#ive already cried my eyeballs out and will probably cry more

[dashnite]

Found out today (right now) that my childhood friend had a heart attack in the early morning hours and did not resist. I’m currently on my way to the wake.

He was literally my first crush. He was this blond teen w green eyes and just as awkward as I was so we bonded immediately. He hyperfixated on Sherlock and learned how to play the violin because of him.

My last memory of him is getting wasted in my room and playing the violin for me to sing and doing absolutely terrible. He was a sweet, shy and caring guy and I will feel his loss with all my heart.

I love you, Vinicius. Sorry I wasn’t around in the past few months to remind you of that.

[beerecordings]

"Start with the youngest", with Anti n JBM? :D

Yesss I saw this list n I was like oh I KNOW somebody gonna send that one in and then the two of you had me covered hahaha. Love you both and hope you enjoy! REALLY loved writing this one, got pretty swept up in it.

Warnings for hospitalization, intubation, and mentions of torture and blood.

Edit: okay @a-single-green-eyeball made an amazing piece that takes some inspo from this little fic! you should totally check it out here, it’s wicked

He sits with his knees drawn to his chest, his fingers digging into his calves.

Tick, tick, tick, counts the clock on the wall.

Gritted teeth grind against each other in his mouth.

Tick, tick, tick, counts the clock on the –

“Fuck, shut the hell up!” Jackie turns to snarl at it, reaching up to tear at his hair. “He’s trying to sleep, you stupid hunk of plastic!”

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Alright, that’s fucking it. Jumping to his feet, Jackie shoves his shitty plastic hospital chair away, leaps across the shitty plastic hospital floor, and snatches the shitty plastic hospital clock off the wall. Distress and sensation crash so heavily across his mind that he feels like he is not thinking at all, and then, before he can summon the energy to care, he is smashing the face of the clock into the shadowed midnight windowsill, striking again and again and again, until what was once a clock is now shards clutched too tightly between his fingers.

For a moment, silence.

Beep, sighs Jameson’s heart monitor. Beep. Beep.

Cars rush by stories below. The lights buzz out a pretend hive mind, harsh and groaning in the ceiling. Heels click on the linoleum floors. Faraway is the swish of a train, distant and dissipating, foam on an unreachable ocean. Two rooms away someone is crying.

“Jackie,” comes a voice, a low warmth in the midst of so much cold noise.

He turns and moves, rounding Jameson’s bed once more. His eyes are wild, he knows. His hair is a mess and there is blood at the nape of his neck and his panic and rage are tangible, olfactory, gustatory, he knows. He shouldn’t be here. He knows.

Chase stands in the doorway, watching him. His eyes are red too. He’s been crying already. Probably since the second he heard about the attack, he’s been crying. He is smaller than Jackie and easier to tears. Jackie cannot bear to see him in pain.

His little brother.

“Jackie,” says Chase again.

Jackie slumps back into his chair and pulls his knees to his chest, chewing on his nails, rocking, waiting, watching his baby brother sleep.

Chase sighs in the doorway.

“They told me they couldn’t get you to leave,” he says, with a step forward. Jackie turns to glare at his feet, gnawing at the end of his thumb. “Apparently you nearly punched the nurse who tried to drag you away. And now you’re not letting anyone get close to him.”

“I’m not leaving,” Jackie snaps, before Chase can work himself into a full-blown lecture.

There’s a long moment of noise, absent Chase’s voice.

“Can I come in?” he asks finally.

Jackie growls low in his throat, his eyes on Jamie.

Sleeping so, so soundly. He’s so white under the mean little fluorescent lights. He’s so small with that strip of plastic inside his mouth, breathing too heavily at the air that it gives him.

“It’s me, man,” Chase soothes, taking another step in.

“Prove it,” Jackie hisses, whirling on him. “I don’t know that. I don’t know it’s you.”

Chase sighs again. Jackie grinds his teeth and shakes out his hands, chock-full of pent-up rage with nowhere to go.

