#in roughly 800 years | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dadsbongos · 25 days ago

Text

gurgle. spit. rinse. do not repeat. do not repeat.

18.3 k words [o mein gott!] / warnings - suicidal ideation/suicide, this bitch is mentally ill, unrequited love but it isn't but it is but it isn't, intentionally strange text formatting

summary - trapped on the tulpar. surrounded by your life's work, chemicals and blood stains. and then there's sweet daisuke, who wants you so, so bad.

[2 months after the crash]

ETHANOL POISONING RISK ⌧

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU ARE WITH SWALLOWS MORE THAN FOUR TEASPOONS OF ETHANOL CONTENT IT MAY LEAD TO:

ABDOMINAL PAIN CONFUSION, SLURRED SPEECH INTERNAL BLEEDING SLOW BREATHING DECREASED ALERTNESS VERTIGO VOMITING, NAUSEA DIARRHEA

IF DIARRHEA OR VOMIT CONTAINS BLOOD, OR IF SYMPTOMS DO NOT NATURALLY DESCEND, SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE SUCH AS 9-1-1 OR LOCAL POISON CONTROL. 800-222-1222.

BEFORE CALLING, HAVE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION OF THE SWALLOWER ON HAND:

WEIGHT HEIGHT AGE TIME SWALLOWED AMOUNT SWALLOWED

IF NOT ALL OR NONE OF THE INFORMATION IS ON HAND, DO NOT DELAY CALLING. DO NOT WAIT. CALL HELP. CALL HELP.

CALL HELP.

“Got 14% ethanol,” Swansea croaks, rotating the opaque cyan bottle in one hand with raised brows. A piqued lip. Wrinkles stretching until the skin is smooth as he observes the sloshing liquid.

“Is that bad?” you wonder aloud, holding the bottle up over your face -closer toward the dusty orange overheads and swish the plastic until its contents cyclone, “That’s alcohol, right? Cleaning and shit?”

Anya grimaces, scanning the ingredients along the back of the bottle, “All the sugar in this eliminates the disinfecting properties.”

Daisuke sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, one hand covering the other around the bottle. Fingers tighten around the pearly cap, twisting it just enough not to break the plastic seal, “But then it doesn’t taste bad, right?”

“We can’t drink this,” Anya shakes her head, reaching out as if to snatch the mouthwash from the intern’s grasp. The same way one would rip chocolate out from a dog’s mouth.

“Why not?” Swansea’s tone is light enough to come as sincerity rather than derision. He flicks the cap open with all the ease of popping a button and roughly punches his bottle against the one in your hand, “Ten and a half years sober: down the drain!”

You were in a minor collision as a child. Your mother’s car rear-ended on the highway while you swung your feet from the backseat. The abrupt jerking flung you hard into the back of the driver’s seat before your seatbelt whipped you back. A rapid burning needled along your neck, leaving you a whiny blob while Mom grumbled out of the car and rounded toward her assailant. Through tinted windows and bleary lashes, you catch turned faces -even drivers slanting your way and back quicker than the crash even happened. Leering curiously, children pushing over each other to peek closer than their siblings and wives’ lips moving as fast as their brains can narrate the scene to husbands.

Currently, you’re no better: head swinging toward Swansea’s tensed gulping like malleable rubber.

Wrinkles vining by his eyes and throat bobbing unevenly, Swansea pulls back with misty, saccharine drool pooling in the corners of his mouth, wiping it up with the back of his hand before loudly sucking wind between clenched teeth. Even louder, he smacks his lips, clicks his teeth, and stares at the floor. From above a low buzz blankets the soft humming of machinery below, lights clawing to be heard in the still survey of Swansea swallowing way more than four teaspoons of pure mouthwash.

Daisuke pops the seal on his bottle, and Anya blinks wildly as if upon the fifth hundredth one she’ll awake to normality, Jimmy cringes with the slowest headshake of disapproval. You shift closer, scooting your shoes sideways rather than taking independent steps, and place a cautious hand between Swansea’s shoulder blades,

“How was it…?”

Expecting the old man to spontaneously buckle forward with a geyser of crystal blue vomit streaked with innards, you slink back as his pruny mouth falls open.

Broad shoulders straightening and eyes alight the closest thing you could call joy since the voyage began, Swansea tosses back another shot of Dragonbreath before looking at you, “Not fucking bad.”

[!] new message: kills 99.99999999999999999%

[sent by: CPT. curly, grant | subsection: the bathroom is moldy again]

[5 weeks before the crash]

Modus operandi declares you perform the most daunting and grotesque step first, then you can peel off the second skin you wrapped around yourself -- throw it into one of the yellow buckets meant to be incinerated -- and wash your hands thoroughly. After that due diligence, you earn the much less demoralizing honor of scrubbing the sinks.

Although. Ola kala dictates you’re being too harsh on the various thrones your crew occupies:

Pretending to find this deal disgusting after five years would be juvenile and beneath you, and nobody would care even if you did. If anything, they could get upset thinking you’d slack off and get the crew credits package reduced. Maybe Daisuke would be a little empathetic, at least. He’s new enough, face round enough, hands soft enough to still pity the janitor just doing their job. Maybe he’d offer to help (and then you could sigh and swoon gratitude before assuring that no, Daisuke, you’re not BBP trained).

Streaks of greying brown crust around the curve of the metal bowl, plumped just beneath the seat. Scrubbing down by the siphon jet, your sponge meant to be steel wool barely grapples reddish muck from the drain -- you assume because anything with harsher ridges would scar the company’s precious shitbuckets. Boxed off with the same greenish, blueish turquoise color that makes up your coveralls. Thin plastic boxes for the sake of privacy. Technically everybody in the ship could pile into this bathroom at once -- three in the stalls and two at the urinals.

It reminds you of malls back on earth, or grocery stores, not an employment bathroom.

Smaller gunk already stuck around the bowl’s interior needs to be scraped up beneath a solid silver putty knife. Each blackened chip cracks off easily enough that you can almost act like this isn’t the epitome of your job title.

At this point, you don’t bother wiping your eyes -- content to let them blur with tears until you’re finished. After all, it isn’t like trying to smear the waterworks away with your forearm will make stinging chemicals fumes drift anywhere else. It’d only make your skin damp.

Beneath the concoction of bleach and syrupy blue whiteners, is a new stale wafting.

Oddly: it’s almost sweet, the smell of the bathroom. Or maybe your brain tells you the stench is more pleasant than it really is because you’ve spent so long surrounded by it. Most of the perceived sweetness is from that earthy musk, the things Pony Express feeds you: Canned soups and processed meats and germinated water pouches, all chock full of corpo-grade nutrients and healthy minerals. Not just a couple of years ago, they even used to permit snack sacks like nuts and freeze-dried berries. You never knew why they stopped doing that. You suppose no answer is satisfying because it wouldn’t matter, the smell doesn’t change much, anyway.

After the feces settles up to your brain, and you’re certain the stink is caked into today’s uniform, you get the hint of piss.

Depending on who most recently took a leak, the smell is different. Sometimes it’s almost sugary, but like if a melon had sat in the sun for two days. Sometimes it’s electric and burns second-hand, making your entire face wrinkle up at the shock. Sometimes it’s got the quietest hint of cat litter. You don’t care to know who’s who. You just acknowledge that they’re all different.

Human bodies are an absolute nightmare. Most times the actual people those bodies host are not much better.

Years ago you learned that breathing through your mouth did not help at all, then you would just taste the mixture. And the idea of all those particles on your tongue was more than enough to make you hurl. Usually, the job isn’t all bad because at the very bottom when you scoop what should not be touched, you can catch the most relieving smell of cologne. With how many men occupy the ship, the least they could do is be some nasal comfort while you scrub their bowels.

Suds soak acorn-colored, slowly growing darker brown the longer they sit as you attempt to rid all evidence that anybody on this ship ever shit in their entire life.

Backing out from this stall to glance down the row, you see more blackish splotches painting beneath the seats. Staining where each toilet is bolted into the floor. Stubborn to be forgotten.

Yeah. You don’t think these things could’ve survived just one more day.

[1 month before the crash]

“Ain’t shit else to drink around here,” Swansea clacks his Pony Express mug -stained around the lip and Polle picture cracking from years of use- against your own empty cup, “Cheers, kid. Find something else.”

“You just admitted there’s nothing else!” you sigh, glaring after the man as he strides unsympathetically toward the door.

In fair humor, Anya shakes her head, clicking her tongue, “How could you, Swansea?”

“Yeah,” Daisuke jeers after his mentor, “Boo, Swansea!”

“Boo!” you copy, deciding against a morning drink altogether. Replacing your cup haphazardly in a random cabinet.

“What’re we boozing?” a gravely Southern drawl bawls from the doors, Curly just barely scraping himself to the side as his mechanic slips out.

Swansea thumbs over his shoulder and grunts, “Your idiots don’t understand limited supply.”

“Ah,” Curly catches the wave of brown liquid in his mechanic’s mug, “Coffee’s a hot commodity, what can you do?”

“They can not lose their Goddamn heads,” the man gruffs into the steaming cup, sipping as he returns to work.

Once the mechanic is out of earshot, Curly frowns your way and confesses, “I was hoping to get a last cup before the pot was dry.”

“Oh well,” Anya sing-songs, combing both hands through her messy shag, “At least we won’t have a fight over it anymore.”

Daisuke nods cheerfully, despite being alert and bright-eyed without any caffeine, you assume it comes with his youth (because the few-year difference between you two is soooooo massive), “Exactly!”

“We can just go back to cute family breakfasts,” you chide.

Curly snorts. Nodding shortly.

Then he mumbles, “Jim’ won’t be too happy about the coffee being gone.”

“Is he up yet?” before Anya’s question earns reply, she spins toward you, “I think I could use some help sorting meds.”

“Oh,” you shrug, “Sure.”

Daisuke perks up, looking rapidly from you to Anya and back to you, “Can I come?”

“Swansea won’t miss you?” you tease.

He pauses in earnest, though. Eyes sliding off toward the motion-activated Polle statue, a consistent ‘uhhhhhhhh’ slinking out from his throat before he shakes his head, “Nahh. I don’t think so.”

Curly’s head darts your collective way, tilting specifically at Daisuke, “You don’t?”

Daisuke does think so, but what’s got more importance to it: A workplace romp or some mechanic experience during his internship? Pretty obviously the answer is you.

“He’ll know where to find me,” Daisuke shrugs easily enough, sweat bulleting down his temple beneath Curly’s knowing gaze.

“If you say so…” the blonde grins.

[7 days before the crash]

Anya stopped you on your way out after mopping the floors. Given that Anya isn’t a pig and most on-ship accidents are related to Daisuke banging around in utility, you hardly ever go into her office without scheduling. But she’d pinged you specifically that the floors were a little more heather gray than eggshell white lately. By time you finished pushing watered-down bleach around the tiles, you realized the floor was always heather gray. This was a trap.

She’s shuffling papers, looking at you through thick, low-hanging lashes, and shrugging, “It’s that time again.”

“Boo.”

“Can’t boo your way out of it now,” she sits and gestures across the table, clearly a silver base painted over with sad beige. You follow with a rumbling groan and fold your arms.

“Okay, shoot,” you throw your head back over the edge of the chair, staring upside down at the digital cloudy sky hanging above the patient beds. You think it’d be a more serene touch if the clouds could stroll by, but Pony Express -regardless of how big the Tulpar is- apparently cannot comprehend such advancement and maintains their stance on stationary clouds.

“You’re not taking this seriously…” a treacherous accusation because,

“If I didn’t take this seriously, I’d tell you I wanna bang Polle.”

“How’d you know about that? These are confidential and- !”

“He brags about saying it, he thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Oh…”

“Anyway,” you check your wrist which does not have a watch on it, and say, “I gotta get to the kitchen in five, so? Can we get this rolling?”

