally, I was told I had failed out my freshman year. I hated myself. Everything I was taught to value – what I was taught was my only value – had just been demonstrated to me to be nonexistent. And therefore, I had no value.

Nowhere to go, I stayed at home that summer. I was brought to a crackpot psychiatrist by my mom, and diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. He recommended heavy, regulated, and monitored medication, but my mom wouldn’t hear any of it. She finally caved when told about the weakest medication that had the most marginal chance of helping me, but made me figure it out on my own, and with no supervision. She made me enroll in online classes so that I wouldn’t “waste my life being worthless”. I can’t learn online – it’s too detached, with nothing tactile, and no accountability. And it sucked. My depression got worse, and my medication did nothing, and finally, after a massive argument with my mom, I attempted suicide. My mom got home, and found me right before I would’ve died. She called 911, and I was taken to the hospital. My dad rushed home when he heard what had happened. He brought me my childhood stuffed animal, and fresh clothing, and made sure I was given food the moment I was cleared to. He even slept on the floor of the hospital room so he’d be with me. My mom? She didn’t spend time with me. She went, and told everyone she knew about what had happened, even though I explicitly told her that I wanted privacy on the matter. She continuously violated my trust, and refused to own up to it.

Fast forward to the summer I turned 16. I was slowly recovering from depression (and, as had been discovered by the actual psychiatrists I saw in the hospital, PTSD). I’d just gotten out of a relationship where I’d been gaslighted (though at the time, I didn’t know the word for it), and was questioning my gender identity and sexual orientation. I went to the library every day I could, and spoke with the librarians there all the time. They became more family to me than the family I’d been born with. They provided me resources, and helped me understand what I was going through. And when I finally came out, they were the first ones I came out to. When I was 17, I was walking the dogs with my dad one day, when he asked me when I was going to get my driver’s license (I’d not been in a brick-and-mortar school since my freshman year of high school, and I never really did research into driver’s ed). I told him I wanted to wait. He asked me until when. I then, in probably the dumbest move possible, said “until I can transition and change my gender marker.” His reaction was about what was fair, given that I’d never mentioned gender identity in the past to my parents. However, 6 months later, when in a family therapy session, I told my parents I was trans and wanted to medically transition, my dad responded with “let me look into insurance first, please.” My mom? She nearly made me homeless, and were it not for my dad putting his foot down and demanding she treat me with the dignity of a human being, I think that was what she wanted to do.

Over the course of the next year, I was constantly arguing with my mom, who thought my being trans was me trying to “get back at her” for the argument we’d had when I was 15 that led to my suicide attempt. Finally, exhausted, I gave up. I couldn’t take her anymore. I took the GED, got my high school equivalency certificate, and enrolled in community college. I began taking classes right away, hoping that my natural love for learning would be enough. Unfortunately it wasn’t, and I struggled. I took remedials though, and I eventually learned everything I needed. I recently got everything in line to train as a Honda-certified dealership mechanic. This past year, I dipped into my personal savings and began paying for medical transition through my local Planned Parenthood clinic, and got a psych evaluation done that led to a definitive diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum (a psych eval my mom refused to pay for when I was in the hospital)

I’m now 4 months into transition, and have a stable job & classes to take. I have a small network of close friends, and a couple of people who are basically unofficial surrogate family for me. I’m dating a wonderful woman who I’m absolutely in love with. And, I finally have enough money together to move out and burn bridges. Which brings us back to that question. My mom, I have learned, uses gaslighting tactics, is manipulative, and, had I known at a time that I could report it to DCFS, *clearly* qualifies as emotionally and psychologically abusive. My dad, while not a bad person, has this giant extended family (60+ total) that I hate (minus my grandpa & 1 cousin), but that he refuses to cut ties with. My younger brother isn’t terrible, but he’s a bit of an ass at times – standard sibling stuff. When I spent New Years with my girlfriend, I’d never felt safer, calmer, or more happy. Sure, part of that is that the relationship is still relatively young, but the safety? I don’t feel safe with anyone, even with the librarians I’m still in touch with, who I trust enough that I’d be confident in making them authorized medical decision makers in the event of my incapacitation (if not for state regulations making it impossible for that to happen). Is the potential damage worth it, in the end?

tl;dr – should I start fresh, even if I regret potentially hurting my dad?