And Chase steps forward, gentle, and takes Jackie in his arms before he can protest, wrapping him up and squeezing him tight, tight, tight, rubbing his shoulders and setting his chin firmly on top of Jackie’s head, until, at last –

Jackie bursts into tears, rocking against Chase’s chest.

“It’s my fault!” he howls. “This is is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Chase answers. He spares a hand to reach out and clutch Jamie’s, but their little brother does not answer, does not wake, does not stir, not for a moment, for a second, for a single sliver of broken time.

“Let’s start with the eldest,” Anti purred.

He trailed his knife down Jackie’s throat. Blood bloomed obediently at the surface of the white flesh.

“Fuck you,” said Jackie, grinning wicked.

Cement walls buried deep in the earth made Anti’s hide-out silent as a corpse, dark as legs torn off of crickets. “Always so proud,” chirruped Anti, straightening his blade against Jackie’s collarbone. “I enjoy that.”

“Yeah? Enjoy this.”

Jackie rammed his knee towards Anti’s stomach, but the glitch disappeared in a wash of shadow, reappearing, a black haze, at Jackie’s side. For just a second, his darkness blocked out Jameson, chained up at Jackie’s side, but then Anti moved again and Jackie could see his little brother, and all was well.

He tried to smile at Jamie. Jamie stared back, eyes large.

Eyes angry.

“Nice try,” Anti sang, flipping the knife around in his hands. Jackie doesn’t even bother to watch it. He was tired of silver in the darkness, and met Anti’s eyes instead. He was proud, yes, proud to suffer for Jameson’s sake. Proud to do anything, anything, whatever it took to spare his littlest brother a single second of hurt.

Anti dragged the knife across his cheek.

Jackie gasped and swore and laughed, loud, at the warm blood sliding down his face. “Best you can do, Anti? You’ll have to try a little harder, you corrupted excuse for a functioning program. We both know that I – ”

Jackie cut off, startled by a stunning sensation in his face. Anti drew back, equally surprised.

Jackie’s face healed.

And Anti turned his gaze to Jameson, who stared right back, his eyes glowing a vibrant silver in the shadows. Silent with his hands chained. Watching with hatred in his fierce youth’s eyes.

“Oh, darling,” Anti murmured.

Moving away from Jackie. Moving towards Jameson.

“No,” Jackie snapped, trying, not for the first or second or hundredth time, to pull his chains out of the wall.

“So you don’t need your clock,” mused Anti, tilting his head. His eyes shimmered and changed colors, venom green to meet the fine silver of Jameson’s gaze. “Interesting.”

For a moment more he stared at Jameson, considering, but then, oh, relief, relief, he returned to Jackie, lifting up his knife again.

“I want to talk about where your precious Sean is.” Anti began to carve, painting blood down Jackie’s torso, and Jackie bit back on a cry, fire burning across his body. “Maybe if you talk like a nice boy I’ll even leave your little dead-tongue alone, and then – ”

But there was no ‘and then.’ Time turned back across Jackie’s flesh, and, in an instant, slices of skin mended themselves back together, blood retreating to untouched veins, scars unscarring on the white curve of his stomach.

Anti watched it happen.

Fascinated.

“Well,” he whispered, tucking his little blade away. There is a larger one on the table across the room. “Now you’re just being annoying.”

He turned to Jameson and glitched forward, and then he was grabbing him by the throat, slamming him back against the wall, and Jackie screamed aloud.

“No!” he cried. Not for the first time, or the second, or the thousandth, he yanks, hard, against the chains that bind him, bruising blue his wrists. “Anti, leave him alone! He’ll stop! Jameson, stop!”

“No, you know, I don’t think he will,” Anti drawled, squeezing until Jameson gagged. “Besides, now I’m intrigued. I haven’t spent much time with the little one, you know. Family, right? They never call, they never come over to be tortured…”

“Anti, leave him alone!”

“I wonder, Jameson – that is the name, isn’t it, or do you just go by Dapper? – I wonder, Dapper, if you’re so very talented at healing your brother, are you equally skilled at saving yourself?”