“That was just rude,” she lays the papers in her hand flat and rests her head in her palm.

“Sorry…”

Anya gives no discernable reaction to your apology, pouty lips popping open blandly around a rehearsed questionnaire she can read with her eyes closed, “Have you been able to complete your mandated task as custodial engineer efficiently and to your fullest capacity?”

Perhaps feeling a little guilty about how you spoke earlier, you clear your throat and offer something just a tad meatier than your typical ‘yep’, “As well as the past five years I’ve been here. Maybe even better this time around.”

She’s unimpressed, “Are you capable of shifting multiple variables on a tight schedule?”

You recline, “Naturally.”

“Are you overwhelmed by sudden and unprompted changes in task when necessary?”

“Nope.”

“Have you experienced lapses in time or are conflicted by the day/night screening schedule?”

“Nah-uh.”

“Does prolonged silence and isolation upon the freighter concern you and/or inspire unpleasant thoughts?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you experiencing, whether of your volition or not, troubling thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”

“No.” you sweat. It’s a little hot in medical today, shouldn’t Swansea fix that?

“Hmmmmmm,” you already know the criticism about to fly from her at that testy hum, and those narrowed eyes -suspicion masked by playfulness, “You gave all the same answers…”

“Well, they’re the same because nothing about me changes!” she merely sighs in response, and you cut her next thought short, “Honestly, Anya, don’t worry about this all too much. Jimmy’s right, this job isn’t hard. Anybody could do it, and everywhere needs it.”

The only difficult part is finding a place to hire you.

[1.5 hours after the crash]

Sprays of blood are already browning onto the metal floor. Stretches of pure red skin smoking from between the floor grates, mushy fat parts caught in the lining. Gloved hands pull at the elastic tissue, gummy white slop plopping back onto the floor. Hurriedly, those gloved hands toss the skin into a round yellow waste bucket -the kind meant to be incinerated after one use- because you’re convinced that if you move fast enough you can pretend the hands aren’t yours.

Instead, a disembodied entity is what plucks shredded chunks of the captain out of the floor, where they’re starting to dry between the lining.

Smaller gunk already stuck to the ground needs to be scraped up beneath a latex-covered nail. They crack off easy enough, you can almost act like it never happened. Really, you could treasure the memory compared to what you know lies ahead.

Just inside the recoverable parts of the cockpit are the hands and feet Swansea axed off mere minutes ago.

If you stress your ears then beyond the shrieking from Captain Curly, you can hear Anya and Daisuke wailing also. Blubbering meaningless comforts Anya trips over herself to bandage him up. A cloth skin to replace what you’re stripping off the ship.

At this point, you don’t bother wiping your eyes -- content to let them blur with tears until you’re finished. After all, it isn’t like smearing the blood on your forearm will aid the situation, and it certainly won’t make the smell of burning flesh dissipate.

Not when the scent has successfully buried into the back of your nose, and is nailing toward your brain.

Sizzling fat and iron make for a nauseating sweetness, the faintest earthy musk just beneath. Then after the whiff settles, the most putrid sourness of exposed, warm meat chases.

Breathing through your mouth helps none, then you just taste the mixture. Making your stomach lurch, bile rushing up before you swallow it down in rough chunks that drag down the canal of your throat.

At the very bottom, when you scoop what should not be touched, you can catch the most relieving smell of Curly’s cologne.

Suds soak pink, slowly growing darker the longer they sit as you attempt to rid all evidence of how violently you each had to rip Curly out of the cockpit. He was unceremoniously dragged along the floor, and no amount of distance from here to the medbay would make the trail lighten. Meaning, as you work your way back, any more muscle stripped from the exposed grouts will be firmly stuck down onto the floor.

Looking down the hall, you see blood rusting on the floor. Lots of it. Stubborn to be forgotten.

You’ll be surprised if Curly makes it just one more day.

[!] new message [!]

Peace and quiet.

Static at either side, your hands have the politest little splay. Webbing tickles as wind whistles through and a moist tar nose pokes around, short auburn fur stabbing into your knuckles. Hot air fans your skin every offbeat. Yellow wings wink from below, dotting dew-slicked sage tendrils. Spiders wave from behind pale silky petals.

You pray to avoid the temptation of casting eyes any nearer above ground. At least this way, staring out into the horizon -- trying to peek over downy hills. Humble curves curling beneath a seafoam green sky, just tinging azure in the corners of your eyes. You hear a breeze blowing through trees -not unlike the sucking of big teeth- but nowhere in sight do you find thick trunks or brushes. You see flapping wings swiftly gliding fatty birds until they sizzle deep into the sun’s scorching image, but you hear no caws.

A mushy, sticky roundness skims your middle finger, making you flinch back wildly. Though you don’t dare drop your stare… it wouldn’t matter either way, you can see more than enough no matter how intensely you attempt to dodge it.

Thick gashes in a cluster-quad cover the top of the thin deer’s skull. Two beneath the eyes and along the snout with two more stretching across the top bend in bend, toward where antlers sprout. Each ragged sniff causes the pear shapes to suddenly inflate, folds stretching until you can make out the pinkish flesh beneath faint dark fur. You’d been desperate to avoid knicking the bulbs and discovering their feel, so to find that they felt like silly putty stretched around an elbow was plenty disturbing.

The most you’ll allow yourself to glimpse are those awful antlers. Frail and formed in straight zig-zags, sickly almost yellow. Despite splitting straight from the deer’s head, you can see where skin parts around the thin branches, looks… homemade. Like yanked chicken wire, or an unbound hanger.

And the closer you look, the more patches you see in its pelt. Pinky lumps glaring into flighty eyes.

Swallowing hard, you just try to keep your gaze locked outward -- into the wide expanse beyond smooth rolling earth. No clouds. No sun. Just seafoam pale light.

Another deep inhale has a warm, soft, almost gelatin-like corm thing filling the gaps between your knuckles. You think the glands are whiter than they used to be, and you think they’re staring, but you can’t be sure; you’re intent on not looking.

You just wanted peace and quiet.

[!] new message: the 00.00000000000000001% remaining

[sent by: zare, jimmy | subsection: stop leaving your fucking buckets everywhere i just tripped]

[1 week before the crash]

Fish. Green scales and an open slash down the rotund little gut. Flopping into one, mushy pile. Content in nature, to be eaten is to complete their cycle. Bred to be consumed and caught between molars, molars belonging to men with poor dental hygiene. Men like Jimmy, who scream in faces no matter how obviously and tightly they wrinkle in disgust.

“It’s unbelievable how many times I’ve had to talk to you about leaving out buckets, this shit is impossible to avoid when you stand it in the middle of the fucking walkway!” he spits in your face, snarling, and without pause to let you explain yourself he ramps up again, “You don’t listen when I ask nicely, so now I have to start yelling. And another thing- !”

“Heyyyy,” Daisuke waltzes in, a dramatic bounce to each stomp and hair bouncing around his shoulders, “I had the soft sponge you were looking for! Stole it for some spilled tonic, sorry!”

He lets out a quiet ‘eughh’, halting full force just after the door to examine your predicament. Jimmy is practically bent over you, stabbing a finger in your face with his mouth split, throat swollen with venom glands.

“What’s going on?” he drops the sponge-bound hand at his side and frowns at the co-pilot.

A violation, technically. Crewmates are not to berate one another on deck, but the reporting route is so demeaningly difficult that now you just let Jimmy go off. It’s easier that way.

“Sounds pretty brutal…”

Jimmy’s seething, fist clenching, and you dodge past him to slip the sponge from Daisuke, “Don’t worry about it,” you shoot a raised brow over your shoulder at the brunette, “We’re over it anyway?”

Your answer comes in a scoff and head shake -- resounding agreement.

[0 days before the crash]

Slamming sideways into a bolted shelf forces a hard guffaw from your lungs. You hardly get time to cradle your bruised core or question what sent you flying when suddenly the trusty old Tulpar rattles violently. Tripping you over hard, solid ground, you barely manage to catch yourself on the rungs of one shelf before your nose cracks on the supply door.

“Hey!” you shriek, another rocky bump shaking you off the shelf and sliding your shoulder into the opposite wall, “Jimmy! Help!”

Polle smiles at the yelp, calling an unhelpful, “Don’t drink undrinkables! If you or someone on ship does: call help at 800-222-1222!”

The doors part swiftly, clicking loudly as two hands force them aside faster. Hands that you’re sure are not Jimmy’s unless he spontaneously got more tan and started wearing thick silver rings. This is strange because you’re sure Jimmy was the one lingering outside the closet just seconds ago, sure maybe looking a bit spacey and distracted but not that spacey.

Your name isn’t called by Jimmy’s voice, either.

It’s Daisuke’s.

Doors clash against his elbows, fervently trying to squash him but he puffs out wider, stuck into the clacking jaws like a louse and he reaches out to you with the most concerned folds in his face. He screams for you again, “Grab my hand!”

You do, nails biting his wrists with enough teeth to draw blood. He makes no complaints, adrenaline masking any possible sting as he hoists you out of the custodial office. The momentum slings you both straight onto the floor, heads knocking against each other. He rolls each arm tight around you while scooching toward one wall with the strength of his thighs.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he pants, “Captain just ran by and said to get low!”

“Where’d Jimmy- ?!”

You’re cut off by a blistering slam -- metal shredding against hard rock. Tulpar screams that way as she dies. Yet something screams louder: animalistic and ragged, pure terror dragging through the walls of the ship like barbed wire. Echoing in bubbles, filling each inch of the vessel until it’s overcome by the shirrrrrrrrrrrrr and whirl of thick, luscious emergency foam spewing out of Tulpar’s gaping wounds. Sparks spitting as fast as still-damp froth can put them out.

Fizzling out with surprising serenity.

Overheads once blood red blink blinding white twice before cutting. Drenching you both in pitch black.

Daisuke squeezes your arm in one hand and palms the flat of your spine with another, wrenching increasing bundles of fabric into his hand. He gasps and trembles, closing your body off between his legs. When all you hear is his thundering breath, you ask,

“Did we just crash?”

Silence consumes you.

No humming gears or hissing pipes. Just your tempered exhales and Daisuke’s gasping.

“I think so,” he sniffles, unwinding the arm wrapped around yours to scrub away the wetness dribbling down his face before it crusts.

You lunge off each other, still clasping hands, breaths mingling between your buzzing faces.

Lights flash hot white once. Then twice. Then red. Then they flicker back to normal.

“That must be the backup generator,” Daisuke assures before you have the chance. He nods unsteadily to himself, “Swansea must’ve flipped it…” he laughs tenderly and without humor, “He’s probably pissed. I totally ran out without saying anything.”

“Yeah…” your head is a little too thick with foam to realize the implications of what he said, “Probably.”

[9 hours before judgement]

teeny bopper thinking with his dick. some useless kid. a cute kissing buddy.

Daisuke can play lots of roles, just never the right one.

“It’s time to be brave, Daisuke,” Jimmy asserts, searching for any weak points he can exploit, “You want to impress that mop-pusher of yours, right? And Swansea’ll be proud, too.”

Daisuke rallies himself, radically stiffening. Both terrified and electrified at the proposition, “You really think?”

And Jimmy’s stark certainty just emboldens him, “You’ll get a recommendation and a date. Everyone’s counting on you. Captain’s orders.”

Daisuke knows you’ve been on edge, maybe if he can rescue Anya you’ll realize he’s worth something more serious than late-night makeouts.

[!] new message: polle says: “call help!”