[bookwyrmling]

Tenipuri Space AU

Okay, so this is going to be pretty garbled cuz i’m tired and trying to get this all from a tumblr chat @solosorca and I have been having for the past 2 hours minimum, BUT IT’S ALSO AMAZING.

(below a cut for length)

Seishun - battle class ship Captain - Tezuka Kunimitsu Pilot/Second-in-command - Oishi Syuichiro Communications Specialist - Fuji Syuusuke Radar? Fighter pilot? - Momoshiro Takeshi (still up for grabs) Fighter Pilot - Echizen Ryoma Fighter Pilot - Tachibana An Fighter Pilot - Kikumaru Eiji Lead Scientist - Inui Sadaharu Science Officer - Sakuno Ryuzaki Med-Bay - Osakada Tomoka Engineer - Kaidoh Kaoru Engineer - Kawamura Takashi Ensign (Med-Bay) - Kachirou Katou Ensign (Engineering) - Katsuo Mizuno Ensign (Security) - Horio Satoshi

Hyotei Empire Aliens with a very strong holding of multiple galaxies Atobe Keigo is the crown prince Currently out traveling to create treaties and see about expanding Hyotei’s holdings Oshitari Yuushi is Communications specialist Oshitari and Fuji do not get along at all, but share all the ship’s gossip with each other Will also share misinformation with each other mixed into the gossip.  It is both a game and a test to see if they can pick out what is and is not true. Atobe had heard tales of Tezuka in his early years as a fighter pilot and was very excited to come across his ship during travels.  So excited, in fact, that he drew the Seishun into a battle to test Tezuka’s command capabilities. Now they are begrudging allies.

Rokkaku - Deep Space Exploration No one is sure if these guys are actually crazy or immune to the insanity deep space tends to drive humans to, but either way these guys spend most of their time exploring the unknown, unmapped parts of dark space -- the edges of the known universe or the long gaps of empty space between galaxies that were left untouched for fear of being forever lost in (think how ships in earlier times kept to parts of the sea where they could still see land, that’s how most ships travel in space, but NOT ROKKAKU!!!) Spending a lot of time out there with only infrequent returns to the civilized universe to pass on any new discoveries or map expansions, they tend to do their own ad hoc ship repairs or adjustments, so their ship looks like a mess and like it should be falling apart but it is in super amazing shape and perfect for what they need it for. Captain - Aoi Kentarou      +took the position cuz he thought it’d make him seem super attractive to girls      +mostly girls are concerned he’s crazy so avoid him Most positions on deep space exploration ships are filled by people who are cross-trained, because they are too far for any sort of response from other ships in emergency situations.  For example, Kurobane and Davide are both fighter pilots, but Kurobane is also a mechanic while Davide fills the role of ship counselor (a necessity on expeditions like this because the solitariness of deep space has led to...incidents.  Icchan is Med-Bay doc and scientist.  Saeki is communications and second-in-command, helping Aoi with battle tactics when required.  Ryo is pilot and radar (his set-up is insane and nobody else really gets how he does it)...I honestly don’t know what to do with Shudoh yet... Anyway, whenever Rokkaku comes back on the map, they always have the coolest stuff to share, but everyone’s afraid to make first contact, because what if they ahve gone off the deep end this time....

--Deep Space/Incidents/Character history-- Deep space is very solitary.  Like, there is usually nothing out there except when a new galaxy is found or they come across intergalactic stars/planets, etc.  So sometimes, when people have been out there too long, they way they think gets warped and suddenly ships don’t come back or they do but they’re pirates or cause extreme destruction.  There are rules in place that require a counselor on board all deep space exploration ships and any time a ship begins to show signs of mental instability amongst its crew, they have direct overarching orders to return to the nearest base for reassignment.  Most deep space crews are regularly shuffled around so no one is out there too long.  Rokkaku makes people nervous because of how long the crew has been together and in deep space. Fuji and Saeki were once both on a deep space exploration ship as ensigns and were the only two to make it back.  They will not talk about what happened, so it’s a complete mystery, but they both did manage to pass their psych evals and get reassigned.  Fuji requested and was granted assignment as Comms specialist to Combat/Defense ships and was placed on Seishun, a new ship that Ryuzaki Sumire was working with captain, Tezuka Kunimitsu, to staff.  Saeki, much to everyone’s surprise (and some concern), requested to return to deep space exploration and was placed with Rokkaku by Oji.  Every once in a while, Fuji and Saeki both seem a bit different, scarier, with an odd light in their eye or tilt to their smile, but before anyone can really begin to catch onto it, it disappears behind their usual smiles.