“Anti,” Jackie cried again. “Leave him alone. I’m the one you want. I’m the one you’ve always wanted.”

“Quiet, pest,” Anti snarled, and shadow coated Jackie’s mouth before he could speak again, drawing away with a gag in place. “Always is over. There’s a new member of the family. And I’ve changed my mind.”

He released Jameson’s throat. Jamie slumped down in his chains – and yet, in his eyes, Jackie saw defiance.

He is the youngest. Jackie was reminded, in that moment, that he was also a hurricane.

Anti picked up the knife and turned back to him. Two forces of nature met eye-to-eye, and Jackie, between them, was only mortal.

“Let’s start with the youngest,” said Anti, and put a blade in Jameson’s chest.

Stalking down the hall, Henrik is not unlike a hurricane either.

“Where the fuck do you get off?” he shouts, and then he grabs Doctor Jonathan Farraday by the shirt collar, and yanks him away from a pleasant conversation with a nearby nurse.

“Damn it, Henrik!” Farraday cries, nearly tripping over the IV someone is dragging along as Henrik yanks him at full-speed toward the room at the end of the hall. “What the hell?”

“You know Marvin and Jameson are my patients – ”

“You’re not supposed to operate on family, Schneeplestein!”

“I’m the best doctor in this OR and not a goddamn screw-up like you – ”

“Henrik, you don’t work here anymore!” squeals Farraday.

“In the words of a close friend,” snarls Henrik. “Fuck that noise.”

He shoves the other doctor against the wall as he yanks open the door to Jameson’s room, fuming like a green-leaf fire.

The sobs Jackie is releasing into Chase’s shirt stop immediately, and Henrik’s big brother looks up with a fight in his eyes, but before he can do anything stupid Henrik is shoving him aside, rounding Jameson’s bed and flipping open the patient report he stole out of Farraday’s desk.

“There you are, Schneep,” sighs Chase, squeezing Jackie’s shoulders again. “Is Marv doing okay?”

“Fine,” replies Schneep tersely, flipping through Jameson’s charts. “Just his usual over-exertion symptoms and one bad cut. Give him two days and he’s fine. Farraday, why the hell is he intubated?”

“He needs the oxygen,” Farraday defends himself frailly. He comes to stand at Jameson’s side, and then backs away at the look in Jackie’s wild eyes. “He took at least four knife wounds to the ribs, Henrik.”

“At least? What the fuck kind of doctor are you, ‘at least?’ Was it four or not? His oxygen levels are fine!”

Farraday shuffles awkwardly past Jackie’s glare and stops at Henrik’s side, and the two doctors stand staring together at Jameson’s vitals reading.

Chase squishes Jackie’s hand in his own and turns to look at JJ, reaching down to brush a limp curl from his closed eyes. Dark lashes touch his white cheeks, but Chase is glad to see that there is at least a little color there, a little sign of life in his soft face.

“Jackie, what happened?” asks Chase, low and desperate, as Schneeplestein and Farraday erupt into argument over the amount of painkillers Jameson requires.

Jackie turns to him with tears in his eyes. He tries to steady himself through a stammer, struggling even to get the words out, let alone to say anything that will make sense to Chase. “It took hours before he stopped healing,” he chokes. “Hours and hours, and by then he was so exhausted it was like he was dying anyway. There was all this blood from his nose, and then his ears, and then his mouth, but Anti just kept going and going and going – ”

He buries his face in Chase’s shirt, sobbing again.

“Let’s just be glad Marvin found you in time,” Chase soothes, rubbing his back.

“But what if he didn’t? They told me a couple hours ago they weren’t even sure he’d make it through the night and now – ”

“Why the hell you are speaking so much bullshit!” Henrik shouts, loud enough to regain their attention. “He’s fucking fine! Take the goddamn tube out! No, forget it, I’ll get it myself! Get out of mein sight – my sight – go! Go!”

Farraday nearly falls over himself in his haste to escape, but the others ignore him. Jackie rises from his chair, hope waking up in his chest. “Henrik, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know what that idiot had him on. He’s not so bad as they told you.”

“What?”