[sent by: musume, anya | subsection: evals are meant to be like a pop quiz i cant tell you when theyre coming up… even jimmy knows that…]

[5 months after the crash]

Most of Pony Express’ provisional chemicals are Grade A: Windex watered down with literal H2O -- a stock of bottles pumped into the bottom of the ship before taking off. Meaning the only genuine water not provided by Dragonbreath bubbles in plastic cylinders beneath your feet. You’ve assumed the water to be from a sink in some warehouse, compound that with the fact it’s mixed with a bleaching agent and it has to have less germs than the water packets provided onboard.

Reaching blindly into the shelf at eye level, you grasp the first bottle that fits into your palm. Pulling and turning it. Full. Blue. Not electric blue, though, more like cartoon water. Not too much more saturated than the Dragonbreath water packets.

Sandpaper tongue scraping the ridges of your mouth, you try your best to remember how refreshing water is. You don’t think you can.

The synthesizer has run dry. And the vendor is dead.

Your lips are chapped, skinning each other as you push them together.

Rolling the bottle from one hand to the other, you take care to monitor its weight. Heavy. How much liquid lulls around. Over half, you think you could handle over half.

You’ve had mouthwash already.

If your kidneys can survive that, they can take this, right?

It’s just more alcohol with water. You don’t even think it’s ethanol, which basically means it’s safer than mouthwash.

IF POSSIBLE: WAKE AND MOVE PERSONS TO A COMFORTABLE PLACE TO SLEEP OFF EFFECTS. MAKE SURE PERSON WILL NOT: FALL, CHOKE ON TONGUE OR VOMIT, OR OTHERWISE SUSTAIN INJURY.

TO ENSURE PERSON DOES NOT CHOKE ON VOMIT, TURN ONTO THEIR SIDE.

DO NOT MAKE PERSON THROW UP UNLESS TOLD TO DO SO BY A HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL OR POISON CONTROL.

CHECK PERSON FREQUENTLY TO MAKE SURE CONDITION DOES NOT WORSEN.

WHEN IN DOUBT CALL FOR HELP.

CALL FOR HELP.

CALL FOR HELP. 98.9% 91.1% 80.02221222% KILLS99.9%OFGERMS

[4.5 months after the crash]

“I dunno if I can ever have a mojito again…”

Anya is the only one to look up from her cards, pouty lips sinking further and brows bending. Swansea makes a disconcerted grunt from the base of his throat. Daisuke doesn’t move whatsoever, blinking sluggishly down at his dealt hand -- mouth open and eyes listless. He doesn’t seem particularly inspired by anything before him, and you doubt the raw alcohol coursing his veins is helping any.

Jimmy has locked himself in medical to feed what remains of Captain Curly his painkillers. He requires absolute solitude and recently, nobody wants to disturb Jimmy while he prowls the ship for another fruitless task.

Swallowing pooled spit from the bowl of his jaw, Daisuke’s gaze rolls around the table with all the grace of a loose marble before he flings a hand forward. Knocking his bottle of mouthwash onto the side, it gushes out rolling across the table and wetting the spare pile of cards before he gasps loudly and picks it up. He watches you stretch over the table to move the cards.

Swansea snaps, slurring some scathing statement Daisuke doesn’t hear over the sight of you. Shirt sliding up your waist, exposing skin he shamelessly ogles.

Daisuke plays the hard rim of his uncapped bottle against his lip, tipping back until the hard minty taste is scarring down his tongue. With it comes the immediate urge to gag and spit, but he powers through like a man: the way Swansea says.

He has to close his eyes and dig all five nails into his palm just to get the stuff down. Maybe it’s because he’s not like you- he’s never had a mojito before.

“Are they bad?” he asks.

“Huh?” you copy, swiping damp cards against your coverall pant leg.

Anya quietly observes the interaction, laying her hand upright on the table for all to see. Though you and Daisuke are too preoccupied bumbling toward one another. And Swansea hasn’t been properly taking his turns since the second round.

“Mojitos.”

You don’t have the strength or mind to explain yourself so you just nod and keep rubbing the suit off onto your pants -moist red and black shreds sprinkled across your thigh, “Yeah. Like shit.”

[2 months after the crash]

A long time ago, back when you first joined the crew, there was a Polle poster advertising kitchen safety. They discontinued it a year later for ‘violent imagery’ and decided to loop kitchen safety beneath the Don’t be Daft issues. That poster was your favorite, though, and given the state of things you almost regret not stealing one before they vacated every copy from every freighter. It hadn’t been the cutest, but it was definitely eye-catching. Every time you passed, you couldn’t avoid paying attention.

A goldfish with delicate, silky fins swims toward the bottom of its slender tank. Full to the jet-black lid with water, tiny oxygen bubbles floating along the right-hand side, just near the handle. COOK WITH CARE! glubbed the fish SAFETY ISN’T TO SPARE!

An uncharacteristically careless Polle sipped coffee with a gloved hand while the other was hairs away from starting the blender. Silver blades jumping to dice a clueless friend as it inspected the glittery metal.

Don’t be Daft is much less effective, in your opinion. After all, the much less foreboding message has done nothing to prohibit you from giving into Swansea’s pressure.

”Don’t you miss it?” he teased. For a man fresh out of sobriety, he sounded so devoted to everything he once battled. But you know what?

He was right. You did miss it. At least the heavy-lidded, sleepy little high of it anyway.

Absolutely not the taste.

Sour and bitter works best not consumed at all, but you especially think the manmade minty freshness makes everything worse. Enhances that burning taste until it scorches out your nose and works up the back of your eyes. Heating your face from the inside.

Laying your cheek against the cold wood of your table, both arms coiled around your waist. Hoping any kind of familiar pressure will keep down what cannot be swallowed.

You think you only make it worse, like pushing on a tender bruise.

Woozy eyes swing to the half-empty bottle of sugary alcohol. Just the thought of another swig has you stumbling onto both feet, ankles rolling aside until you’re crashing into the wall. Clawing toward the sink to plop your head in. Slobber veining toward the drain as you moan once.

Then twice.

Then red stains shoot into the sink. You don’t get to gasp before another shot comes back up, foul flurrying from your mouth. So hard your head feels ready to pop open.

Rust companies you. Knowing it's your own makes you shrink back. Concern immediate, then shriveling: if that’s blood, you should seek the nurse. You should cry out for Anya.

Another acidic spout cuts through your stomach, up your throat, and takes out a tooth before clattering into the metal sink.

You watch it slide like thick slime into the drain. Pulling out the tooth and pocketing it for the trash. Rinsing blood from the rim with fresh mouthwash, then gargling and spitting the taste from your mouth. You nearly puke again just from the smell.

The gap in the back of your mouth shrieks out. You just push your lips together tighter, taking the bottle with you as you slink away from the scene and toward the custodial office. Conveniently and coincidentally across the ship from the medical room.

[1 day after the crash]

“Have you been able to complete your mandated task as custodial engineer efficiently and to your fullest capacity?”

You inhale the clinically stale air of the medical room, imagining it could dig out the remaining chunks of rotted, cooking meat from your nasal cavity. No matter how roughly you beat your coveralls or snort the chemical fumes in your office, the stench of grilled fat and blood persists. Clawing one nail beneath the other, you wonder if suddenly popping keratin straight from the bed would make Anya forget this evaluation.

“Do you have to do this?”

Anya shoots you an unimpressed glare, “Have you been able to- !”

“Yes, I have.”

“Are you capable of shifting multiple variables on a tight schedule?”

Pressing up harder from beneath your thumbnail until it stings, you’re sure the time is coming: she’ll forget all about this and just bandage you up. Cooing dull reassurances rather than poking for the softest part of your belly to slice open. Guts don’t need to be shared, you don’t think, there’s nothing to talk about.

“I didn’t suddenly stop being capable, no.”

“Are you overwhelmed- !”

“Anya,” you sigh, giving up on the nail torture to massage tensing temples, “Nothing changed. I’m fine.”

She stares at you too hard. No amusement in her straight face before she confesses, “I don’t believe you.”

“What does it matter what you don’t believe?” you groan, slacking into the seat across from her.

A thin teal curtain is drawn around the edge of Captain Curly’s bed. Aside from the offbeat squelch of his throat opening for air, silence radiates from that side of the room while he lies practically comatose. Anya told you she assumed the instant his adrenaline wavered, he was out from the blood loss. And he’s been out since.

“In the event of a work-related incident: are you fearful of continuing work with Pony Express?”

“None of us work for them after this,” you spit, if it wasn’t already faxed out then surely this crash would be enough to terminate your lot.

She repeats herself until you throw out a frustrated, “no! fucking- no!”

And she keeps flapping her lips, droning with procedure that’s on the bottom of your priority list, “Do you consider harming others when you otherwise would not have?”

“No, Anya! I’m fine!” i just smell a corpse in the back of my mind at all times. it won’t leave. i can’t get rid of it. i smell it now, and it reeks. it just makes me want to

“Have you considered harming yourself?” she trails off, blinking up at you. Papers flopped onto her desk, which was shuffled toward the right in the crash. Uprooted and askew.

Uprooted and askew, you slowly shake your head and answer, voice almost drowned out by the new sound of Curly breathing, “No.”

She muffles your name, bit-crushed beneath the captain’s impression. Strange how someone so big becomes something so small: you keck at the horrible passing thought. Curly the esteemed captain, a slab of cooked meat.

You salivate.

People salivate before vomiting, right?

You can say it’s that. You’re so sick you’ll vomit.

“I’m serious,” you think that’s what Anya says, “I know it seems pointless, but I need you to be open with me. This isn’t about Pony Express anymore. I’m just worried about you.”

You could tell her she should be, or you could spare her the piece of mind. Give her peace of mind.

“I’m fine, Anya,” you stand and grin, a firm perch of the lips, “Really.”

Anya rises before you have time to process the protesting screech from her chair, she darts around the edge of her shifted desk and latches onto you. Wrapping arms around your neck and squeezing air out, “Please… please...”

“You’re so thoughtful, Anya,” you return the embrace, shoulders drooping. Her nails scrape the nape of your neck. It’s bizarrely reassuring to have no choice in her arms, “You’re kind. I wish…” you sigh, barely clinging to the remnants of adulthood in you saying it’s too immature to bury your face into her jugular, “I wish my mom was more like you growing up.”

Anya’s claws sink into the top-notch of your spine, cutting sideways in harsh lines before she takes your shoulders in her hands. As if she really was your mother, as if you really did something wrong, as if you deserved all the ensuing agony: she shoves you back with a ghastly face. Onyx eyes swimming in a pearly sea, shock etched into her -down to her trembling hands. She jerks them into her sides to hide the shaking.

“Get out!”

“What?”

“Get out,” she steps back, “I’m not- I’m not your mother.”

“I- yeah, uhm… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… I’m not saying…”

“Get out.”

“Anya, I’m sorry!”

“Get!” she flings papers your way, they fly away in every direction except toward you. When they float and drift onto the floor by your feet, you see the evaluation questions. Pencil notes beneath each one, “Out! Get out!”

You’ve never seen her so desperately upset. Not even at the news of layoffs. Not after her several rejections to medical school.

“Anya?” what’s wrong?

She skirts behind the curtain surrounding Curly’s bed.

You don’t get to ask. You assume the evaluation has been concluded.

[3 weeks before the crash]

A curved spine and furrowed brows are often the sign of an artist in deep concentration. With the way his knuckles are whitening hard pressed against Anya’s metal desk, you don’t doubt Daisuke envisions himself as an artist either. His little tongue creeping out the side of his lips. Pen swipes scratching through the room.

Anya smiles down at the man, “I can’t file my reports when you steal all the pens, you know?”

Daisuke grunts in acknowledgment, mouth opening like he’s about to respond only to let out a resounding, utter silence.

You laugh at the profound focus he exhibits, “I’ve never seen you so serious.”

“Hold on, hold on,” he’s muttering, then shooting up with the lemony post-it cupped to his chest, “Done!”

“Let’s see it,” Anya waves.