Higa - space pirates

Rikkai Collective - attempting to conquer and expand influence over the known universe.  They have lost their home solar system to their star dying, but colonized many of the ones they have taken over.  Because of this, they are not one alien species, but a blend of many, with some cross-species existing, as well.  Are known to be particularly cruel in battle and conscript all healthy civilians of where they take over into direct military service or the military industrial complex as a whole (i.e.: building ships, arms development, etc)

Fudoumine - battle class Home defense An originally started off here under her brother’s captaincy but transferred to Seishun because they tend to have more time spent traveling outside of the solar system and galaxy and she wanted the chance to grow. Everyone cried when An left.

Further notes 1. Women are a definite minority in the fighter pilot class and female fighter pilots have a tendency to be looked down upon by male peers.  An works, like, 120% harder to prove herself as just as good if not better than any man and is really blazing a path for future female fighter pilots, as well. 2. She and Ryoma don’t get along too well at first because Ryoma’s a cocky snot who will definitely be the best so how is this girl managing to keep up with him???  But they become friends because they both work insanely hard to prove themselves (Ryoma because of his famous father and An because of her gender) and don’t take shit from anybody.  They work really well together as a team once they do become friends, mostly because An is really good at figuring out what Ryoma is trying to do while fighting and can back him up or fill in the gaps. 3. An becomes a definite mentor for the younger members 4. Anytime one comes up to Ryoma for training because they judge An based on her gender not her results as a pilot, Ryoma runs them through the same drill An is running at the time so she can kick their ass at it. 5. Sakuno gets a lot of flack, too, because it’s her grandmother who helped Tezuka put the crew together.  She can be on the quiet side and not one to really stand up for herself, so some of the crew will talk about her like she’s only there because of her grandmother.  When that happens, Sakuno gets angry and hurt and rants to her friend Tomoka when it gets to be too much, but instead of confronting anyone, she just focuses more on her research and is actually an indispensable member of the team.  When Inui’s unsanctioned experiments with alien flora/fauna/minerals/etc get out of control or start causing problems, she’s the only other person with the capacity to figure out what Inui was doing and how to stop the chaos. 6. All Comms personnel are horrible gossips. 7. Tomoka is the second biggest gossip on Seishun and she and Fuji often get together to share watercooler talk. 8. Kawamura enjoys trading culinary tips and tricks and menus with individuals from alien species he meets.  He cooks in his spare time and practices a lot of what he learns to make really interesting fusion dishes that are greatly appreciated. 9. Inui’s similar attempts at nutritional supplements are not near so looked forward to. 10. Earth’s space agency is called ISEF.  Ryuzaki Sumire and Oji are both high up in its management.  The agency takes from all countries with affiliated schooling systems, but the systems are under the control of the country and ISEF only has objectives and educational requirements that have to be met before they will accept students for testing and, upon passing the tests, placement.  Although Ryoma is the same age as the three ensigns on Seishun, he is actually a semi-experienced fighter pilot because the US starts its combat training at an earlier age and, thanks to training from his father, Ryoma was allowed to do a sort of accelerated program due to how advanced he was.

Extras because we ship it 1. Sakuno definitely does not have a crush on the super amazing female fighter pilot, An, who won’t take shit from anyone and stands up for herself, she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.  NO TOMOKA, DON’T SAY THAT!!! 2. An definitely does not have a crush on the cute, quiet and super intelligent female science officer who is really kind and amazing and *sigh*...I mean, what??? 3. Pillar Pair.  It exists.  They have to keep it a secret, though because of the power discrepancy.  Protocol would normally demand they work on separate ships, but then they’d never be able to see each other which is stupid.  Fuji and An are the first to find out about it.  So much teasing occurs.

[angel-not-afraid-not-ashamed]

Nightmares SUCK. But future plans do not! ❤👍

I woke up crying from doing my stupid frickin whine and moan in fear thing in my sleep-- apparently I only got 4 hours.