“Look, see, how his vitals are mostly okay, just a little weakness, a little trouble breathing. I put the oxygen in his nose instead of down his throat like this and he’ll still be okay. Poor little guy. He does look so small, doesn’t he? Shit, I’m sure Farraday botched this whole thing. I am looking at his chest.”

He draws back the blankets and begins unraveling the bandages coating Jameson’s chest with a warm and professional hand, drawing away layers that Jackie could have sworn were coated in blood just hours before. Reaching bare skin, Henrik stops and gently, gently, runs his hands across Jameson’s chest.

Together, they watch the wounds disappear as though they’d never existed.

“Mein Gott,” whispers Henrik.

“Whoa,” Chase breathes.

And Jackie looks up, and sees, and Jameson opens his eyes.

Smiling through the tube in his mouth.

“Little brother,” cries Jackie, and falls upon him, clutching him close, squeezing his unscarred body tight, tight, tight. “Little brother, little brother, little brother!”

On the wall, the shattered clock has remended itself.

[heartslogos]

seas who could sing so deep and strong [165]

They’ve spent an entirely too lazy day doing trash relic runs. Lith and Meso fissures with relics that neither of them care enough to refine, getting items they’ve already managed to wrangle from the Void. Kore’s Nidus is a long, lean line of bone and eyeballs leaning against the ducats exchange console. Nidus doesn’t have visible eyes or optics aside from the ones on his shoulders and back, but his face is angled upwards towards the relay’s lights as Judge lazily flicks through relics to get them exchanged for ducats.

Judge’s eyes keep wanting to slip closed and he knows that Kore’s nursing a quiet headache. She wouldn’t have even come to the relay at all if it wasn’t for the fact that she had to do a quick stop with Simaris.

Judge yawns, transference wobbling a little as his own mind threatens to drag him into a very deep sleep. Dangerous stuff, sleep. Judge can go ages without it — it’s not healthy, but he can do it, and usually he does without wanting to — but when he finally crashes he crashes. Usually he’s woken up by Handsome scratching him with her claws, howling like a demon to be fed or given some mediocre token of affection that she can quickly decide she hates so she can scratch at him some more, or Kore kicking the foot of his bed, snapping at him to get up and eat something because she doesn’t know how to insert an IV drip and doesn’t feel like calling Alpha or Chic to do it for her.

Some Banshee parts, some Lex parts, he even has a few Fang and Limbo parts to throw in, and —

“You didn’t tell me we had a Mesa Prime!” Judge says, suddenly awake as he stares at all four of the Mesa Prime components listed in front of him.

We, he says, because if he has it Kore has to have it. They always do their fissure runs together, and when they don’t it’s only for junk runs.

“What?” Kore’s suddenly alert and perfectly awake, all of Nidus’ eyes swiveling onto him. “What do you mean we have a Mesa Prime?”

She quickly turns, activating another console screen.

“I’m leaving you,” she says immediately after opening the screen, turning on her heel and bullet jumping away towards the docking area.

Judge quickly scrambles after her, collecting his ducats.

“How did you not know we had a Mesa Prime?” Judge asks. “I’m always asking you what we need!”

“I’m not looking for a Mesa Prime!”

“You’re a completionist! You look for everything!”

“Well you were the one who was a Mesa main for a while!”

“I’ve been preoccupied as a sand man!”

Kore’s transmission cuts as she gets onto her extraction unit, heading back to their main ships. Judge quickly follows after her, breaking transference as soon as his warframe is safely secured and in transit to their Orbiters.

“Argon!” Kore screams at him as soon as he’s on his ship, voice furious and buzzing with energy through Scylla’s speakers. “I know you wanted to sleep. I know I wanted to sleep. But. Argon.”

“I’m entering coordinates for the Void,” Judge says.

“Ordis! Where’s my Nekros? Where did you put my Nekros?”

Judge can only guess what Ordis is saying back because Kore scoffs and snaps back at the Cephalon.

“Link me,” Kore says as Judge prepares the ship for a jump to the Void. “Fuck, I’ll link you.”

Judge accepts the squadron request without looking, too busy focusing on hoping for a clean Void run where they get the argon on their first try.

Predictably, they don’t get it on their first try. Or their second. They do get it on their third, and that gets the both of them back at their ships exhausted.

Kore’s come aboard his ship after setting her Mesa up for building. Her eyes are bright as she leans against the Orbiter wall next to his foundry, illuminated by the light of the Void shining through from the navigation area up top.

She grins at him. “We’ve got Mesa Primes.”

Judge grins back, “We’ve got Mesa Primes.”

And then he snickers, “Yeehaw.”

Kore laughs, “Ugh. A Punk frame.”

“Hey! She was my frame first! But yeah. Definitely a Punk frame.”

Judge pauses, and then slips into the worst impersonation he can do of Punk. “Howdy ya’ll, who’s up for ‘rasling up some kuva on this here station?”

Kore stares at him blankly for a beat too long and Judge can feel his ears start to burn but then she bursts into laughter, clutching her sides.

“What the fuck was — “ She wheezes, laughing as she leans against his Orbiter. “That’s!”

Judge spreads his legs and does his best awkward looking bow-legged strut he can muster up without breaking down in either embarrassment or laughter. He does finger guns at her and winks, pretending to tip a hat.

“Ma’am.”

Kore’s turning pinker than her hair as she slowly slides down the wall, clutching at her sides, practically yowling with laughter. Judge can’t help but smile as he watches her curl up on the floor, reaching out to feebly try and smack him and failing because her eyes are scrunched up wit laughter.

“You’s been looking in need of some assistance,” Judge says, struggling to keep his voice as low as he can get it.

“He doesn’t even talk that way,” Kore whimpers. “I hate it.”

But she’s still laughing and shaking with laughter and crying with laughter so Judge perseveres.

“The way I figure it,” Judge starts and Kore snorts. It’s a loud, slightly painful sounding thing, but she’s giggling the entire way through it as she weakly tries to hit him.

“I can’t,” Kore hiccups. She actually hiccups. “Blease. No. Stop.”

If all Judge had to do was do very bad impersonations of Punk to get Kore to laugh like this he would have done this the second he met the blue Tenno as an Atlas ages ago.

“I reckon that you an’ me having a bit o’fun at Punk’s expense’s a mighty fine way to pass the time while our ol’ gunslinger gal is cookin’ over there in yonder foundry.”

“I hate you,” Kore cries, giving up entirely and just sprawling out on the floor weakly. “God.”

Her hand finds his foot and she weekly clings to his ankle.

“I can’t breathe,” she wheezes.

Scylla chimes that he’s getting a communication channel request and Judge opens it without thinking, the ship broadcasting Punk’s voice as he says, “Hey, ya’ll good for — “

And that’s as far as he gets before Kore shrieks. She howls. She screams.

And Judge goes down with her in a fit of giggling laughter because he can’t hold it in anymore.

“Are you okay?” Punk asks, sounding alarmed. “Ya’ll need some assistance? Guys?”

“I can’t,” Kore sobs, “I can’t do it anymore.”

“Mesa — “ Judge attempts to explain to Punk. “Mesa — “

“You — “ Kore wheezes. “You.”

“Are ya’ll thinking about me and Mesa? I was never a Mesa, you know,” Punk says after a beat. “How come everyone makes that assumption? Empress messaged me as soon as Mesa Prime’s artifacts started coming out of the Void and she was laughing and hootin’ an’ hollerin’ about just like you two. Seriously. What’s with that?”

Judge hopes that Scylla is recording this because he wants stills of Kore’s laughing, red and blotchy, face. It’s a little creepy probably, but he wants to remember her laughing forever. He wants to remember him making her laugh forever. He wants the feeling of being filled with Kore’s favorite cola from the tips of his toes to the end of his hair.

“I hate it,” Kore sniffles, hand clawing at Judge’s arm as she tries to gasp for breath. “I hate it so much.”

But she’s smiling.

(I love you.)

She’s smiling.

(I love you so much.)