Daisuke flips the tiny square around to show off his work: a wide forehead parted by two obnoxious bug eyes and a thick nose.

“Is that Jimmy?” you tilt your head, Anya’s neck limping in the opposite direction.

“Yimpyyyy!” Daisuke cheers, pointing at the name scrawled beneath, “Yimpy!”

“Yimpy?” you steer closer, just to stick the note against your finger and push it nearer to Anya’s face, “Yimpy!”

“Yimpy…” she nods slowly, then shrugs and slicks her finger against the rapidly aging adhesive stripe. Laying it flat against her corkboard to tack in place, stepping back proudly with a soft giggle, “Yimpy.”

Daisuke beams over making the sullen and serene Anya laugh. Turning to you for a private celebration, only to see you laughing as well. It feels even better that way.

[!] new message: signed legal agreement

[sent by: juarez, daisuke | subsection: huhhh you had to sign up for that????]

[first day of expedition]

“Everyone, meet Daisuke.”

“I’m Daisuke!”

“Hi, Daisuke!” the room drones, in a slow little tune reminiscent of an Alcoholics Anonymous chant.

“He’s an intern, so technically all of us can teach him something but I figure he’ll learn the most under Swansea,” Captain Curly nods toward the mechanic. Swansea swears between gritted teeth while you snicker.

“And what about the esteemed custodian, can’t the kids stick together?” he weasels, “Bad enough to get another baby on board.”

“Please,” Curly sighs, the hand he laid on Daisuke’s shoulder tightening just so before he drops it altogether. Clasping both fists in a plea, “I’ve been assured this is nothing that will sabotage the voyage. We should just brace for rationing a bit tighter with the last-minute addition.”

“Ain’t excited for more babysitting.”

You, very maturely, blow a raspberry at the older man, “Don’t break a hip bitching about it.”

Daisuke giggles at the retort, nearly earning his own beratement if not for Anya quickly cutting in:

“Go easy on them, it isn’t like that’s anybody’s dream job.”

“Besides,” Jimmy sneers, “they’re the most reliable part of the crew, we might catch a cold from the shitters if this one wasn’t there to clean ‘em.”

Curly bends to clap his co-pilot on the shoulder, perhaps a bit harder than he has to, and shines that million-dollar smile your way, “You’ve been my lucky charm on every voyage. Highest credit payout when the rest of the crew is living clean!”

You roll the praise off with ease, locking eyes with Daisuke, “Most of what I do is shovel the shit Jim’ spews. You’ll learn more with Swansea, for sure.”

Daisuke’s never met you before. He doesn’t know you at all.

But he’s sure that the boiling coil in his stomach is disappointment when he’s hauled off toward the utility room with Swansea rather than wherever you’re going.

[1 month after the crash]

“I let you in there and you’ll tear the ship a new asshole,” Swansea swears, squinting over you as you lean against the opposite side of the door.

Daisuke looks your way as you shrug, “Alright, already, I don’t even care anymore. Not like fighting with you is worth it, stubborn geezer.”

Swansea scoffs, crossed arms tightening over his chest (Daisuke’s head flips back toward his mentor), “Yeah, right! I’m sure as soon as I walk away you’ll try ripping into that foam and get us all killed!”

“Why would I give a shit, Swansea?” Daisuke chuckles at your bite, bleached chestnut hair flapping around his shoulders.

“Because you’re young!” Swansea points right between your eyes, and Daisuke’s stare swings back around toward the older man, “You’ve got no ears,” you raise a brow at the accusation, “Everything I’m saying goes in one end and floats out the other, until you end up scraping the ship open and suddenly everything ole Swansea said makes sense!”

Daisuke’s head whirls back at you, chomping down a smile at whatever you’ll say next.

“What? You think I don’t listen?”

“I know you don’t.”

“Just ‘cuz I don’t have the patience to wait around until you’re ready for me to mop up utility…” you roll your eyes, “You know that rule is stupid.”

“I don’t know anything,” he mocks.

Daisuke’s neck will crick off how often he wrecks it back and forth, with all the thrill of a high-speed tennis match.

“So, what’s the plan?” that question only earns you a wrinkled glare.

Swansea knows you know the plan. And he knows you’re only dragging this out for the knucklehead beside him’s entertainment. It’s far more irritating than anything else.

Then, just to dig into his side, something somehow more irritating pounds closer and closer.

Jimmy appears over your shoulder -- Swansea makes a displeased grunt from the base of his throat, silently prodding the brunette for -what everyone’s sure is- his 500th rant of the day. Which is the worst, and funniest, thing about Jimmy, even if he’s entirely silent you can always read how pissed he is just by other people existing.

“Yeah, capitano?” Swansea scoffs when the man doesn’t just start prattling.

Daisuke straightens out, hands flaking at his sides. Brown eyes shooting to you, an almost comical bead of sweat dripping down his nose. You roll your eyes again and coo,

“Captain Jimmy, do you have orders for us?”

That, of course, is what sets him off.

Jimmy throws his hands in the air, aggravated, “I’ve been running around this ship, being helpful, while you three stand the fuck around?!” he jabs a shaking finger in your face, and you notice up close that it’s crooked after the first knuckle -like he broke it and never bothered having it set properly (something you wouldn’t put past him), “Go mop up Curly’s shit or something! This place is filthy, you’ve got things to be doing- I know it!”

“I already emptied his stupid bedpan and the catheter, whatever’s happened since is Anya’s business.”

Daisuke watches you with eyes positively sparkling as you sass a man on a higher wrung of the ladder without batting an eye. When Jimmy’s not looking, you catch him mouthing excitedly ‘you’re so cool’.

“Useless!” a hot glob of spit melts onto your cheek, he pays no heed to your grimace, “I pull my fuckin’ weight while you just stand here, a useless goddamn body!”

Yeah. Whatever.

You wait until Jimmy has stormed off again before playing off the infectious saliva stinging your face, smearing it off with the back of your hand, “Say it don’t spray it, dude.”

Daisuke snickers. That’s the best part of the interaction since your pseudo-captain forced his way through. Maybe since the crash, even. Not many things make your heart sputter or remember what it was like to beat, but for some reason Daisuke is different.

As for work... There isn't much to be done on anyone's part. Not yet at least. Daisuke can't do anything without Swansea's (extremely temperamental) supervision, and Swansea can't do anything until the foam is cleared, and you can't clear the foam until Swansea lets you, which so far he has been intensely clear about how little interest he has in that option. Three useless bodies.

Make four out of the incapacitated Curly. Then five anytime Anya isn't actively supervising or aiding the captain. As for Jimmy.... you aren't exactly sure what it is Jimmy does to keep busy except for maybe crawling around the Tulpar to nitpick everyone else. He raves about the responsibility he takes, but as far as you’re concerned each of his assignments have been childishly basic.

Perhaps his real work ethic translates into being as unapproachable as possible.

After talking to Jimmy, you always have the strongest urge to drink more. Swallow more. Bathe more. Purge the entire interaction from your system -kill 99.9% of him off until only the most vague and pleasant parts remain. The parts where he's fucking walking away and shutting up.

[4.1 months after the crash]

Aside from your hard steps down the rattling Tulpar, you can hear quiet lights droning: protesting their own existence. A blood orange hue staining the Polle Horse posters stuck down the walls, your skin glows too, but most of all: it turns the candy pink petals of a sweet hibiscus darker, kind of like a mildew eating out from the fabric’s folds.

You gently prod the ribs hidden beneath that fabric with your shoe’s toe, “Daisuke? You awake?”

“Eughhhh,” he rolls onto his back unsteadily, arms wiggly and he completely falls onto one elbow in a way you’re sure wasn’t intentional. Those suspicions are confirmed when his entire round face yanks toward the center, a wimpy whine escaping his plump lips as he cups the elbow with his spare hand and massages the afflicted bone, “I don’t feel gooooood…”

“I can tell,” you squat down, hesitating only a moment before soothing your hand from his shoulder and toward the injured joint. His body seems to go lax beneath your warm touch, he smiles up at you,

“You’re so nice to me…”

“Uh, I guess? I never really thought of it like that.”

He tilts his head back against the floor, stray bubbles of foam soaking into his dyed strands, thin black brows furrowing, “Whaddya mean…?”

“I just. I dunno,” you guess it doesn’t matter how you phrase it, or what it even is that you phrase, Daisuke won’t remember come tomorrow, “I just talk to you how I think everybody should talk to you, you’re really someone that I like. As a person.”

“Really…?” his mouth splits in a wide smile, even rows of teeth glinting up at you. You take a weirder, closer glance and see that some teeth actually aren’t even, the bottom front pair grow over each other and one canine is a little far to the left. He giggles quietly, “I like you, too.”

“Thanks, Daisuke,” looking down each end of the rounding corridor, you slip onto your ass and sit with Daisuke curling around you. His knees come up until they’re brushing your knees and he tries nuzzling his face into your thigh, “You’re real touchy when you’re drunk, huh?”

“I’m not drunk!” he breaks down immediately after the charge, “I didn’t have that much!” his hand clanks around the floor until it scoops up a nearly empty bottle of mouthwash, he drops it before managing to properly show off what he’s drank, “Swansea had a ton more…”

“This shit’ll kill you, Daisuke.”

“You drink it…” he pouts, wrangling his hands into the back of your overalls and pulling as if trying to coax you to lie over his belly.

“In, like, shots. Quick swallows. Kids do it all the time.”

“That’s still drinking!”

“I’m not a good person, Daisuke,” you laugh it off, but it feels weird to say. You don’t think you meant it, but it felt. Solid. Coming out of your throat so concisely it still startles you how it sits in the open air, “I deserve to drink it.”

He blinks up at you lazily, lashes batting and you feel him yank your overalls tighter, “That’s not true!”

“I’m just someone that got stuck here years ago, you don’t know…” you shake your head, “I didn’t mean it.”

And saying that felt chunky, like upchucking cottage cheese and curdled milk. So sour you can feel it singe the back of your nose.

“Good because you’re my favorite,” he uses your pantlegs as leverage to crawl around and lay over your lap, turned onto his back. His hands settle over his chest, fingers busying themselves wringing his sweatbands around his wrist, “You’re funny and really pretty. And you’re nice to me.”

“You said that one already,” you pat his cheek when his eyes drift closed a little too long.

“It’s true…” he bemoans, reaching up to copy the gesture. Popping his lithe fingers once, then twice, against your cheek -not even hard enough to leave an imprint, “I like you a lot.”

“It might be time for bed, Daisuke…”

“My mom would like you,” tiny grunts escape as you prop him upon his feet, one of his arms thrown around your shoulder and he lends most of his weight to your side. Sloppy feet borderline hindering your joint trek back toward the common lounge.

“Would she? She wouldn’t disprove of my influence?”

“Nahhh, she’d love you,” his drunken grin falters just a moment as you lay him onto his mat, “She got me this internship, you know?”

“Did she?”

“Mhmmmm,” he snags you by the sleeve, urging you into his bed, “Said I was too aimless but I just don’t know what to do with myself,” he blinks up at you, “Never took to anything. Never wanted to try anything… just partied and drank. Now I’m drinking away this internship, and I might not ever get to thank her. Or show her that I learned anything.”

Just as you see water swelling along his lashes, you fall onto his mat, combing fingers through his hair. The bleaching has made it feel a little rubbery, it stretches a bit before untangling around your knuckles, you scratch over his scalp and pray it drains the tears before they fall.

“I’m sure you’ll find a chance, people like you always make it through.”

“Like me?”

“I mean. Pony Express has got to be tracking us somehow, right? They have to know we crashed…”

“Yeah,” he sighs, bloodshot eyes drifting over your features, “You’re so smart, too, my mom would be totally obsessed with you…” content to let yourself drift off in the coupling silence until Daisuke is audibly swallowing and murmuring again, “You know, when I need some dreaming material before bed… I like to imagine taking you on a nice beach date. Like. A real beach, not the sunset window screen. And we could have a lot of fun, I think. I like you.”

You nod slowly, scrunching his hair in your hand.

Even with your eyes closed, you know he’s turned to look at you -feeling his nose nudge across your cheek and his damp eyelashes scuttering along your temple, he says louder, “I really like you.”

“That could’ve been nice,” you admit.

“I’ll make it happen,” he promises, finally closing his own eyes, and committing to falling asleep together again.

Then his brain zaps again, apparently too fired with curiosity to realize he could just ask in the many coming days you’ll spend stranded on this big ass rock,

“How’d you end up here anyway?”

He yawns. Loudly.

You yawn back.

Not bothering to open your eyes before blandly spitting, “If I didn’t find some kind of purpose, I could’ve killed myself.”

Then nothing. Not shock or disappointment or even a feigned gasp. It’s almost… offending, humiliating even. You swing up violently, lips twitching to scream when you’re stunned still:

Daisuke’s wholly asleep. And now you can hear his soft snoring, quiet sighs escaping his -you bet pained and burning- throat.

[5 months after the crash]

“Pfft, I thought you said this would work!”

“I thought it would!”

Daisuke giggles and lifts some of your dead ends, “You know I don’t think any amount of bleach could get these colored…” he’s mumbling, mindlessly, thinking nothing of it, “They’re so fried…”

Immediately your entire face twists unpleasantly, “Hey! Don’t say that…” you shove Daisuke’s hands away, clutching the dead ends by your neck, “Get scissors and just chop ‘em off, then…”

“Right now?” he tilts his head, blinking at you stupidly.

“Right now!” you shout, drunkenly.

Just as drunkenly, Daisuke stutters over while shaking his head, “No way! They’re just dead ends… I didn’t mean it mean,” then he’s tweaking his own bleached, frayed strands of hair between his fingers, “I got ‘em, too! Look!”

Peeking through your disgusted scowl, you reach out and yank, “You do.”

Daisuke snickers in your face, nodding, “Exactly! Sorry I said it weird.”

You nod sluggishly and Daisuke simply lets you hold his hair. You judge the splitting hairs, you think it’s strangely pretty -- maybe just because it’s Daisuke.

“You’re lookin’ at me funny,” he mutters, looking from your eyes to your lips. You do the same, “You look at me like you wanna kiss me.”

You shrug. Coy. Pouty. Perhaps not acceptance, but most definitely not denial.

“Can I?” he wonders.

You lean in first. He tastes like mouthwash, and you keep kissing him anyway.

[4.2 months after the crash]

Page two, subsection General Safety, paragraph seven states that in the event of shattered glass. The custodial engineer is the sole person capable of collecting and disposing of loose shards. There are thick gloves in the office and a hazard bin for exactly this moment.

After Jimmy stormed off with the emergency axe, Swansea stumbled down the hall toward utility. Grumbling about the apparent nerve of your new captain after burying the blade into the window screen. Red bathes the foamed lounge. Daisuke sits criss-cross from you: both your faces turned up toward the cracked screen. Starry-eyed at the glitches like two toddlers sat in front of morning cartoons.

Then a crimson glint catches from your peripherals.

You twirl in place, shuddering into the wall before drunkenly reaching out and grasping for glass.

There’s no time for gloves or bins- not when glass is littered everywhere! This is too urgent.

Bare prints pricked long ways, you know you’re cut before the bleeding even starts. It never outright hurts when you cut yourself by accident, there’s that momentary shock like ice pressed right against your skin. Then you bleed out onto the floor, and then it stings. Skin peeling back exposing the tiniest bare fragments of yourself to open air. It fucking stings.

You whine and pull back and Daisuke hurries over. He hisses at the sight and plucks your hands away from the scene. Blood drips from your fingertips and over the carpet, no doubt to fester a new commune of mold.

“Uh, shit,” he blinks himself as sober as possible, then has to close one eye just to see straight while clobbering for a bottle of the trusty stuff, “Disinfectant! Right? Gotta clean this…”

Daisuke holds your hand palm-up, clenching it like he believes what’s next will hurt at all. In his other hand is a backwash-frothy bottle of DragonbreathX mouthwash -- it tips hesitantly. Guzzling faded teal into the cup of your hand. You hold your breath, expecting that searing wave of alcohol draining a wound. Daisuke holds the bottle upright and stares through you.

It just feels like you have a slowly leaking handful of mouthwash. Sugar sticking around your cupped skin.

“Should I get Anya?” he asks, watching your blood turn the liquid brown before tipping over the edge of your hand. Drooling from the cracks between your fingers.

“No,” no, no you don’t think she’d help at all. You shove your fist knuckle-down into your thigh and smile wryly at Daisuke, “I think the mouthwash will be fine… It’ll take care of everything.”

It’s just some glass, after all.

[!] new message [!]

When you try raising your head, it hurts. But not really. Just an incredibly dull vibration that you know is meant to be a painful deterrent, so you choose not to fight it. No matter how badly you know you should look up.

Mom sits on one end of the couch and Dad on the other. They lean into their respective arms and do not cross the middle of the couch, where you sit. Every few minutes a bell rings from inside the television, but other than that all it plays is monochrome snow. Randomized pixels all buzzing across the screen. A white glow emanates from the screen. It looks cold, you think if you pressed your palms flat against the glass a chill would race up your arms.

Mom yawns, Dad shoots a brief slant her way before mumbling, “Tired?”

His thick voice and drawling tone mutilate the vowels, though, so all you can make out is a gentle, ”Terrred?”

Mom shrugs and speaks over your head without looking away from the television. Dad nods listlessly and they both rise and shuffle off down the hall, leaving you and TV buzzing. A bell rings.

It tingles sweetly, all gentle songbird and high. Sort of like the bell at school warning you from being late to class, or permitting you to charge into the canteen for soggy pizza and frozen milk.

When Dad comes back, he’s without Mom, and he’s got wavy blonde hair and a little scruff. And he doesn’t speak at all. His eyes are hidden beneath stray golden strands, but his lips are stretched pleasantly. Pressing the TV into pitch black before scooping you into two big arms, cradling your neck against his chest.

You hear his heartbeat; pulpy, it pounds in loud, viscous waves. As if it needs to prove that it's still alive. And the heat is overbearing, as though he’s melting from the inside out.

He lays you down and leaves.

A bell rings.

[!] new message: i am my worst moment i am defined by my past and i am fucking awful

[sent by: sender outside of network. please contact captain if messages from unknown senders continue to route to this machine. do not respond. do not respond. do not respond.]

[6 hours until judgement]

Sixty excruciating minutes drag by before five fingers are snapping over the edge of the mattress. A distinctly metallic click follows. Hinges squeak apart, clacking against the frame of the bed with finality. A wobbly elbow pokes into sight before that clutching hand pushes up, dragging his whole body sideways as you yank the sheets with effort. Standing upon squiggling knees, downcast eyes linger beneath the bed -- he can’t see that far down. But he’s sure he already knows what you’re looking at.

Get it over with he wants to hiss Just shoot me. Don’t keep me in suspense.

Your forearm writhes with a ‘click’, eyes heavy with discoloration. Somewhere between sinking into your skull and popping out like a cyst -- they finally rise upon him.

Somewhere between upset and stoic, your face remains unchanged as you lay the hidden hand just by his bandaged arm. Silver glints angrily into his eyeball -- he’d flinch away if he could.

Just do it already he screams in his mind, but all that escapes are wheezy whistles Just fucking shoot me!

You already said you would, didn’t you?

It’d help everyone. Meat would make the crew happier than when they still had those canned soups. That’s what you said. So just get him over with.

[10 days after the crash]

He always said the past is something that defines who you are, but not something you need to be enslaved by. You can be a terrible person, and become something shinier. Less obscure or offensive to observe over time, you just need to put in the work. You wonder how long you can be disgusted by your thoughts before they’re no longer your own.

this doesnt even look like curly anymore

Instinctually, and despite not having verbalized it, you clasp a hand over your mouth at that.

You unwind the bent arm to wrap knuckles in warm bed sheets. And he watches you. You think he knows what you were seething. You’re sorry. You don’t say that. Rather, you ask,

“Do you sleep anymore, Captain?”

He ticks his head just slightly, just enough as he can manage before the muscles shred and burn.

“I bet…” you murmur, uncapping the jade bottle of little white relievers, “it just hurts all the time now…”

He tips his head back, then shudders forward.

Shaking two capsules into hand, you look down at the panting crimson stain that is Captain Grant Curly and shake another two out. Then you tip six more out. Balling the pills in your hand.

His pupils shake around your hand with the pills, dilated to hell -his entire eye nearing black.

You notice now that Curly has no eyelids. But the muscle still attached and bound around his socket puckers as if there’s anything there to move. It all pulses with the best intentions, just to accomplish nothing. Same for his nonexistent lips, singed off just to show off bare nerves beneath crisp gums and gapped teeth. Blood dried into the bones’ indents. His teeth chatter as he moans, as if to speak but there’s only a stubbed tongue back there. Nothing he can use to shape the words to beg for

“Should we just…” his gaze snaps up to your face then, teeth clicking against each other, “Uhm…” open red muscle flexes around his neck but before you can see which way he moves his head, you clench shut.

can we kill you already?

Pure darkness swallowing your sight, you fiddle around the plastic green bottle and replace eight of the pills, “Here, Captain, open up.”

Barely peeking through your shrouded lashes, you slot the pills between gaping, warm gums where teeth should be. His tongue feels like fucking sandpaper, you cringe and clench your eyes harder.

“I’m sorry,” you shake your head, hand shaking at his jaw before soothing the caps down his gullet, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Logically, it makes so much sense: he’s in pain simply lying here -no skin, charred flesh, exposed nerves, chopped limbs- and you don’t imagine he will ever recover what he’s lost.

Emotionally, you clam up completely; rejecting the thoughts until you can claim they were never even yours.

You never got the question out, anyway. And you never saw his response.

So, practically, none of that happened. You just gave the captain his pills because you’re a good subordinate and a good crewmate, and more importantly a good friend.

Eyes still closed, you mutter, “Feel better soon, Captain…”

He moans in protest as you turn. Groaning louder when you call Anya back into the room, claiming to be finished.

“Thank you,” she sighs, stepping into her office with hands clasped over her heart. One soft palm laid over the other, “I’m sorry to put it on you like that, but I just…” she frowns, “The sound… I’m- well. I can’t- “

“Anya, it’s fine. I don’t mind,” you wave her concerns away, a thin, forced smile stretching over your face. And you pretend the huffing behind you is just the new sound of Curly breathing.

Escaping into the hall, you wait as long as it takes for the medical room to click shut behind you before darting for a waste bin. Clamping the sides between two shaking, clammy hands and heaving into it.

Your whole body jerks over the neon bucket. Something like a big ball races up your intestines and just beneath your uvula before falling back into the well of your stomach. Gagging again, you feel it just about to slip over your soaked tongue before: nothing. The thick coil shudders back down again with nothing in your stomach to offer up. Besides spit that burns on the way down.

Your stomach rumbles for something to puke up.

Begging for relief.

[13 hours before the crash]

“Woah.”

Gold tresses gleam beneath the digital moonlight, two pale faces shining your way. Deep lines cut beneath your captain’s eyes.

“Didn’t expect to see you out here so late, Captain…”

He shrugs, throwing an arm over the back of the lounge couch to better watch you, “I’ve had to think over some things recently,” you’re about to prod and he must be able to sense it because then he asks, “What are you doing up?”

“I wanted a sweet tonic, honestly.”

He raises a thick brow at the response, you merely shrug and meander toward the kitchen. Not sparing the code booklet a glance before punching numbers into the synthesizer.

“I’m basically already fired anyway, right?” you rationalize, sensing his judgments from across the floor, “Plus, there’s supposed to be fewer germs in the sweetener anyway, so it’s healthier than a regular tonic.”

When he doesn’t miraculously approve that response and spin back around, you scoff, continuing the one-sided argument,

“What? Will me sneaking another sweetener pack get you in trouble with your old bosses?”

Curly sighs and slumps back into place, “No. I guess not……… Look. Kid. I didn’t know any more than you all do. I didn’t. I didn’t know.”

“It’s not really my business, Captain. You heard Jimmy, I’ll be off to another shithole soon enough.”

Nothing back, not even an admissible chuckle.

Sliding squishy, silicone packets on either side of the humming fabricator is a simple enough task that you can look away without screwing anything. So you watch Curly as he watches the window screen -- silent. Stiff. Unsure, you poke again, “What’re you looking at?”

“There’s a dead pixel in the screen,” he scans left to right as he says it though.

Two glasses in each hand, you sit beside Curly on the white pleather. It squeaks at the sudden weight when you throw yourself back, slipping one tonic toward Curly while curling the other into your chest. Nestling it comfortably in the middle with the straw right beneath your lips, “Where?”

He ignores the offered drink, “I’m still looking for it.”

“Huh… okay,” you squint up at the screen, sipping the sweet mixture.

That look is back in his eyes. That vacancy. Pulling in and nulling all the light above, something reminiscent of a black hole. He stares down at Jimmy that way a lot.

“I just don’t see it, but I know it’s there,” he says: solemn, gloomy, “I know it’s up there.”

Curly has a wide face and wider shoulders. Blonde scruff has grown out around his jaw since his last shave on earth, and the hair on his head is almost waxy with how perfectly it falls and frames his head. Rosy cheeks, button nose. And those dull blue eyes. Captain Grant Curly, your beloved and trusted pilot.

“Uhm, you know, Captain…”

He blinks, eyes flicking your way before returning toward the screen.

“I’ve been thinking a lot more lately,” you sit up straighter, shoulders feeling lighter as you finally confess, “I usually do nothing but think, but now it’s stuff that’s actually… important. And it’s all terrible. After this crew disbands, I’ve got nothing and nobody to go back for. I’m not sure what else to strive for if I’m not being told what to do, I don’t know what else I should stay alive for. I feel like I’m watching someone else use my body to make all the worst decisions possible but I don’t know how to find the will to stop myself,” you feel nauseous in a good way, the way you feel when you lurch the last part of a hangover. Just before the stomach lining starts repairing itself. Getting everything you’ve let stain your back out into the open actually feels…

“I’ve just been thinking that maybe Jimmy was probably right about me… about everything…”

Good.

But if it’s good, then why does Curly shoot off the couch like you lit fire at his feet, and why does he scream like you did too?

“Goddammit, kid!” he scoffs, raking untamed tresses, “I’m not the ship’s personal diary!” he heaves, eyes wide, “We’ve got psych evals for this shit!”

He looks down at you, you’re still on the couch and you’re completely still. Your mouth agape and hands folded nervously over your drink. He thinks he could hear a bit of Jimmy’s blunt gruff in the back of his mind: he sharply turns away and marches toward the doors.

You feel nauseous. In a terrible way. Like your dad just called from the hospital. Suddenly your nose feels fuller than it used to, and suddenly your eyes are fucking burning, and suddenly your arms shake so violently you need to put your drink on the table. Next to Curly’s untouched one. You hiccup, short of breath.

Thudding steps pause just after the hiss and release of the lounge doors parting, a man sighs, “Don’t spend all night out here, kid.”

You don’t hear that over the sound of your own breathing, heavy and wavering. Pretty pathetic.

Befitting to be hidden away scrubbing some abandoned shithole. Desperate enough to hire a goddamn mess.

Jimmy was probably right.

[!] new message: neighhhh^7

[sent by: hotard, swansea | subsection: last i’ll say this, i need to be there when you clean utility.]

[3 days after the crash]

You get it, really you do. After a crash, some gears are bound to not work the way they used to, that’s just common sense. In the same way Curly is forever changed, Tulpar too is marred by her collision. And the same way Jimmy has already taken the helm and is pushing for rationing and repairing, doors squeal in agony as they open. The offside closet attached to Utility did when it opened for you to enter, and you were already prepared for it to do the same as it opened for you to leave.

Except it didn’t.

“What the fuck…?” you groan.

Slapping both hands against the metal door, straining your arms to manually glide the steel apart. Huff and puff as you might, nothing would budge.

It reeks of stale emergency foam, leaking through the cracked walls. One stumble too far back and you may be torn apart by space.

That could be preferable to starving alone in a closet, though.

You just wanted something to do. Something to get the smell of a breathing corpse out of your nose.

Banging into the door with both hands wide open, you scream hard for any pair of ears to hear. “Help! Help! Help!”s devolving into wordless, snotty trills and ceaseless violent slams on cold metal. Your voice echoes in the cramped space. Bouncing through one ear and out the other faster than wails leave your mouth.

You slowly become less upset about being trapped and more upset that nobody’s found you yet. It didn’t feel real until the third time you screamed: Nobody’s looking.

Dropping your arms, you just ball your pants into each fist and hang your head to whimper. Tears streaming down your face. Dripping onto the floor, rolling between grates. Hacking into the open air. Flem webbing down your chin.

It’s like being seven all over again. Strangers pushing rusty carts past you as you shiver in a tank top and jorts in the meat section. Shiny plastic swelled over beef and pale chicken watching high over your head. A big man with a round belly and a white plastic card clipped into his yellow shirt came upon you. He asked your name. He asked if you knew where you were.

“Do you know where you are, kid?”

“Did you get lost?”

“Hey, hey, hey.”

A big man with a round belly has no choice but to pop you in the cheek with the back of his hand. Immediately he apologizes.

“Sorry.”

Not a grimace crosses his features as he wipes a conglomerate of tears and snot and drool from your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. His brows are creased so far down that they nearly hide his eyes. You reach up, snagging his wrists in your hands, burying a cough into your shoulder,

“The fuck happened in here?” he means it entirely, obviously expecting an answer as he jitters you by the neck, “You see

Whatever else he’s saying sounds too complicated. Underwater. None of your business. It makes you feel little again: watching another man with a plastic card over his chest, and a tie latched around his neck have a stern conversation with your mother. Who looks like she couldn’t care less while he’s red in the face.

“Are you fucking listening to me?” he scathes, “Do you wanna die or something?”

[12 days after the crash]

“Huh?”

“Do you wanna die or something?” Swansea swerves the axe in front of your face. Ticking it like clockwork.

“I’m just trying to clean out the foam,” you cannot fight back the yawn as it drags out, protruding the middle of your sentence like a fat beetle.

He merely tightens his stance and glares at you. Axe now against his chest, hugged between both arms.

“I’m trained for this, I know what I’m doing,” for a man of his age he’s more determined than he knows what to do with. Both of you have been at this argument for at least a couple hours. Not long now before the nighttime window screen illuminates, “Besides, if we’re really stranded here then isn’t it better to just die now than wait for something worse off?”

Rather than answer with sincerity, Swansea sarcastically bites, “Is that your way of saying we’re all gonna kill ourselves?”

“Starving, Swansea. Starving.”

Sighing, Swansea pulls a hand on the door and preemptively shushes you. Not that it stops you from nearly splitting ears as you cry “fucking dick!”

Clasping a hand over your mouth, Swansea swings you both into utility after a fleeting glance down the hall to ensure you were alone. Shutting the door so you’re locked into the vast floorspace of a fucking empty utility room. Foam clogs, maybe, a quarter of the room: stuck near the edge of the wall where most of the damage was concentrated.

Before you can bite his hand, or chew out more swears, he’s speaking again:

“I wasn’t lying, nothing in here works anymore,” he holds up a finger, letting it fall to the left, “Except that cryo pod. I’m hiding it from Jim’, I just know something about him ain’t right. I don’t want him or Curly to be the ones in it,” he must catch the confused twitch by your eye because he redirects his pointing toward the lounge where Jimmy and Anya and, most importantly, Daisuke are sleeping, “The thing might be big enough for you and Daisuke to jigsaw into place, and I’ll make sure it starts from the outside. Just gotta wait for Jimmy to stop fucking wandering,” then he sighs, mostly to himself but also for you.

He says, pretty evidently disappointed,

“If there’s not enough room for both of you. I’ll be making sure the kid’s the one that gets in, you know?”

You think you do. You assume you do.

Something about a

[8 hours until judgement]

“Please, please, please please please,” you’re slurring all the consonants together, flurrying out each word as if they could save him, “Please! Please, Daisuke?!”

Daisuke responds the only way he can: writhing.

His eyes are full circles of bloodshot white. Piercing through you ambivalently.

Malice and resentment, but also so so so much regret. Past all his grunting and squealing, no words have room to grow. Instead they stay buried with the rest of his feelings, deep in his chest right about where his lungs are filling with blood.

“Don’t leave me,” you gush, squeezing him on your lap. Devastated over a death you can physically feel coming. He’s getting so warm with all those weeping wounds, and he flexes with each passing breath -- every one taking more effort than the last, “Please, I need you. Daisuke…”

He knew you were selfish. A little flighty, too. And as much as he wants to grant your pleas, this task is just a bit impossible.

You’re asking someone to live when there’s no remaining quality of life.

[1 month after the crash]

Page five, subsection Poison Control, paragraph one -Polle pledges that if any chemicals are out of stock without proper logging, personal credits will be docked from the crew pay package. To ensure something like that doesn’t happen, custodians are required to perform stock counts. Often.

To distract yourself from the mounds of foam cobbling the Tulpar together, maintaining its air seal, you continue to perform this duty. Even if you’re sure it’s one of many less pressing matters.

“Ready and reporting for duty!” is what greets you. Daisuke pushing two fingers to his forehead with the other arm wound behind his back, a toothy smile parting his face, “Hi!”

“What’re you doing?” you skip past the intern, keying the walk-in open.

“Keep you company.”

“That’s against policy, you know? I’m supposed to be alone for this,” on the off chance he believes that you believe that, you force a tiny laugh out.

He takes the bait and shrugs, slotting against the gaping doorway. Picking and twisting his neon sweatbands absentmindedly. His eyes snaking after you, “Are you gonna snitch on me?”

Bending to lift a toppled bottle of blue, bubbly chemical -a motion you feel Daisuke thoroughly examine- you make a flippant hum, “I don’t see why I would.”

You spare all of two seconds trying to push the chemicals onto the top shelf -unsuccessfully- before your dear, sweet intern is charging into action. Bravely saddling up beside you and rolling up his sleeves somehow higher.

“Oh, you need help with that?” now Daisuke curls up behind you, already grasping the jug in your palms without any response.

Daisuke’s arms are not the biggest or broadest, but he’s certainly more capable than the aging Swansea or thin Anya. You’d just about rather die than approach Jimmy.

Besides, maybe the sight of his muscles flexing overhead is interesting. Bubblegum hibiscus flows around your waist and warmth flushes up your back. Hard chest rounding against your back, thick thighs nearly shuffling between yours.

Daisuke is breathing so heavily, but you don’t think it’s from any heavy lifting. Plump lips parted before he sucks his bottom lip between sharp teeth, eyes darting from your face -sickly in the pale freighter lights- to your own pulsing chest. Spindly fingers fumble out for your own, looping around the first two before he bravely snatches your entire hand. Scrubbing his thumb along your knuckle.

“Can we…” he has something in mind, and at the last minute you watch that pivot click behind his eyes, “Can we share a bed tonight?”

Smaller than the closet, you’re forced to slather Daisuke with your weight. Legs tangling and arm over his stomach. He’s got a hand up your shirt drawing shapes into your back; it’s about the calmest thing about him right now. Blunt nails crush the impression of lopsided, top-heavy hearts into your skin while his head is pin-straight forward. Gaze locked on the pumpkin-painted ceiling, the sunset projection across the room more interesting than saying anything he actually wants to.

“I feel like,” he has to close his eyes, visualizing himself on the edge of a cliff. Jumping off. If you don’t catch him, he’ll die anyway, “We do this a lot.”

“Cuddle?”

“Get close,” the pace of his breathing quickens, your head on his heart bobbing in rushed time, “And then we kinda pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Do we?”

“I think so,” he’s questioning himself even with a hand up the back of your shirt. Eyes squeezing harder until technicolor shapes are popping into little greyish stars, “I thought so, anyway…”

Mercifully, you lay a hand over his jaw, squishing round cheeks between thumb and forefinger. Scooching up on the lumpy medical mat to sweetly lay a kiss on his cheek. Instantly his face flares, the hand not shoved up your back latching onto your wrist -- squeezing but not prying, cooking your lips. The next moment his head falls and twists, lips puckered and sugary against yours.

Hand slithering along your arm until he’s cupping your cheek, arm curling tighter around your waist. Nigh pulling you on top of him completely. Plying the fat of your thigh, working toward your ass with cute whines. Grinding tenting jeans into your leg with little distorted jumps.

You pull back, kiss his cheek, and murmur, “Goodnight, Daisuke…”

He sighs quietly but grins against your face and nods, “Goodnight…”

Hugging you tight, Daisuke rolls you two enough so he’s able to hang off you like a backpack with arms wound around your waist. Legs entwining with yours. He kisses along your shoulder before burying his face in your neck. You think something wet drips on your skin, but you don’t ask about it -- too scared of the response.

Daisuke is sweet and kind and you know he likes you. You like him too.

You squeeze the hand he has rested over your stomach.

You just don’t know how to like him without ruining everything you liked.

(at some point in the night, you’re woken by anya -- asking with just the tiniest bend in her lips- asking if you knew daisuke was in your bed. you would nod sleepily and she would wish you goodnight. daisuke, then, drowsily smiled and mumbled ‘what’s up anya??’. she ruffled his stiff, bleached hair and wished him goodnight too.)

[!] new message: stop fucking ignoring me and answer these

[sent by: sender outside network. Please contactact captain if messages from unknown senders continue to route ot this machine do not espind. Do not respond. do not respond..]

[5 months after the crash]

The inside of Anya smells worse than the outside.

A thought you never imagined you would actively have, but something that makes sense logistically.

“Does logic help with team cohesiveness?” Polle asks over your shoulder.

In theory, it should.

“So how did your crew end up like this?” he sounds a little girlish, high-pitched and all. You think pointing that out could get you a visit to the HR office.

But also, the question is valid. How did you get back here, and at this point, is there a point to being back here? The rag is sopping wet and all the white threads have turned burgundy. Everything is so… ripe. Pungent. Pushing muck around the scratched tile. Everything not clinging to Anya seeks to stain you.

Why are you here?

Polle answers: “Biohazards! You are the first line of defense between your crew and disease!”

A janitor is important, after all.

Nobody else wants to play in shit and blood and oil so it’s best they seal off the slimiest grub they can find to roll around in it. Who better than you? If you get sick it’s fine.

“That’s what you’re paid for!” Polle chirps. Giving a mock salute. Obnoxiously clicking his black hooves.

Which is why Anya appointed you the one to wipe the captain’s shit out of a bent bedpan. Which is why Anya gave you one last task: mop up the vomit she choked out. Whatever you can’t mop, everything on her clothes and skin and tangled into those petite little framing hairs, should be burned. For sanitation.

“It’s about all you’re good for,” a deeper voice adds. Disgust grating each vowel.

Polle laughs behind the stiff veneer of his poster, nailed down years before you came here and no doubt hanging up long after you eventually croak.

Looking up at the red man on the bed, you find him already staring down at you with that single bulging eye. The fucking nerve: leaving you all here, free to venture out. Free of your nastiest thoughts, free of the grotesque thanklessness of sucking puss out of an open wound. Free of the concern of where you’ll end up next.

Free to just die.

“What did you just say?” you snarl, an unfamiliar fire encouraging you onto your feet. On a bridge, staring into crystal waters at a fish floating belly-up.

All his crispy lungs can get out is a quiet moan. Pained at the center. Gooey in all the wrong ways.

“Why did you watch Anya die?” his gaze darts down to your hands, now balled in blistering fists, “Why were you the last one she talked to?” he refuses to look back into your face, “And why does Daisuke want your fucking approval so much? And why is Jimmy obsessed with keeping you alive?” unsteadily your volume has risen, yet startling even yourself when you’re shouting. The cockpit safety gun -that spontaneously disappeared not long before the crash, that you’re pretty sure you spotted just now beneath his bed- would be comfortable in your hand right about now, “Maybe our crew would’ve been better off if we just fucking ate you!”

Curly’s chest convulses wildly. Now he’s looking you in the face.

Polle says: “Play nice! *unrest amongst the crew requires befitting punishment from the Captain, and will dock personal credits from the crew pay package.”

He looks afraid. Squirming away from your cinched hands and huffing inconsistently. Like he’d cry if he could.

Sympathetically, you crumble to your knees, bent over his bed and hugging the sheets while dry-heaving self-loathing, “I’m sorry- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” you hack, snot and salt mingling in the back of your throat, clogging it as you rush to spew, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry- I didn’t mean it, Captain, I didn’t - sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s one year older for you, Captain! [6 days before the crash]

How’s it feel?” you tilt your head, bumping both brows lightheartedly.

“Surprise!” Jimmy jeers from beside you, arms folded.

“Surprise!” Daisuke copies, “Look at your face!”

“Gotcha!” Anya giggles, dainty hand curling over her mouth.

“Cheers!” Swansea, despite his eagerness to appear unenthused, is the loudest after Daisuke.

“Uh. Wow,” Curly blinks, shaking his head. You hope just clearing the adrenaline from his system… you wouldn’t think this party could be that much of a startle.

Unless something else had completely overridden his mind, he should’ve known this was coming.

Swansea was last year, after all, and your crew always moves the parties in a routine circle.

“Last year must’ve been wild, huh?” Daisuke nudges you with an elbow.

“Huh?” you wonder if he could read minds. You beam the number four into his third eye, waiting to see if he’ll snag the bait.

He doesn’t, confirming two possibilities: he either does not read minds or is committed to keeping his powers a secret. In both scenarios, you have no choice but to move on, so you do.

“Last year, I can’t believe I missed it! You guys got Swansea,” he points across the room, some would call it rude but you think it’s just another harmless Daisuke-ism, “Wish I could’ve seen him get loose!”

The old mechanic grumbles a vague threat to keep you silent.

“It was fun, he ate three whole slices of the company cake and puked. Real party animal shit,” while Anya recounts how Swansea stumbled over himself as everyone screamed ‘surprise’, you whisper to Daisuke, “I actually made the cake last year. Captain was too busy filing reports from corporate.”

“No way!” he hisses back, “You know the sweetener code?”

“Uh-huh, take notes,” you mimic a notepad and pen in your hands, “2-3-4-1. It was the first thing I scammed my way into memorizing on this stupid ship,” perhaps a bit unwise you’re just telling some new intern this, but oh well, “Captain pretends he doesn’t know.”

An overly dramatic hum breaks out over your shoulder, making you jump in place as a deep voice quizzes, “What’s that?”

Recovery is simple enough, you just twine your hands bat your lashes, and beam, “Ohhhh, nothing, Captain!”

He seems a bit out of things as he laughs. That usual spark in his eyes long faded and lips not quite quirking the way they used to. Even just a single day ago, his face seemed brighter.

Even as he brings the cake to your crew, sat around the cheap table. Anya and Swansea are on one side, across from you and Daisuke. Jimmy at one head by Anya. And Curly at the other by you.

“Speech! Speech! Speech!” Daisuke chants, encouraging you to join.

Swansea grins, lackluster and slight but full of mirth he would never show, leaning his chin against folded hands, “Yeah, captain.”

“Can’t be a party without a speech!” Anya giggles, head turned fully toward the blonde, “We won’t let you get out of it!”

Before Curly’s mouth opens, even a little, the man on the other side of the table prompts:

“What’s wrong?” Jimmy scours his friend with those wooden eyes.

Curly can’t maintain any mask in front of the slightest prodding, let alone from Jimmy. . . .

that’s all it said on the report from management we will receive the paycheck for this delivery I don’t know any more than that

Silence gnaws at the table before Swansea braves to break it: pony express finally kicking the bucket huh what a joke and we’re the punchline

You blink. The back of your neck is freezing cold. Your throat is too tight to swallow any saliva, so you let it all pool in your mouth.

i don’t have any savings they can’t just do this right

Anya’s voice wasn’t always so shrill, was it?

Are your ears melting off? They’re burning hot enough, you think. The temperature clash makes you push a shaking hand into your gut. Tissue bubbling beneath your palm.

A hand joins the one you aren’t pushing against your stomach, coaxing your nails out from puncturing your chair’s armrest. Daisuke squeezes your hand, turned away from Swansea in favor of studying your troubled face. Each minuscule slacken surveyed by him, he can pinpoint the exact moment your crewmates’ voices stop sounding like bland static impersonations and start sounding like themselves again.

Unfortunately, that exact moment is when Jimmy asks:

“When did they tell you?”

You actually look at Curly for his response, and Daisuke decides that maybe he should look over too. At least seem a little invested in anything that isn’t your obvious unrest.

“Earlier this week,” each body not belonging to Daisuke flinches at the brutal honesty, which he supposes is fair, “I was instructed to wait until we’re closer to the haul destination. But I can’t keep something like this from you all…”

“So, I guess you got what you wanted. Without the guilt.”

Not exactly the shot you assumed Jimmy would be taking, but you can’t say you disagree with it.

Captain Curly constantly had this greyed look in his eye. Watching a movie he could recite the ending to. Maybe even one he dreaded having to sit for again.

For a long time now, you’ve suspected he wanted to move on. Who better to confirm it than the longtime friend, co-pilot Jimmy?

“I can get back to my…” the brunette snorts inauthentically, “How’d you put it? ‘Struggle of a life’?” he swings a rabid arm across the table, “Anya never got into medical school because she’s, well, let’s be real. And how many employment years Swansea got left in him?” he sneers towards your more youthful half of the table, “Daisuke will be fine, mommy and daddy have him covered. So there’s that at least! And that one won’t be out of work for long, huh? Anybody could do that job, and everywhere needs it. Only worry there is finding the right dump desperate enough to hire a burnout!” Jimmy slumps back into his chair, leveling Curly with an almost painful glare, “But you. Headed for bigger and better, right?”

Curly clenches both fists, sighing through his nose and head shaking, “I’m just,” he blinks too hard, each drop visibly manual, “I’m just working on my life being a place I don’t have to fucking escape! That’s what I was trying to tell you: nothing more!”

Jimmy bangs a fist on the table before swiping it across to display you all, you and Anya recoil at the unexpected motion as he declares, “We’re the ones you’re trying to escape! Leave the dirt behind now that your boots are clean!”

“That’s not what I meant!” hearing Curly raise his voice is sickening. You turn your hand on the rest to now be the one squeezing Daisuke.

“That is what you meant,” Jimmy asserts, “You just couldn’t frame it to yourself in a way that kept you as the hero. Abandon the crew and make your escape.”

“What else could I do?!” seeing him so desperate, clawing for a way out of Jimmy’s needling like a declawed cat in plastic, has you doubling over yourself with a buzzing stomach.

Jimmy throws himself back into his chair at the head of the table, “Let’s have some fucking cake, hm? Props to the twilight crew of the Tulpar. Props to the captain and his new prospects.”

Even in a different light, you don’t know if you would’ve ever enjoyed here- hearing Captain Curly’s advancement from the Tulpar.

So when he looks to you for any cheap defense, you don’t find anything to say. You even congratulate yourself for not whimpering for him to talk the higher-ups out of this.

Jimmy does not find your bravery as inspiring, and instead scoffs, “Even your codependent maid can’t talk you out of this.”

Ashamed, you sink into the seat. Only Daisuke’s grip keeps you from slithering onto the floor. Slimy and wet and pathetic. And whimpering for some kind of miracle that means this won’t really be the last time you work with your crew. You lay your hand in the hand Daisuke doesn’t pulse, his gaze solely on you: now hunting for the moment you pick yourself up. Or at least for an opening where he can manufacture it for you.

Curly’s knife clinks as he picks it up, sawing through plasticine sugar.

You don’t raise your head.

[8 hours until judgement]

“Please, please, please please please,” you’re slurring all the consonants together, flurrying out each word as if they could save him, “Please! Please, Daisuke?!”

Daisuke responds the only way he can: writhing.

His eyes are full circles of bloodshot white. Piercing through you ambivalently.

He knew you were selfish. A little flighty, too. And as much as he wants to grant your pleas, this task is just a bit impossible.

It’s bizarrely greedy for everything he could have to give, gobbling him down and demanding more. In a strange way he could only accept in death, he likes it. Wanting to reach up and fondle your cheek -- tackle some hair in his fist and yank you onto his level -- Daisuke flails his hand up with a whimper and gargle. Blood spitting onto your shirt.

Jimmy nearly trips over you with a full, unopened bottle of mouthwash in his hand. Cracking it open ferociously before dumping it over Daisuke’s gaping gashes, dowsing you in the process. Fresh mint horribly scars the inside of your nose.

Finally.

Captain Curly’s corpse stench is wiped straight out.

Relief.

Relief. He’ll live!

“You’ll be fine,” you weep, though, hard and ruinously, “You’ll be okay, Daisuke. It’ll fix everything,” but you can’t say what it is because you already know that if you do, you’ll be wrong, “It’ll fix everything!”

Mouthwash can’t fix this.

Your hand is still wrapped, bloody and sticky and aching, infected from sugar poured over deep glass cuts. Mouthwash can’t heal anything properly.

But you scream for it anyway, “Please don’t leave me, Daisuke…!”

Rattling footsteps shake you from behind, followed by a meaty hand on your shoulder, “Out of the way, kid, I’ll take care of him.”

“No!” you bawl, frantically clawing into Daisuke’s flowy pink shirt as he flounders on your lap, “Please, no, no nono!”

“Get to the pod,” he curses down at you. Lifting the axe despite how you and Jimmy scream at him to stop, stop just listen fucking listen stop it stop!

Daisuke’s body lurches against your thigh. Pelvis jumping once. Chest sputtering twice. All ten fingers twitching.

Followed by punctuating silence.

Jimmy yells, as Jimmy always does. You don’t catch any of it.

The sight of Daisuke’s body was too captivating.

Swansea’s voice joins the mix, but he’s far away. Adults arguing overhead. Things you don’t care about nor do you want to hear. It takes you back to your childhood.

You wish you knew Daisuke back then, maybe you could’ve been sweeter with him.

And maybe someone better acquainted with the ship’s layout, like yourself, would’ve been a better choice for Jimmy. You’re not foolish enough for him to approach, but you almost pray you were. Younger and stupider.

Swansea said it himself. You have less quality of life. You’re the perfect candidate to die.

“Kid, I said get the fuck to the pod!”

Swansea butts you in the gut with the axe so hard you cough up stomach acid.

Rolling onto your back in agony before kneeling up, crawling out toward the hall as Swansea restrains Jimmy.

[7 hours until judgement]

The smell of death clings like a snarling dog to rope. Gnashing teeth growling around frayed, rotting strings. Blood and flesh slide off his bone as he lives. Painkillers could’ve dulled the sensation of twinging muscles but they don’t make him ignorant to the fact it's happening. Worse is the lingering stench of vomit. Which makes him feel worse than knowing he’s dying as he lives: Anya was his responsibility and now she’s had to take care of herself the only way she knew how.

He can’t even be upset she took the rest of the capsules. She deserved them if it meant some peace.

Now he prays Daisuke is dead. For as short of a time as he spent with the boy, he knows him well enough to say he does not deserve suffering. And as Daisuke had to pull himself out of that collapsed vent, skin caught and shaved off by metal scraps, he was only suffering.

He knows Jimmy very well.

He thought he did: but then, he should’ve expected this, right? If Jimmy was so capable of inflicting pain, then he should’ve seen those signs. He knew that Jimmy was unstable and mean-spirited and violent, but he never thought Jimmy could torture people.

Anya opened his eyes and he couldn’t. Function.

With that knowledge came such overbearing responsibility that Curly froze completely.

And now, because of Jimmy, he has no choice except to remain frozen.

Even as you crumble into the room.

Even as Jimmy and Swansea’s voices slough down the halls, ringing through after you.

Curly wants to soothe your terrible hacking, wants to get you back home. You’re a misguided thing with some frustrating parents. You should get to find another gig.

So why are you going for the [PONY EXPRESS PERSONAL PROTECTION WEAPON] case?

[ISSUED TO CAPTAINS IN CASE OF UNREST AMONGST THE CREW]

He watches through one eye as you kneel by the bed. A glint of confusion passes over your face, and in the next instance is gone: your thumb scrolls over the clicking digits.

Every muscle in his neck convulses as he swallows. Slow and pained before it goes down.

The case does not open. He exhales.

You calmly seat yourself on the floor. Both hands grasp the metal box. Both thumbs meticulously click through each possible combination to open the lock. [6 hours until judgement]

Get it over with he wants to hiss Just shoot me. Don’t keep me in suspense.

Curly watches, heart thundering so hard into his ribs his entire chest shakes. Just shoot me already.

One pulsing eye, twitching muscle lining the organ.

Your forearm writhes with a ‘click’, eyes heavy with discoloration. Somewhere between sinking into your skull and popping out like a cyst -- they finally rise upon him.

Somewhere between a pill-induced rest and knocking out beneath senseless, whole-body waves of pain. He prayed he’d just go cold after the third day, and now he’s not sure how long it’s been since Jimmy lashed out.

Somewhere between upset and stoic, your face remains unchanged as you lay the hidden hand just by his bandaged arm. Silver glints angrily into his eyeball -- he’d flinch away if he could.

Just do it already he screams in his mind, but all that escapes are wheezy whistles Just fucking shoot me!

You already said you would, didn’t you?

It’d help everyone. Meat would make the crew happier than when they still had those canned soups. That’s what you said. So just get him over with.

Slowly, your lips part -- eyes on his, and you draw the gun from the bed, laying it flat in your palm before turning the barrel. Finger snug around the trigger, teasingly curling tighter until it jerks in your hand, bucking into the meat of your palm.

You pull tighter, until the gun is firing.

Jerking your hand back; he can see that silver catches silver and clatters to the ground, but he can’t hear it. Can’t hear much of anything following the gunshot crunching through the back of your skull.

Iron pervades the room as soon as your body hits the floor. Brain matter clumped around the sliding med door, peeling off slowly and squelching onto indifferent tile. Bone shards sparkle from the puddling floor.

You cleaned that floor just today.

Who’s going to clean you up?

He’s self-aware enough to know why his first thought is something so callous and mundane, but he isn’t present enough to realize that heavy breathing -like a sprinter fresh off some marathon- is his. It startles him. Eye darting around the room to find the wind-sucking culprit, that sick bastard stealing all the oxygen must be the one! The one who shot you- he needs to find them- someone else in the room-

Someone else, surely?

Someone not previously seen on the ship, right?

Someone he’s never met before, you know?

Because he met you five years ago, and he’s seen you walk up and down the Tulpar corridors countless times since he’s known you, and you wouldn’t do this. You’d never shoot yourself, he knows that.

Just like how he knew Jimmy would never hurt anybody.

As if sensing those condemning thoughts, his dearest friend runs into the room just then. Wide-eyed and ripping the gun from your hand without a teary blink, screaming,

“Swansea’s gonna fucking kill us!”

Curly can’t see straight -blurry green splotches zig-zag around medical. He must not be seeing straight; no way he could be because Jimmy would also never kick aside the corpse of some unfortunate kid.

Swansea shouts the name of his co-captain.

Curly feels the laugh bubbling between his ribs before he even registers it's coming out. Raw throat croaking and exhales biting exposed nerves.

It’s just too funny- everything, really- it’s hilarious.

So funny he could just about throw himself into open space.

[!] new message [!]

Amber sands sink beneath your feet. And long ways above you, itching cloudless vermillion skies, are hot pink hibiscus flowers with gold stigma scraping even higher. Each flower casts wide shade from the sun -- it blares at you, dull vibrating from all directions that makes you so very deeply nauseous. It sounds distressed.

Dark ocean, frothy and black, still sparkles over the coast. White sprinkling far into the horizon.

Shiny onyx beads pop out of the vibrant sands; scorpions driving in lines down toward the coast.

All you hear is the gentle crashing waves.

Then a wavering voice, no distinct syllables, just a nonsense song. You turn, and there’s a picnic basket on a pink gingham blanket. You know the voice comes from inside. No matter how roughly you shove your feet through the sand, you’re slowed to a near standstill. But the basket waits, assuredly so.

Flopping onto the soft cotton, your eyes flutter shut with hands folded over your stomach. Lullaby waves coo you to blissful rest, and the voice inside the basket praises your hard work.

This could’ve been nice.

Peace and quiet.

* *

[five years ago]

“And this is the internal system for messages,” his lips press a bit too firmly, that universal misalignment saying you’re not gonna like this, “I’ve only ever seen it used for custodians. Specific requests and all.”

“So, like, if somebody fucks the medbay but that’s not on my schedule, they just get to message me here? Like an email?”

Curly jumps at your swear before nodding slowly, “Uh, yeah… Something like that.”

“I thought going into space, we were beyond email…” you step deeper into the dark closet, rusty shelves lined to the gums with white bottles, labels bubbling from age. Reaching out to tweak the receiver’s edge, tracing a single finger around the tiny screen, you raise a condemning brow.

“Well, we’re still just people,” the blonde watches in real-time as your amazed smile flattens and those stars in your eyes fade over with rippling fluorescents, “Most advanced part of the Tulpar is the idea it exists,” he shrugs, “And maybe the fabricator.”

“Fabricator?” that makes you grin again, “No shit- we got a fabricator?”

Your language could use some work, but that wide fucking smile reminds Curly of when he was starting out -- sure, his uniform still had more specs back then, and sure he was in a much better position. But still, he was just a kid (only nine years older than you now but sure, a 27-year-old kid) impressed by the idea of floating through the stars without realizing it wouldn’t be too different from earth life. Besides the fabricator, at least.

“We do,” he confirms, stepping back from the 6x7 foot closet with ‘CUSTODIAL OFFICE’ printed across the front in chipping white paint, already pivoting down the hall suspecting you want to witness the machine posthaste, “You want to see it?”

“Yeah!” you cheer, slamming the door shut behind you before speeding toward the lounge, calling back, “It’s gotta be in the kitchen, right?!”

* *

[!] no new messages [!]

@toxycodone / @maniacpixiedreamboy + @penguite + @morbiddog + @whoresinatrenchcoat + @voidcat / @fortheharbingers

trying another horror fic a la bug sluts @ da clurb

#daisuke x reader #daisuke mouthwashing x reader #mouthwashing x reader #cw sui mention #cw sui ideation

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