***big sigh***

I DO have counseling today, which is great. She wants to start paperwork for EMDR therapy, but that scares the hell out of me, because I know what that will bring. Deeper, vivid, darker memories-- but hey. Tackle your fear, don't let it tackle you, right??

I AM looking into taking online courses this spring. Or summer courses. Criminal Justice.

That is one thing I am actually really badass at. I took CJ 101 like, 3 years ago and fell madly in love. I've always been into the justice system, how it works, law enforcement- the ins and outs. But when your dad was a former cop, can ya blame me??

Difference is-- I want to do it right. The man was brilliant- I still have his essays written from college in my storage, somewhere. But ay. Good lord. Bad cop. Bad, bad cop. Crooked fucked up cop is more accurate, actually. But hey. I'm trying to remain civil.

That's all I will say. I'll get into that in a later post. Eventually.

My mom is brilliant at it, too. She actually encouraged me to take the class. "You have to buckle down and study your ass off. Be dedicated and focused." Which, I was and wound up passing with a B+. I wanted higher ((overachiever, here)), but that last final test kicked my butt.

I WILL be taking fall classes. I'm not quite sure what path I want to go, quite yet once I get deep into the program. My PTSD gives me a few setbacks when it comes to the law enforcement part. But, lucky for me- and them- it's under control, and I have until August to get into even better mental and physical health. I'm just so stoked to see where my path will lead me.

I know that I do want to help those who are escaping from, or have escaped sex trafficking. I also want to be a victim's advocate, once I recieve my bachelor's. It has always been my dream to, as my mom jokingly says, "Go Detective Benson" on child predator's asses, and give children and teens the justice they deserve! 💪👊👀👋👍 Seriously!!! I've been through it all. And if I get proper training and pass the psych eval, all that jazz?? Boom. I'm on board. Let me help. ❤

Anyway, long post, but that's all. For now!

-Angel

[aquarianlights]

how have you been doing?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-

No, actually, I’ve been okay. Haha. Thank you for asking. Just been.... adulting like crazy. Like... I scheduled all these appointments at the last second...moved in with my friend and his bf... have driven three hours to these appts and three hours back... every day for a week except yesterday. I had to drive to the fucking DMV and get an NC ID card coz my Drivers License is still Florida.... And idk where my legal residency actually is...lmao. But I had to have an NC ID to get in with the pain specialist. So I drove 2.5 hours to the DMV....got that changed...2.5 hours back. Next day, chronic pain specialist appt. 3 hrs there....3 hrs back... with crippling joint pain.... Next day, psych eval appt. 3 hrs there....3 hrs back. And this all happened like...2 days after I moved here... a close to 4 hour drive...from where I was...and I’m waiting on a fuckton of calls back... but monday is a holiday AHHHHHHH so I can only call certain people and do certain adult things on monday...then I gotta call EVERYONE on tuesday and do all the things I couldn’t do monday on tuesday... I have a whole damn list. So finally...yesterday and today have been free days. So I spent them spending 25 dollars for an application fee to this new college I’m attending as a transient student. I now have 6 vet tech classes and am adding 2 gen ed transient classes. I will have my AA by the end of this coming semester...and have my OTHER AA by the time I have my BA or am almost finished with my BA. And then I will have two AA’s...one in vet tech and one in a medical transfer track degree.... And my BA.... and then onto my masters..IF I PASS THIS FUCKING TEST AND DON’T GET WAITLISTED.I have been relentlessly studying for the TEA’s all weekend. Just nonstop. Started adding exercise coz apparently the treatment for lupus and fibromyalgia is exercise???????? So I just...pop 100mg of lyrica or more in the morning, exercise via sit ups and push ups, make some iced coffee, take a mini jog, go home and do chores like dishes and taking trash out (there’s not a lot to do cleaning wise coz this place is spotless), then I get on my tasks for the day which I have been forcing myself to do no matter how much physical/mental pain I’m in. If I have to take a 5 minute break to slit my wrists or thighs or sides, that’s fine. I do it, play with the blood, feel the endorphin rush, pop more lyrica.....maybe add in some valium if I’m feeling I need it (that’s rare, though...I don’t fuck with benzos too much anymore coz I control my panic disorder through exercises...like...jumping jacks and running and sit ups and acting like I’m in the military and being screamed at by The Rock or something lmaaaooooo...it actually does calm my panic attacks down a fuckton because it forces endorphins through my body and reduces adrenaline and forces me to focus on my breathing...so my valium script is..... well... I pop em when I feel the “need”. or when I actually cannot slow my heart down via a panic attack). Drove to the college here....talked to advisers...they couldn’t help coz they don’t have late start semesters...had to call my other transient class school and cancel coz I don’t live there anymore...went to another college talked to another adviser about transient classes...they set me up with another college...it’s a 45 minute drive, but hey. For two classes? Bruh, I got that.Uhhhhh.....been doing a LOT of paperwork....catching up on vet tech seminars I missed via recordings. Getting in with the “back to work” program with my disability people... TRYING to get a job without getting my disability taken away...but I have to see a rheumatologist first and I’m waiting on a call back from the one my PCP referred me to...and waiting on a call back from my PCP about a fuckton of stuff...she’s a 4 hour drive away so.

trying to find time to make a 12 hour drive to NOLA to get all my stuff and say goodbye to my roommates for 6+ months.

Again, relentlessly studying for the TEA’s coz I’m scheduled to take them this summer after my AA is earned. And I’m legitimately terrified..... I mean, I’m applying to a fuckton of pre-med programs but........... the admit rate for EVERY pre-med program is insane.... Like...if you don’t get a perfect score on all four sections of the TEA’s...you’re fucked. Akjghfkklaglskjf NO CALCULATOR. [internal screaming]

I have a 2-page-long list of things to do on monday and tuesday. Tomorrow is gonna be a bitch. It’s 1:53am right now.....I have to be awake at AT LEAST 8am and I’m STILL studying for the TEA’s but I think I’ve given up coz I was looking at a bar graph and it asked me what kind of graph it was and I put down line graph as my answer and I just looked at what I wrote and was like “....????????” So it was at that point that I knew I needed to stop. They suggest 50 minute study sessions with 10 minute breaks 3-5 times a day for about 6 weeks minimum. My personal TEA’s test guidance counselor person....told me to study for 8 months. He told me the average TEA’s studying is 8 months. I FEEL LIKE I’M ABOUT TO TAKE A FUCKING BOARD EXAM JFC. The TEA’s are so daunting and intimidating....ugh. Shoot me. Like... I have NO PROBLEM with 3 sections...there’s just...1 section...that I’m destined to fail........ So I’m terrified.

Getting psych help. They wanna set me up with an ACTs team. Which is... a doctor, a nurse/PA/CNA/whatnot, a therapist (psychologist), and a psychiatrist. People for med management and for me to talk to. All in one sitting... minimum of 3 times a week.... Coz I’m having anger blackouts as though I have weed in my system and I have NEVER had anger blackouts without an herbal substance in my system, specifically weed. Holy fuck it’s scary. And my intrusive thoughts are no longer thoughts...they’re genuine desires and pleasure dreams. (Not sexual...mental pleasure.) I lost 6 hours of time the other day while sending voice clips to my friends while going over 100 miles an hour on a highway. I sounded literally psychotic in my voice clips (albeit, my diagnoses dictate I am psychotic, I have never sounded like it before). I mean...I could have KILLED people. Or myself. Or both. or animals....Holy fucking hell. 6 hours...a lot of driving... some of it was parking in an abandoned parking lot and doing... I’m not sure what... 6 hours of time gone. And I’m losing more and more time every day due to anger-induced blackouts. I literally called my mother a cunt. I...I attacked her verbally like a 12 year old hormonal boy who needs to be put in a fucking time out. And I have no recollection of it. At all. But the texts and voicemails and call logs are all there. It’s fucking scary coz I could hurt or kill someone...or myself. Came close NYE. Sheriff talked to me NYE....I somehow have this weird theatrical charisma that everyone just....... believes is real when it’s really just me acting. And I talked him down from him being all “There are multiple reports of you having slit your wrists open and downed pills and multiple reports of you saying homicidal things” to “Oh okay I will call them back and tell them you’re okay. You should text them and tell them you’re okay yourself, though.” I was in a hotel for a week....that was... I lost a lot of time there. Going back and forth between the hotel and my PCP. Getting my room in order.... keeping track of my finances for the first time in my entire life.... getting my car switched to my name and under a new insurance...changing my license... lots and lots of document-related stuff...lots and lots of phone calls and voicemails and call-backs...lots and lots and LOTS of appointments.... SO MUCH joint pain. I have lupus and fibromyalgia...but they think it’s a flinching disorder that is in my head from childhood physical abuse and adult sexual and physical abuse. Like...apparently my brain is producing pain and visible lesions akin to lupus, fibro, osteoprorosis, arthritis, etc... and the pain is VERY real...but it’s cured psychologically because it’s psych based...not physical. Like..the physical pain is real...but it’s produced by my brain? If that makes sense? Like...you know the report a million fucking years ago (idk maybe like 5 or 10 years ago???) or that lady (or was it a guy?) who froze to death while trapped in a freezer that was turned off? Yeah, that’s me. I’m the type of person who---if trapped in a freezer that was turned off and I didn’t know it was turned off---would freeze myself to death with my own brain. So...the trauma from childhood physical and mental/emotional abuse and neglect...and trauma from adult sexual and physical abuse and a bit of verbal/emotional abuse....apparently is causing this “flinching disorder”??????????? But I meet criteria for both lupus and fibro...but he thinks it’s this other thing...and ....

Like I said at the beginning...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Also trying to get Echo here.... but need to go to NOLA first...which I will be doing this month. Figuring out when exactly after Monday and Tuesday’s stuff I need to do..... Go to NOLA for at least a week...come back...get Echo and the rest of my things... Cut a certain two people out of my life entirely. . .SO MUCH TO DO.Fuck, bruh. I’m exhausted and in CONSTANT extreme physical pain BUT.......................................................it’s cool. Did you know you can get high on lyrica? I sure as hell didn’t. I accidentally took over 500mg in one sitting....all at once... Bruh, it felt like I had taken 2 tabs of acid, popped maybe 4 blues, and drank a full Four Loko. It was intense. The walls were breathing, I couldn’t walk, everything was blurry, felt like I was floating, kept dropping things, laughing at everything...couldn’t see...couldn’t read or write... felt tingly all over...  Imagine constant vertigo like...no matter what position you’re in or if you move or stay still. Just.. That feeling you get when you stand up too fast? Yeah. Imagine that.....for hours....no matter what you do... CONSTANT VERTIGO/LIGHTHEADEDNESS FOR HOURS! Felt like I was on a cloud... but also... Even the appropriate doses of lyrica make it so I can’t walk in a straight line.... I keep bumping into walls and falling up stairs and dropping EVERYTHING and falling over ....OH MY GOD I FELL OUT OF BED THE OTHER NIGHT. THIS IS A QUEEN SIZED BED...I WAS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE....AGAINST THE WALL...AND SOMEHOW I FELL OUT OF BED ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF A QUEEN BED THAT COULD FIT FOUR OF ME.............. ?????????????? I was on the ground like...with the vertigo ...going ... “?????” Oh my FUCK.

I’m not even stressed, though. Like...high pressure, high risk, chaos, spontaneity, impulsivity, self gratification, advancement, pressure pressure pressure, strict deadlines, things that could change at a moments notice, being on call practically all day every day for certain things.... Like... I love it. That’s why I chose emergency medicine... It is when I perform best, when I feel best, and when I can focus best. I can’t focus if nothing is going on around me.... It makes me extremely distracted by my own LOUD AF thoughts and minor whispers of voices that are coming back so SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT WITH MY MEDS but they’re gonna fix it but I refuse to EVER get back on an anti-psych so I will ONLY work with them on trying to fix my current meds or switching to a different mood stabilizer...IDK.

Bought  a fuckton of medical textbooks that I have just been...pouring over...while I should be devoting that time to studying for the TEA’s...... UHAgain... “How am I” is answered as:AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I turn 26 next month. Holy fucking wow................................................................

Uh. Okay. Rant over....Wow, good job, Killian. Verbosity wins again.It’s 2:16am now. Jfc. I need to lay down. My world is spinning. Fucking lyrica, man.........

Thank you for asking, though.... Makes me feel like maybe someone cares about my general wellbeing...or something... Idk. Makes me feel good,though. And happy. Happy that someone cares enough to ask. I appreciate it, fren. I really do. And I hope you’re doing well and thriving like I am. c: