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captduggs · 26 days ago

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Tim Bradford - East Side of Sorrow - Chapter 2 - Was it his blood, or his conscience, or the alcohol?

inspired by a song of the same title, by zach bryan :)

tags: Abandonment, Angst, Army, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Military Backstory, My First Fic, Song Lyrics, Tim Bradford is a Bad Communicator, Zach Bryan - Freeform

read on ao3

So I walked miles on the Tulsa streets

Light started beamin' in from the east

6 AM and fucked up again

Askin' God where the hell He'd been

Bradford was never the same soldier. Yes, he still executed every order the Army asked him to but he was never the same up there.

Tim’s first panic attack came a week after the incident. It had been a week with total hours of sleep in the single-digits. He’d leave the barracks to go on walks in the wee hours of the night, anything to bring his brain a smidge of peace. He was less than 10 minutes into tonight’s walk when he saw bright flashes of light in his eyes before he collapsed on that dirt road. Another moment where his breaths were shallow and his vision was blurry, but this time add in his lungs feeling like they were on the verge of collapsing and he couldn’t feel any part of his body except the clenching of his lungs. His mind went blank, and for the second time he thought he was going to die, but somehow this time was worse.

As the panic attack subsided and his mind came back to him, he cursed himself. How dare he feel like this, he’s alive, he made it out alive, he’s not weak, he’s a pure, highly-ranked American soldier, honored with the duty of fighting for what’s right. Why, why , how dare he feel like this. Tim needed every thought, every episodic memory to just stop.

Tim walked his jellied legs back to the barracks and turned to the one thing his teenage self said he’d never turn to. He snagged a bottle out of the plastic mini fridge and slumped against the side of it, busting the top off the beer using the corner of the table. His muscles tired, uniform soaked in a cold sweat, head and throat aching like no other. He dragged the rim of the bottle to his lips and forced the liquid down the hatch, the whole bottle gone in one swig. Immediately, his mind raced to the countless times that very liquid caused Tim’s father to punch and kick him, slamming him into walls, leaving drywall and sawdust littered in his dirty blonde hair, blood dripping from his mouth, all while his mother, who was supposed to help and protect him, stood motionless, and his helpless little sister Gen, accompanied her with tears threatening to drop from her eyes. And then, Tim’s mind went quiet, blank.

All the memories and thoughts just stopped. He stared at his dirt-covered legs and boots and the shitty tiled floor and nothing came to mind. It was the most bliss he’d felt since 9/11, almost five years prior. Tim twisted back toward the fridge, grabbing and busting open another bottle, chugging it, and then repeating the process with another. He fell asleep on that floor right at 6AM, and finally got an uninterrupted eight hours.

He said the sun's gonna rise tomorrow

Somewhere on the east side of sorrow

You better pack your bags west

Stick out your chest

And then hit the road

The next morning, Tim’s first sense of consciousness was before he opened his eyes, bright light seeping through. When he opened them, he was ready to see the industrial lights of the group’s shared kitchen, or maybe sunlight peeking through the windows–not his major’s blinding flashlight beaming into his pupil.

“BRADFORD! GET YOUR ASS UP!” Tim stumbled to his feet, moving quicker than he ever has in his life. “IT IS 14:00 AND YOUR SORRY ASS HASN’T MOVED FROM THIS CORNER ALL DAY. YOU’RE LUCKY YOU HAD NO ASSIGNMENTS TODAY.”

Tim stood there like a robot, eyes looking at his major, but by no means focusing on him. Tim couldn’t bear to actually look at a man he had so much respect for.

That moment changed everything, bringing about a life-changing revelation–he needed to get out. The war was winding down, he’d done his time, it should be easy. Despite the headache from those eight-plus hours slumped against the fridge, he knew that if he stayed in the army any longer, constantly following other men’s orders, no matter what rank he was; chasing the glory story, no matter who was lost; yet still being devastated every time he heard of another great man being blown to shreds–he was going to end up just like his father. A drunk. God-forbid having kids of his own one day and giving them enough emotional, and physical trauma to last generations.

Tim spoke to the post’s general the next day, given clearance for an honorable discharge, to his luck, technically before his tour was over. He was able to jump on the first flight back to the states, finally ending his journey at Edwards Air Force Base. As corny as it sounds, it felt good to be back on American soil after almost a decade spent in middle eastern deserts. The year was now 2006. Tim Bradford was twenty-six years old, and he felt the same way he did all those years ago in his guidance counselor’s office, with no idea about what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

“Heard your brother lost his mind in the city last fall

Was it his blood, or his conscience, or the alcohol?”

“Did the Navy do him well or did he wind up sick

Like every other brave boy from these run down sticks?”

Upon reaching Edwards, Tim called the only people he thought would pick up. First, he tested his luck and tried their house number, praying to god his father wouldn't be the one to pick up the phone. No answer. He then decided to try his sister, Genny, and shockingly, “Hello? Who is this?”

Tim stood on the other side of the phone in shock, silent. It was clearly the right number, definitely his sister, but she sounded so…different. Not just older but more confident, sure of herself. It hits him how much he’d missed while he was away.

“Hello?”

“Genny, it’s me, Tim?”

It’s Genny’s turn for silence. She hadn’t heard of her brother since he left their family years ago, and while she first resented his leaving, she knew he always had it far worse than she did, and him getting out was for the best.

“Yeah, yeah, hi, is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Um, I’m out. I’m at Edwards right now, if you…or mom, pick me up?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

Tim breathes a sigh of relief, “Okay. Thank you, see you soon,” before he hangs up the phone and sits back down in the lounge. About two hours later he meets Genny at the entrance. She gets out of the family SUV. They both stare at each other, stunned at what one another has become. Genny, no longer the spunky 11-year-old Tim left, but now nearly twenty, but with the same stark red hair and blue eyes. Tim, much tougher-appearing now, but with his matching sapphires, still as vulnerable as ever. After taking each other in, the tension finally breaks, crashing into one another for their first hug in God knows how long. Both sets of blues now filled with tears that refuse to drop, the two hop into the SUV, ready for the long drive back into the City of Angels. Again, it’s silent, for nearly fifteen minutes until they hit the freeway, and Tim breaks.

“So, how are things?”

“Don’t do that.” Genny replies, taking her eyes off the road.

“What?”

“Pretend like nothing happened. Like you didn’t leave us, with no communication for almost ten years. If it wasn’t for the military showing up to the door we wouldn’t know if you were dead or alive.”

Looking away from sister, Tim begins twiddling his fingers, “You know I had to get out.”

“Yeah, but you could’ve called. Update us. Send a letter, birthday wish. I know you hate dad but you didn’t have to leave the rest of us hanging either.”

Tim remains silent, and then Genny continues: “So many people asked about you, or if they didn’t ask, made up stories of their own, ‘he went crazy,’ ‘didn’t make it through basic,’ ‘went MIA,’ and we didn’t know who or what to believe.”

“I’m sorry Gen,”

Genny gives a slight acknowledgement to his apology, but definitely not a sense of forgiveness. “Mom will be happy to see you.”

Tim smiles at that. As much as he wishes his mom stood up for him more growing up, he still loved her, and knows how much she felt the same. Naturally though, his mind wandered to his dad. Was he even around? He knew his parents’ marriage was just a legal binding at this point, but they evidently weren’t the type to finally get a divorce either. As if reading his mind, Genny mumbled, “Dad uh, hasn’t been home in a while. Like, three years, while.”

“All for the better,” Tim asserted.

Tim knew he and his sister’s differing opinions on their father, and decided not to push the issue any further, and the car remained silent as they made their way back into LA. Arriving at their childhood home, Tim and Genny hopped out the vehicle, with Tim grabbing his duffle from the back. Genny steps inside first, Tim takes a second, a deep breath, into the home he never wanted to step foot in again.

Walking through the entryway, Tim feels an immediate chill down his spine seeing the same areas of the house where he’d been turned into a victim over, and over, even catching the spots where he and his father had to fill in chipping paint, caulk gaps, and fill larger holes in the wall made the night before.

As he walks further into the house, Tim hears the sink running in the kitchen, splashing across the surface and dishes being set into the drying rack. The two siblings walked into the kitchen silently, and feeling the presence of her children, Cynthia Bradford turned around and stilled, unable to believe that her baby boy had finally come home. A short, but lanky woman, Mrs. Bradford looked just like her children, with Genny’s striking features, like their shared red hair, but Tim’s overall look, and those signature Bradford blues.

Her voice soft as ever, “Tim,” she turns to set the bowl and plate she was holding back in the sink, and moves to crush her son in a hug, something they hadn’t shared since Tim left for basic. Tim returns the hug, slightly, wrapping just one arm around his mother’s waist.

“I thought you’d never come back,” Cynthia continued.

“I served my time, now I’m back home. All part of the process” Tim retorted.

“Okay then,” Cynthia nodded, shocked by this new Tim she was facing. He, for the most part, looked the same as when he left, possibly a little more built, but his demeanor is completely different, and she can’t determine if it’s for better or for worse. He was always the sweetest boy growing up, even after all he went through, but now he seems like that’s all gone, or at least was hidden away for war.

“Well, let me at least make you something, you’re probably hungry after eating all that army food for so long.”

“No, I’m okay, it wasn’t too bad, just need to crash for a bit and figure out what’s next, then I’ll be on my way.”

To that response, Tim felt Genny tense up, like she didn’t expect him to be leaving again so soon. Tim nodded back at his mom, before turning away to head toward the back of the house into his childhood bedroom, which was exactly as he left it. Royal blue walls, but immensely dark. Bed unmade (if only his major would see this), clothes strewn across the floor, except there was a distinct stench that Tim didn’t remember there being all those years ago.

He tosses his duffle on the bed, and for a minute just stands in what feels like a time capsule. All the things that he made an effort to run away from were right in front of him in an instant. His dad wasn’t even in the house anymore, and it’s like Tim could feel him breathing down his neck again. All of a sudden Tim felt his throat get thick and his head began to spin, vision growing fuzzy. Then his chest got tight, and he felt like his legs could no longer hold his weight. He collapsed onto his bed and grasped at his sheets, begging his hands to quit shaking. His inclination was right, he had to get out of here. ASAP.

#nai writes #my first fic :)#tim bradford #tim bradford fic #the rookie #the rookie fic #ao3 #fanfiction #fics

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coredrill · 1 year ago

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as foretold, bang brave bang bravern was crazy good this week

it's just. gosh. for as much as i talk abt bravern being unhinged the fact of the matter is that it is actually SO restrained. ESPECIALLY for something in a medium that is already a little self-indulgent and referential. like for all of bravern himself's clear love for mecha there have been so few explicit references to other shows? and then this ep had so fucking many - ttgl (which - fucking hilarious to use it against a character KONISHI is voicing and then have that DD be fucking useless except for wanting to see some cool fights LSKDJFH) and flcl and symmetrical docking and rider kick and jeeg and gundam and the fuckin uhhhhhhhh exkaiser i think but i dont remember for sure its the same one that showed up in the earlier fight w superbia too. like w the other mecha on the roof framing. and probably about thirty more that i'm for sure missing or not recognizing or forgetting ON TOP OF all the obari posing and punching which have been sneaking into the visuals before this - but it was all for the purpose of having us watch this hype battle and get all excited to make the ending hit THAT much harder. and holding off the first gattai until episode NINE???? the thing we're all expecting to happen at any fucking moment, because there was no way that the souls of isami and bravern could've combined and actually resonated for a true gattai until that point????? like it's ALL in service of the story rather than wow cool robot even tho it IS a pretty damn cool robot. this show makes me feel like i did my homework and i'm acing the test AND I HAVENT EVEN WATCHED THAT MUCH MECHA TBH. LMFAO. all the "who is this show even FOR (eyeroll emoji)" comments back in like ep2 get funnier every week bc bravern knows its audience like the back of its hand and it gets clearer and clearer every week that its execution is fucking razor sharp. this show is SO SUCKING GOOD and I LOVE IT. that was supposed to say fucking good but sucking works too

the fucking NOISE superbia makes when bravern is like "don't u want to fight me when i'm EVEN STRONGER" took me the FUCK out

[gets beer sponsorship] [makes Consumption Of Food And Drink a tether point to Humanity] [out-cooks the cooking show] i'm gonna buy more kona beer (<- fucking hates beer)

fish jumpscare !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i honestly don't think i've seen any anime with a fucking ED DROP before. lmfao

lewis smith. you want so badly to be the protagonist. to be the rival. to be the one who dies to motivate the hero. to be the MECHA ITSELF. and yet you are the love interest!!! you are GOING to be saved whether you want it or not!!! you ARE rain mikamura. you ARE the heroine. Let Isami Save You. you've got a family of people who fuck with time in different and fun ways to save each other and its his turn now whether you like it or not!!!!!!!!

he rly did put that mask back on right before he died…………..subtext, cowards, so on and so forth

thanks bravern for inventing gay ppl. was surprised to get a literal love confession AND an almost-kiss here but tbh at this point i think isami could use a good old-fashioned hug more than anything else. like one of those that cracks his spine. poor baby rice cracker is goin thru it LMAO. also i keep calling isami baby rice cracker and i cannot stop myself anymore………..baby rice cracker…………

me after saying every week that this show has done something to my brain "guys i think this show has done something to my brain"

wow this post is allover the place moreso than usual. like i said earlier this ep was so fucking DENSE and GOOD that i'm gonna need some time to process All That. gosh. [bravern voice] BRAAAAAAVEEEERN!!!!!!!!!!!

#a: bravern #bravern spoilers #t.bbbb

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vanosslirious · 10 months ago

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BBS Dialogue Prompts #362

BBS Dialogue Prompts & Sentence Starters: [ 11 ]

VANOSSGAMING

How did I survive that?

I want to do that.

I can get inside of you.

Knock him off!

Surely he wouldn't do the same one three times, would he?

That's why I said it, I'm a fucking genius.

How did you not die?

Just right before you joined the call.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Someone do the honor, I am not picking this.

I got one life, I'm scared, I don't want to go.

Don't waste it on me either.

None of that shit counted.

I'm getting ready for the next round.

I'm invincible, you can't kill me!

Guy's, I'm still stuck, help me.

You'll never find me!

How did you manage to do that?

That wasn't a hint.

I'm not doing anything, I'm just holding it.

SMII7Y

Let's look at the stars together...stand to my left.

Why do you sound like I'm talking to you through a prison phone?

I’m not thanking you.

I’m glad I fucking did!

I’m not thanking anyone.

Good luck killing me though, I'm on your fucking team, idiot!

I don't know what to feel about what you said.

I’m having major deja vu right now, this is nuts.

You better stop that.

Not the time for stunts.

H2ODELIRIOUS

He’s looking for drugs.

Get his money, take his money!

I think you’re good.

You turned into a chicken.

Everything turned into a TNT!

I didn’t do that.

I’m going to try some battery acid!

Why is there a cat down here?

You know what, fuck it, I’m taking more.

We’re in a deep dark hole of death!

JERICHO

Do you feel lucky?

You walked past me.

I just heard glass break.

You dropped me off over here, it's scary.

Why do vampire's need guns?

If you consume a human to get their ability in front of another human, you get tagged.

Why do they care if their friend is getting eaten in front of them?

That's it, you're fucking done.

That's alright, sometimes I like it when you just say shit.

No, you immediantly get notified.

NOGLA

He got you how you got me.

Do a breakdown on my brain, please.

Wait, do we stay in here?

Can we leave, we can leave!

How did this get five stars?

To be honest, I just like him.

I'll be right back, my food's here, I got a cookie delivered.

That's what we pay a hundred grand for, baby.

Be chill was his final words.

There's just going for me, why?

BLARG

You look like someone wishes their pet egg to be real.

Oh, so do we.

I hit grandma with a knife and it's still in her.

Grandma, why do you have so many beer bottles in your room?

We have so many weapons to murder our grandma with right now, it's insane.

Does anyone else have any keys?

Yeah, I will, working on it.

Stop kicking me out the window!

That's not what he said, grandma.

I don't even know who I am anymore.

SILENTDROIDD

I got left, I got left, go.

I didn't know it was gonna explode.

The van is freaking slow.

We're gotta go, he's gonna escape.

What the fuck just happened?

Uh, guys, remember that robot we saw over there?

Uh, even worse, he has a twin brother.

They're like secret paths.

Guys, I don't know how to hack.

Let's go, boys, let's escape in style.

GRIZZY

Alright, everybody pray to god.

I should've clicked your name because rightfully that was mine!

I'm just gonna stick with mine.

We can't afford shit.

Yeah, he's gonna rob your shit.

That'll never happen and we know it.

Oh, I forgot I'm cursed, it doesn't even fucking matter.

Hear me out, both.

This is the exact same thing.

Literally, nothing's new.

MOO

That is useful.

I just railed you.

He blew it too early.

I had it just sitting in my inventory.

Guys, I had one heart left.

I'll help you!

You're not missing much.

That was a massacre, followed by a dispersion.

I had to go take care of my kids, sorry!

Screw doing it together, right?

BIGPUFFER

They have the best goalie in the fucking world.

Give me the fucking ball.

That was all me.

I figured it out.

I think those are bots.

So annoying, I knew you would do it too.

That's a shit ton of loot.

The tree's on fire!

Can I land in the water?

Stop using me as a weapon.

TERRORISER

I just want to get one.

I'm doing gang signs.

What was that noise?

Oh my god, I'm horny.

For once, I'm actually happy to be first.

I'm trying to be optimistic.

I think I got the gold.

I got my tail back.

Keep 'em away from me.

Oh, you're making one, huh?

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talk-like-boomhauer · 10 months ago

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(Scene: The familiar setting of Arlen, Texas. Hank Hill is standing outside his house, chatting with his friends Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer in the alley. They each hold a beer as usual.)

Hank: (Taking a sip of his beer) You know, fellas, I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about skirl lately.

Dale: (Adjusts his cap) Skirl? Hank, are you finally succumbing to government mind control? They’ve been beaming skirl directly into our brains for years. I’ve got a lead-lined hat, but who knows what it’s done to the rest of you?

Boomhauer: Mmm-hmm, dang ol’ skirl, man, you talkin’ 'bout that noise, man, that whistlin’, that high-pitch, man, like a dang ol’ bagpipe, man, skirl’s a dang ol’ Scotsman’s best friend, man.

Bill: (Looking puzzled) I thought skirl was that new brand of cereal. I had a bowl this morning. Tasted kind of like disappointment and the color beige.

Hank: (Sighs, looking serious) No, no, it’s not cereal, Bill. It’s...well, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it’s somethin’. Bobby came home from school talkin’ about it, said he wants to join the skirl team. Now, I know I should be supportive, but I’m just not sure I’m comfortable with him gettin’ involved in somethin’ I don’t understand.

(Cut to Peggy Hill inside the house, sitting at the kitchen table with Bobby. She’s holding a pamphlet titled “Everything You Need to Know About Skirl.”)

Peggy: (Reading aloud) “Skirl is the ancient and mystical art of whistling while wearing roller skates. The practitioner must maintain perfect balance and pitch to achieve true skirl. Only the most dedicated will ever master the elusive Skirl of Destiny, a note so pure it can summon a squirrel army.”

Bobby: (Excited) I’m gonna be the best skirler in all of Arlen, Mom! I’ll have squirrels doing my bidding in no time!

Peggy: (Proud) Well, Bobby, you always did have a knack for the unusual. And roller skating builds strong ankles, which is important for when you grow up to be the President of the United States.

(Cut back to Hank and the guys in the alley.)

Hank: (Scratching his head) I just don’t know, fellas. I mean, skirl? What happened to good ol’ fashioned sports, like football or propane-tossin’?

Dale: (Leaning in) Don’t fight it, Hank. Skirl is the future. The government’s using it to control the masses. Once they have us all skirlin’, they’ll flip the switch, and we’ll be like little roller-skating, whistling robots!

Boomhauer: Man, talkin’ ‘bout you gotta embrace it, man, like that dang ol’ technology, man, you fight it, you get left behind, man, next thing you know, you’re dang ol’ chasin’ squirrels and skirlin’ right alongside ‘em, man.

Bill: (Starting to cry) I just want to be good at something, Hank. Maybe...maybe skirl is my thing.

Hank: (Sighs) Alright, Bill, if you want to try it, I’ll support you. But I’m stickin’ with what I know best: mowin’ lawns, drinkin’ beer, and sellin’ propane.

(The scene fades out with the four men standing in silence, contemplating the bizarre new world of skirl. The sounds of distant, off-key whistling on roller skates can be heard as the sun sets over Arlen.)

(Cue credits with a skirl rendition of the "King of the Hill" theme song.)

#skirl #tv #scene

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lingshanhermit · 1 year ago

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Lingshan Hermit: When Greed Joins Hands with Your Believed Theory of Happiness

As humans, we are all influenced by greed. It controls our thoughts and commands our actions. Greed prompts us to do many things: it leads us to purchase all sorts of unnecessary items, to undress in front of a camera, to spike someone's drink, to steal to acquire things we don't need, and to even make pacts with the devil. All our greed stems from insecurity, from our uncertainty, from buying into the wrong theories of happiness.

Many people acknowledge their greed but don't see it as such. They feel they are not greedy at all, believing that whatever they do is merely satisfying normal basic needs—even though what they consider 'normal' could sustain 5,000 people during the Song Dynasty in my view. These so-called 'normal needs' are actually abnormal needs. In this noisy era, abnormal needs have become the new normal, with everyone feeling they must constantly bring more things into their homes, wearing themselves out to satisfy these abnormal demands. I am not accusing modern people of being overly desirous, as I know they are also victims of flawed concepts—they were not born wanting so much; it was later taught to them that such a life is happy, that owning more leads to happiness, and that self-satisfaction is the key to happiness. When human greed encounters such theories of happiness, it becomes unmanageable.

Former U.S. President Obama once said that if 1.3 billion Chinese people aspired to live like Americans, it would be a disaster for the world's ecology. This statement precisely illustrates how resource-intensive the American lifestyle is. Since the Renaissance, Western society has been immersed in worldly life, striving to build a perfect secular society, aiming to make everything in secular life convenient and handy. To this end, they have studied how to make everything more convenient, from enacting laws and constructing public restrooms to inventing tools for hair removal. They seriously address each specific need with a corresponding tool. They have invented snowplows, ice makers, and emergency contraceptives—many things in Western civilization make life more convenient. Admittedly, snowplows, ice makers, and public restrooms have made life easier, but they have also consumed a vast amount of resources. Here, when I say "a vast amount of resources," I am not solely referring to the felling of trees or the mining of oil and minerals. I mean your life resources: your time, your brain that could contemplate the truths of Buddhism, your body that could practice asceticism. Compared to oil, gold, or turquoise, these are far more precious and rare resources, and once used, they take a very long time to replenish. What is even more frightening is that you devote all your time and energy, which could have been used to attain true happiness, to creating bad karma, to acquiring things that could never bring you happiness. In the process, you have to fight with others, devise cunning traps, and even resort to violence—all to obtain things that will never bring you joy. Any path that seems to lead to happiness but fails to do so is a waste of resources. And that is the greatest waste of all.

Since the mid-20th century, due to America's rising influence, the entire world began to look up to the U.S. and envy the American lifestyle. Many people set the American way of life as their goal. They wanted an American-style society, American-style yards, American-style garages — where one can brew beer or hang a wall full of tools and guns. For many men, this represents the ultimate pleasure in life. Because of the belief that the American lifestyle brings happiness, one may spend a lifetime striving for it. Hollywood, through its movies, has shaped the global model of happiness: to be happy, you must have a dishwasher, a water purifier, American ideals of freedom and democracy, and a robot vacuum cleaner. You also need high educational qualifications and a high-paying job, and you must have a bigger house and a more respectable job than your wife’s friend’s husband. To attain these, you wake up early and compete with others. To attain these, you may have to hurt others, have a gun pointed at your head or point one at someone else's. Many of us believe that technological progress and material life improvements will bring about a happy life, but what they bring most is just minor conveniences. And the resulting consequences are immense. In pursuit of this happiness lifestyle laid out by others, in order to live this "happy" life, you expend all your energy and waste your most valuable resource — your life — in exchange for some minor conveniences and fleeting satisfaction.

In my view, it all starts with greed. Greed drives us to want more, more convenience, and quicker solutions. It makes us want to live longer, eat healthier, and possess more fun things. All the developments in human society aim at this. From midjourney trains to high-speed ones, to vending machines, all inventions and creations revolve around this purpose. Now, we can take a few hours by plane to reach places that would have taken months or years to reach in the past. But this doesn't make us happier. We always want the best, always want more, but when the best arrives, we think there's better; when we have more, we want even more. When we enjoy convenience, we are actually consuming a lot of resources, including those of the earth and, more importantly, our own human resources. And most crucially, these don’t bring us true happiness.

In another article, I mentioned how the Japanese, influenced by Yukichi Fukuzawa, fully embraced Western thinking. After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese, like Westerners, focused on all aspects of secular life. They tried, just like Americans, to make everything handy and convenient. From building national infrastructure to increasing electronic device storage and making ramen tastier, they made every effort, even designing the opening of medicine bottles to be extremely user-friendly. It should be said that in some aspects, they have gone to even greater extremes than Westerners because many of them are perfectionists who focus on details. I believe they think that doing these things well leads to happiness. The Japanese invented digital cameras, Nintendo, and VCDs, and photo-taking mobile storage cards. The appearance of these gadgets reduces a bit of your pain, adds a little time, improves efficiency slightly, but they can never make you truly happy; they are mere anesthetics. Even if you own the entire world, you will still not be satisfied. Ask those who own the world if you don't believe me.

With the significant breakthroughs in artificial intelligence worldwide in 2024, the latest efforts of governments and tech companies around the world have now turned to focus on increasing the supply of electricity and chips to ensure the smooth operation of AI devices. Many people I know feel that AI breakthroughs will bring us happiness. But even if AI allows you to live to 1000 years old, you may not necessarily be happier; it might only extend your loneliness for hundreds of years.

Most modern people are very tired, and we are tired because we want more, and we want more because we believe that having more makes us happier. Believing this, we devote all our efforts to making money, stemming from our belief that worldly possessions can bring happiness. So we strive to make ourselves wealthy, to achieve financial freedom, so that we can buy Italian coffee machines, go diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and savor top French cheeses. We believe that happiness will arise from this, but it's all just an illusion.

Now, many people are looking forward with anticipation; they hope that AI development will bring happiness to humanity, that it will solve human problems. The development of AI can indeed solve problems such as AIDS or superluminal travel, but our happiness does not depend on whether we can fly out of the Milky Way. In fact, whether it was the advent of the steam engine or today's AI, their emergence has only increased productivity and computational power. AI like chatGPT has dramatically increased computational power, undoubtedly bringing rapid development to many fields. But no matter

Nowadays, many people are eagerly awaiting, hoping that the development of AI will bring happiness to humanity and solve our problems. Indeed, AI's advancement could solve issues such as AIDS or enable superluminal flight, but our happiness does not hinge on whether we can fly out of the Milky Way. The truth is, whether it was the advent of the steam engine or current AI technologies, their emergence has only increased productivity and computational power. AI like ChatGPT has dramatically boosted computing capabilities, which will undoubtedly accelerate development across many areas. Yet, regardless of which domain advances quickly, it still does not contribute to our happiness. Contrary to our hopes, such progress might just make the majority even more weary. AI leads to a surge in productivity, which in turn produces more appealing goods that lure us, making us more weary from the chase. We are seduced into believing that unseen technological marvels will bring us joy, driving us to try new things, which requires even harder work, translating into more fatigue. Thus, even if AI develops to the point where cancer patients can be healed with a simple scan in a treatment chamber in ten years, you won't necessarily be happier. As long as you have greed, you'll always believe something better awaits, you'll always feel what you have isn't good enough. You will never settle, never be satisfied, and will always be on the lookout for something better. Therefore, if you identify with these symptoms, it means you're believing in falsehoods; you've been ensnared by them, led to believe that the world's imperfections can be fixed, that a perfect life awaits you, and that you just haven't encountered it yet, believing there is always better. You think you're not happier because you don't have enough. You put your faith in ketogenic diets, in love, in Anoktur NMN as an anti-aging remedy, in bank savings, in premium assets to fix your life. Most of us believe in these despite the lack of evidence; we just do, convinced they will bring us happiness.

Because of this belief that they will bring us happiness, mankind's scientists have invented high-capacity storage devices, automatic coffee machines, quantum computers. All inventions in human history initially tried to make our lives easier (it's curious they thought that by having things done for us, we'd be happier). But clearly, their wishes have not been realized; things are moving in the opposite direction. The advancement of modern transportation saves you the time of walking, but does your boss give you a year off because you can travel in one day what used to take a year by plane? You save time making coffee, but the money spent on the coffee machine forces you to work harder and longer to afford it. Modern people have to do thousands to millions of times more than our ancestors to satisfy appetites thousands to millions of times larger. This is the outcome of trying to attain joy and satisfaction through external things.

Greed begins with ignorance, which makes us believe that the more we have, the happier we'll be. Now scientists around the world are striving to enhance AI's capabilities to meet our ever-growing demands. Yet no one considers why we should boost AI's capacity. They live in this society, never questioning whether this direction is correct or if it can bring them what they desire. From what I see, this development, aside from bringing vast wealth to a few, does not benefit most. Indeed, increasing AI's computational power might allow for rapid development across various fields, making many things more convenient. AI could soon conquer diseases like cancer and AIDS, soon every household could have robotic servants, we could live even longer. But remember, Oppenheimer was devoted to theoretical physics and aspired for peace, yet he ended up creating an atomic bomb capable of destroying the world. Over the past two hundred years, our world has changed dramatically; now you can show off on TikTok, order food on your phone, travel to the other side of the earth with just a backpack, sleep with people your ancestors couldn't have even imagined. Yet we are not happier, our greed, hatred, delusion, and troubles have not diminished, they're just temporarily numbed. We stare at our phones all day, constantly trying to fill ourselves with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas, unable to stop for a moment, for stopping means pain. This is the anesthesia I mentioned earlier.

The advent of artificial intelligence has accelerated the pace of technological development, but as long as their efforts are directed as before, it will still be futile. Whether it's ChatGPT or hypersonic missiles, they only provide greater convenience for us to own more things, to indulge in more sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas. That will only inflate our appetites, making us more dissatisfied and unhappy.

In modern society, the most frightening aspect of greed is that it has formed an enormous theoretical system. In this system, we believe that possession leads to happiness, that the more we possess, the happier we become. This is perhaps the greatest superstition in human history. Countless individuals tirelessly pursue this path. This belief system is almost omnipresent in all civilizations, with the Western civilization practicing it more resolutely. At least in Eastern cultures, there exist notions such as "gain is loss" and "contentment brings happiness" that provide some resistance, albeit feeble. In Western culture, this theory progresses almost unopposed and unchallenged. The horror of this belief is that it appeals to nearly everyone, it's easy to be lured in, but it's hard to see its flaws. Most people only see the shiny exterior of those with power and wealth, their superior lifestyles, yet are blind to the terrors that lie beneath because no one exposes their wounds for the public to see. Hence, they never truly know what the lives of these individuals are like, what they have sacrificed, what they endure, and what they will face. Moreover, because satisfying greed can produce temporary pleasure and a sense of fulfillment, it undoubtedly bolsters their confidence, making them think that they haven't achieved lasting happiness simply because they don't have enough yet. In pursuit of more, they continue to strive, to seize, to harm others, and to accumulate more.

Only a tiny minority in this world may doubt and ultimately realize the fallacy of this theory, but by the time they do, their lives are nearly at an end. Throughout their long lives, they have been driven by greed, committed many wrongs, harmed many people, and taken much that did not belong to them, leaving others without sustenance and driving many to commit evil for the sake of survival. None of these actions come without a cost. And the things they have seized, some of which were never truly theirs to begin with, and some of which will soon be lost, cannot be taken with them. They haven't even truly used these items; they just lie in a corner of their home, gathering dust, possibly forgotten. Yet for these things, they have stolen others' lives and, consequently, lost their own. Such is the legacy of greed.

Written by Lingshan Hermit on April 20, 2024.

灵山居士：当贪欲携手你所相信的幸福理论

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tinygiantrobotsinouterspace · 6 years ago

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Dear Marvel,

Deadpool showed you it was possible. Twice.

Now GIVE ME MY ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ NEXTWAVE MOVIE.

FUCK.

#nextwave #agents of h.a.t.e.#my robot brain needs beer

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hatefulrobot · 7 years ago

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tag dump vol. 1 !

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coldsandfluff · 2 years ago

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FutureSick (F, Original, Illness, Sci-Fi)

I wrote this little sickfic for a trade a while ago and I don't think I ever posted it on the forum. It's set in a future where every sickness has been eradicated, but a hacker found a way to "infect" cyberwares implanted in the brain to mimic illnesses. Two bounty hunters are tasked with finding who is doing it, and Zela ends up "catching" a cold.

FutureSick

Interrogations were the worst part of the job.

The mess. That’s what Zela hated the most. But it was often a necessary part of the process. Nobody still living in the pits of Nightdale liked to be pushed around, and they all fought back one way or another.

She watched as her partner Makk pushed the bartender to the wall, knocking down a stack of drying glasses. Zela winced as they shattered on the ground. The bartender’s hand blindly searched the counter to his left, flinging rags and utensils around until he grabbed a knife the wrong way. He yelped as blood poured from a cut on his finger.

Zela rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Would you just calm down? You’re going to hurt yourself more than we will.” This was getting irritating.

The two men struggled for longer than usual: Makk’s enhanced Prostexs were top of the line, but the bartender was huge, both in height and weight. Zela had no doubt he’d eventually subdue the witness, but in the meantime, his backstore was getting wrecked.

“Just answer the question and maybe you’ll still have booze to serve to your clients tonight,” said Zela, leaning on a stack of boxes. Her weight caused the bottles of alcohol inside to jingle as they shifted around.

“I told you, I don’t know who he is,” grunted the man as he tried to pry off Makk’s enhanced forearm firmly placed on his chest.

Zela rolled her eyes. Her Neuronex had already identified several signs of lying on his facial features when she’d first asked. Not that she’d really needed it. The man was a terrible liar. Even an organic would have caught it.

She sighed and pushed herself off the stack of boxes. “So you’re telling me that he’s never been at your bar?”

The bartender was still struggling, pushing Makk away, but his breath had become ragged. He was finally getting tired. “Think I memorize everyone’s face? I’ve got more important shit to do.”

“Right,” said Zela. With a subtle movement of the eye, she activated the Neuronex’s facial recognition. Within a split second, information about the bartender appeared on her visual overlay. Silex McDureth. Forty-five years old. Divorced. Two kids, age ten and thirteen. “More important things like feeding your kids I bet.” As she said it, she pushed on the top most box. It crashed to the ground in a deafening explosion of glass. Zela hopped back to avoid getting alcohol all over her boots. The smells of fermented hops filled the air as fizzy liquid seeped out from the splintered wood. She never liked beer. She was more of a gin & cranberry kind of gal.

“Fuck!” Silex wheezed through Makk’s grip on his throat.

“Come on pal, just tell us the truth,” said Makk. “She’ll destroy your bar if you don’t. Trust me, she looks all small and cute, but she’ll fuck you up if you piss her off.”

Silex’s arms flopped to his side, and a look of defeat flashed on his face. “Fine.”

“There you go!” breathed Zela. She kicked a chair over to Makk, who slid it next to Silex and released his grip.

“Kid used to come here two or three times a week,” Silex said as he collapsed on the chair. He took out an old hanky and wrapped his wounded finger in it, still catching his breath. “Called himself ‘Redux’ or some dumb shit like that. Got piss drunk one night and told me all about his stupid hacks. I was going to report him. Got one of my regulars to follow him home one night. He’s working out of an abandoned robot factory in East Bedlam.”

“What a great citizen you are,” Makk said, his voice full of sarcasm. “The police didn’t do shit I bet?”

“I never got ‘round to reporting him. Kid found out.” Silex lifted his dirty shirt. “Left me with this.” Silex’s stomach was covered in small red pimples.

Makk recoiled. “What the hell is this?”

“Apparently, it’s called ‘chickenpox’. Itches like a mother.” Silex grimaced and dropped down his shirt. “He threatened to do this to my kids too if I talked.” He looked away, embarrassed. “You don’t want to fuck with this kid is all I’m saying.”

Smog lay low over the shore of East Bedlam, like an ominous gas monster enveloping the carcass of what was once a bustling factory sector. The silhouettes of collapsed buildings sprouted from the ground, swallowed at the top by the fog. A horrid stench permeated the air, wafting from the toxic river snaking through the area.

As soon as she stepped off the self-driving cab, Zela turned down her olfactive sense. “Bet you wish you had a Neuronex right about now,” she said, looking at Makk. He was covering the lower half of his face with the collar of his t-shirt.

“Still not worth messing with my perfectly good brain.”

“Sure, metal boy, you keep telling yourself that.”

Zela and Makk had been partners for almost a year after being paired up against their will by a client. The two had butted heads for most of the job, until they’d figured out that their strengths played perfectly off of each other.

Zela had one of the best Neuronexes on the market, but refused to get fitted with kinetic cyberwares after a botched job left her with a weakened shoulder. She’d always believed that focusing on her smarts, enhanced by the Neuronex’s capabilities, was all she needed to perform her job.

Makk, on the other hand, came from a family of organics who believed cyberwares were tools of the devil. Even though he had come a long way from the cult-like paranoia of his upbringing, he still refused to let anyone touch his brain.

However, he sure never minded taking advantage of Zela’s Neuronex whenever he could.

“Just do your little magic trick so we can figure out where this guy is,” Makk said.

Zela activated her scanning function, which allowed her to search for broken patterns in an area, such as recently disturbed soil or dust. After a few seconds, a trail appeared on her overlay, leading to one of the buildings in the distance.

Zela unholstered her gun. “I’m locked in on a trail. Let’s go.”

Makk took out his own weapon and followed her. “How dangerous do you think the kid is?”

“Dangerous? I don’t know. But he must be pretty dumb to infect one of the most powerful drug dealers in Nightdale.”

“I heard he gave him something called ‘strep throat’,” said Makk, chuckling. “Why the hell would he spend so much time figuring out how to hack Neuronexes just to give people Old World viruses? It makes no sense.”

Zela shrugged. “I don’t know, some kids are just bored.” She remembered hearing the story on the news a few weeks ago and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Pretty much all illnesses had been eradicated a long time ago, except for implant sickness—basically the body rejecting the cyberware. It rarely happened anymore.

“Hope you won’t catch anything with that cyber brain of yours,” said Makk. Zela noticed a hint of worry under his joking tone.

“I’ll be fine.” The trail ended in a gaping hole on the side of a half-collapsed building a few feet from them. “It’s right there, but there’s no one. My infrared sensors aren’t picking up anything. Let’s just have a look.”

“Do you think he heard us coming?”

Zela shook her head. “The trail is old. Maybe a week, according to dirt accumulations.” She stepped over a chunk of the broken wall. It looked like someone had blasted a bomb through it a long time ago, possibly the demolition team. The city had planned to turn the sector back into a habitable area after Zymek’s Industry had moved all their robot factories to Mars, but they’d given up halfway through when the mass exodus had started.

Most people who still lived on Earth preferred nicer, cleaner cities like Boston and New York.

Inside, the factory looked pretty much exactly like Zela had expected. Tables strewn about in various states of disrepair. Huge metal structures torn by rust. Random pieces of robots in piles here and there. The whole thing was covered in dust and dirt, except for a trail leading to a closed door at the back of the room.

“Do you think he could be camouflaging his thermal trace?” whispered Makk, drawing his weapon and holding it on his chest.

“Only one way to find out,” mumbled Zela. She positioned herself to the side of the door and gestured for Makk to kick the door open. Her partner nodded and sent a heavily enhanced kick just below the handle, sending the door flying forward.

Zela swiveled towards the opening, aiming her gun, but a blinding flash popped from somewhere in the room. She staggered, bringing a hand to her face in confusion.

“You alright?” asked Makk.

Zela blinked, her vision slowly coming back to life. Once she could finally see, she noticed that the letters on her overlay were distorted and illegible. “Yeah. I think it was a Neuronex scrambling device.” She restarted the program by pressing on a spot at the base of her skull. “Should be good as new in a few seconds.”

“Good thing there wasn’t anyone in here,” teased Makk. “Seems like your robot brain could have killed you.”

“Too bad, maybe you would have been useful for once. I know you’re dying to save me.”

“Sure, princess.”

The room they had uncovered was small, about the same size as Zela’s studio. Unlike the rest of the building, the space was in an almost perfect condition, as if it had been renovated. Everything was pristine and ventilated, with several monitors and computer docks arranged neatly on metal tables.

Makk roamed around the room. “Looks like this is where he was working on his virus.”

“See if you can find a computer, although I doubt he would have left one behind. I’ll snap pictures of anything that could clue us in on his location.”

A wave of fatigue hit Zela. She rolled her shoulders and lightly shook her head. The past few days had been tiring—trying to track down a hacker was never easy. Thankfully, finding his lair had just uncovered quite a bit of options to find him.

Zela snapped a few more pictures of the equipment, but there wasn’t much they could use. As she opened a desk drawer, a sharp prickle reached deep within her sinuses. She pushed the back of her hand against her nose, trying to relieve it, but it didn’t stop it from spreading.

Her head bobbed forward. “Hhh… Ihh—TSChh! TSChheew!”

“Bless you,” said Makk, briefly looking her way.

“Th—thanks… Ihh—TSSchh!”

Makk chuckled. “Is the dust getting to you?”

“Guess so.” Zela sniffled, surprised by how wet it sounded. Dust never really bothered her, although the entrance to the building was covered in thick layers of the stuff, so it made sense. She rubbed her nose and sniffed again for good measure. “I think I got everything. We’ll have to check in with Rob and see if he can pull up vids from the monitoring satellites.”

“Again? How many favors does the poor guy owe you?”

She flashed a smile. “Let’s just say his debt is impossible to repay.”

The next morning, Zela sat in their usual spot at the counter of Vixi’s Diner. Ever loyal to his chronic tardiness, Makk was thirty minutes late. Zela nursed a coffee she’d had refilled twice already by the waitbot.

Head cradled in her hand, she stared at the glitching holograms of the Old World’s waitresses milling about, conjuring images of nostalgia no one could even relate to. They stood behind the counter in their pink shirt-dress and their frilly white aprons, holding a paper pad that had long gone extinct. The place was a weird mix of neon lights and fading relics of the past, but it had always felt comforting to Zela for reasons she couldn’t understand.

However, that morning, nothing could really comfort her. She’d woken up with an annoying headache, a runny nose and creeping chills that had left her struggling with the temp regulator on her jacket. She was either slightly too cold or slightly too warm, which was downright annoying.

And she’d never sneezed so much in her entire life.

“Hhh… Hh—TSSCHhhh! ET’TSChhh!” Zela groaned, closing her eyes. It was pretty clear that whatever had scrambled her Neuronex at the factory had also introduced one of the kid’s dumb viruses. “Motherfucker,” she muttered to herself. Now she had a personal reason to go after that asshole. The client might have asked for him to be captured alive, but no one had said anything about a little beating.

“Hey beautiful,” said Makk as he slid on the stool next to Zela. His smiled dropped when he took a good look at her. “Woah. You don’t look so good.”

His alarmed expression made Zela chuckle. “Don’t worry, it’s not implant sickness. I’m pretty sure I got infected with the kid’s virus.”

Makk narrowed his eyes and gently touched her face with the tip of his fingers. “This is so weird. How can a cyberware virus make your body react like it has an actual infection? Your skin is all pale and your nose is pink.”

Zela swatted his hand away. “It’s tricking my brain into thinking I’m infected, activating my immune system. These are just the effect of antibodies produced by my own damn body.” She sniffled, feeling the tickle in her nose growing stronger.

“Ehhh… Ihh—TSChhh!”

“Bless you,” said Makk, still looking concerned. “What virus is this even supposed to be? What are your symptoms?”

Zela grunted. “According to my research this morning, it’s probably a ‘rhinovirus.’ It’s a dumb thing people used to have often that didn’t do much harm. Just makes you feel run down with sneezing, sore throat, watery eyes, runny nose, chills, headaches.”

Makk frowned. “You should go home and rest. I’m sure I can convince Rob to pull those vids for you.”

“No way,” Zela said, sniffling. “You don’t have the brain power for that, muscle boy. Leave it to the pros.” She tapped the touch screen on the counter to bring up the menu. “Let’s eat. I want to catch Rob while he’s in a good mood. He’s one of those ‘morning person,’ if you can believe they exis—Ehh… Ihh—TSCCHhhh!”

“Bless you!” Makk shot her a pity look. “Man, people had it rough in the Old World.”

Zela pressed the back of her hand against her nose, irritated. This whole ‘appearing vulnerable’ thing wasn’t sitting well with her. “I’m fine. Just shut up and order your damn bacon.”

“Come on, Rob. It’s in East Bedlam, no one will even noti—Ehh’TSChhh!”

Zela’s head bobbed down as she aimed her sneeze away from Rob and Makk. They were in Rob’s secured man cave, surrounded by computers, their alternating flashing lights pulsating like a series of miniature hearts. The place was darker than the night, thanks to the metal walls painted black. Rob insisted that it made him feel safer when he hacked high profile systems. Like a “ninja in the shadows,” as he told anyone who would listen.

“Bless you,” said Makk, leaning on the desk next to Rob.

“What’s up with all the sneezing, Zee?” Rob stopped typing for a second to look up at Zela. “Are you broken or something?”

“I’m fine.”

Makk shook his head. “She’s got the kid’s new virus. Can you do anything about it?”

Rob sighed. “Nah man, I’ve been working on it all week. I haven’t figured out how to crack it yet. What did he give you? Strep? Sinusitis? Mononucleosis?”

“Rhinovirus.”

“Oh, whatever.” Rob rolled his eyes. “You’ll be fine. It’s the least offensive of them all.”

“See?” Zela said, looking pointedly at Makk and gesturing towards Rob. “Even he thinks it’s nothing.”

Makk shrugged. “You don’t look well to me. I still think you should go home and rest.”

“Guys, can you have your little domestic argument somewhere else? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Zela crossed her arms over her chest and leaned on the wall. The coldness of the metal on her neck sent chills through her body. She repressed a shiver as best as she could.

“Show us the vids and we’ll be out of your hair,” she mumbled.

“Zee, I can’t keep doing that. Every time I go back in, I risk getting found out. I’m sure there’s another way you can figure out where your guy is. That’s your actual job, you know.”

“Or,” said Zela, approaching Rob with a ruthless grin, “I can tell my sister about your little secret operation in here. I’m sure she would love to know that your remote job ‘with’ the government isn’t exactly sanctioned by the government itself.”

A look of recognition flashed in Makk’s face and he started laughing. “So that’s the unpayable favor?”

Rob grunted. “I should have never let her set me up with her sister. Now I’m on the hook for the rest of my life.” He turned towards Zela. “You’re a monster.”

Zela cocked her head. “I’m hurt. I gave you a lifetime of happiness with my amazing sister. Now pay up.” She walked to the back of the room where a worn leather sofa barely hung to life under piles of boxes and various devices. She managed to free up enough space for her tired body and snuggled in, folding her legs under herself.

Her head felt heavy and filled with cotton balls. Her nose was somehow runny and blocked at the same time, which made sniffling very difficult. She closed her eyes for a second, letting her head droop to the armrest.

Before she knew it, sleep swallowed her whole.

When she woke up, Makk was kneeling in front of her. “Here,” he said, handing her a cup of steaming coffee.

“Thanks,” Zela said, taking it. She sat upright and tried to shed the sleep from her brain. “Where did you get this?” She held the cup in both hands to warm up, even though her heat-regulated jacket should have done the job. Her body was a mess, as if it didn’t know how to act anymore. It wasn’t something Zela had ever experienced before.

“A convenience store nearby. Thought you could use it.”

Zela half-smiled, a curious tingling warmth filling her chest. She nodded towards Rob. “Is he done yet?” As she was about to take a sip of coffee, her nose rebelled. A sharp prick forced her head back as her breath hitched.

“Ihh—TSChhheew! ‘TSChhhh! Heh—Ihh’TSChhhh!”

“Bless you. I also got you this,” Makk said, presenting her with a soft, black handkerchief.

Zela blushed, but took it, as she could feel her nose running, threatening to embarrass her even more than accepting the gift itself. She wiped her nose quickly before shoving the handkerchief in her jacket pocket. “Thanks.”

Makk nodded with a smile. “Rob is done. He pulled the vids. Looks like the kid tried to cover his tracks but he’s not great with surveillance hacks. He took a cab from East Bedlam to an apartment in the north. We should be able to find him there.”

Zela pushed herself off the couch. “Let’s go.”

Makk put a hand on her arm. “Listen, are you sure you want to do this in your condition? This could get physical real quick. We don’t know if he has bodyguards or what kind of security he’s got. Maybe you should stay back and let me take care of this.”

Zela narrowed her eyes. “Makk, I swear to god, if you keep treating me like a frail little thing, I’m gonna break your neck in half.” Anger mixed with a touch of tenderness at his concerned expression. She bit her bottom lip, unable to reconcile the opposing emotions she was feeling. She sighed and softened her voice. “I’ll be fine, OK?” She put her hand on his. “Really.”

They waited until night to pounce. A cold rain had started falling, shrouding the streets in a thin fog. Zela used her Neuronex to get a floor plan of the building, and they devised a way to sneak into the building through the fire escape.

“Ready?” she whispered to Makk.

Makk nodded and waited for her to go up the metal stairs. She grabbed on to the railing but stopped abruptly, feeling a sneeze coming on.

“What’s wr—” started Makk behind her.

“Gonna sn—sneeze… Ehh’TSChhh! IHH—TSChhhew!”

“Make sure you get it all out of your system now,” said Makk, chuckling.

“Impossible. There are an infinite number of sneezes in this goddamn nose,” grumbled Zela before continuing her ascent.

When they got to the fifth floor, Zela peeked through the window. They had selected an empty apartment to minimize the risk of getting caught. “All clear,” she whispered. She used a special Neuronex program cooked up by Rob years ago that allowed her to deactivate the security on the window, then moved out of the way to let Makk cut the glass pane with his tools.

Once he was done, he looked at Zela. “All good?”

Zela sniffled and gave him the thumbs up before sliding through the opening. The small studio was completely empty and dark, illuminated only by the street lights shining through the windows. The pair walked up to the front door.

“H—hold on…” trailed Zela, holding a fist to her nose. “Hhh—KMPFFff!” She stifled her sneeze as much as possible, pinching her nose through her thumb and index finger. Her head throbbed for a few seconds, making her wince.

“You OK?” whispered Makk.

“Yeah.” She turned her attention back towards the door. “His apartment should be the one across the hallway.” Activating the heat sensor, she felt a flash of excitement when a bright orange and red silhouette appeared on her overlay. “We got him.”

“Any sensors out there?”

With a flick of the eyes, Zela used her Neuronex to check for a security system in the hallway. It identified a bunch of cameras and sensors, which she managed to deactivate fairly easily. “Should be clear now.”

They opened the door as quietly as possible, then slipped out, silent as cats. They each took a spot on either side of the door across the hallway. Makk gestured at Zela, something she interpreted as “should I break down the door?” She held up a hand, leaning towards the door. Turning up her enhanced auditive function, she held her breath and closed her eyes. All she heard were the sounds of tapping on a keyboard, and a faint synth music track, possibly coming from headphones the kid was wearing.

Suddenly, another tickle assaulted her nose, high up near the bridge. Her eyes grew wide, her breath hitching. Realizing what was happening, Makk’s face fell, panic written in the folds of his forehead. He grabbed the handkerchief from Zela’s pocket and gave it to her. Zela fumbled for it and covered her mouth and nose with it, trying her hardest to push the sneeze away. She pinched her nose hard through the fabric and stood there, hoping the feeling would pass.

Makk stared at her, raising an eyebrow. But the tickle wasn’t going away. Zela’s eyes watered and she shook her head as her breath hitched one final time. Before she knew it, Makk grabbed on to her and held her to his chest so that her face would be buried in his hoodie.

“Hhh—MPPFFKK!”

They both stood, unmoving. Zela could practically feel Makk’s heart pounding against her cheek. They waited for what felt like an eternity, but nothing stirred in the apartment next to them.

Zela relaxed and moved away from Makk, her face red. Yet as soon as the hallway light hit her eyes, a second, lightning-fast sneeze got away from her before she could even react.

“Ihh’TSCHHHHhh!”

This time, Zela heard the noise of a chair rolling on the floor in the apartment, then footsteps.

“Go, go, go!” she yelled, pointing at the door.

Makk immediately kicked the door down, his weapon drawn. He pounced on a human silhouette Zela barely had time to see. She rushed in after him, her gun drawn on the two guys brawling on the floor. She relaxed her finger from the trigger when she realized that the kid weighed about a third of Makk and looked like a twig. This was no contest.

Half a second later, the kid was pinned under Makk’s knee, breathing heavily, his face beet red.

Zela holstered her gun and rolled the computer chair closer to the kid. She sat down, sniffling. “Hey there, jerkface.”

The kid tried to spit on her, but he was too out of breath to do much more than puff out air from his chapped lips. Makk pressed down harder on his chest, and the kid grunted.

Zela chuckled, then wiggled her nose. “Ugh.” She prepared the handkerchief as a tickle burrowed in her nose. “Iihh’TSCHhhh! Ehhh—TSChhheew!”

“Bless you,” said Makk.

The kid started laughing. “I see you found my parting gift in the lab. Hope you’re fucking suffering.”

Zela wiped her nose, scoffing. “You’re a weird kid, you know that?” She took a good look at him. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen, maybe younger. A weak little thing that hadn’t seen the sunlight in years, judging by his pallor. Zela leaned back on the chair, frowning. “Why are you even doing this? Of all the viruses, you’re picking the dumbest ones that ever existed. Why not something really dangerous and fatal?”

The kid looked away. “I’m not here to kill people.”

“Then why are you even here?” asked Makk. “Why are you infecting some of the most dangerous people left on this shitty planet?”

“I wasn’t targeting the most dangerous people, just the ones with the most influence.” The kid shifted under Makk’s weight. “You people think you’re fucking immortal with your cyberwares. Look at you,” he said to Makk. “Does it make you feel good to hold me down like this with your fucking metal arms and legs? You think that makes you better than me?”

Zela rolled her eyes. Another organic on a cyberware rant. Of course.

The kid’s eyes darted back and forth between Makk and Zela. “You all think you’re gods. I’m here to show you that we’re all just as vulnerable as we used to be. If you keep implanting metal shit into your flesh, eventually someone will find the weaknesses and take you all out, and us with you.”

Makk shot a worried glance at Zela. She could tell the kid was bringing up memories of his upbringing, increasing his Neuronex paranoia.

“Well, thanks for making me feel shitty for a few days, I sure learned my lesson,” said Zela, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She kneeled down. “Wanna know my take on this? If it’s not this, it’ll be something else. Doesn’t mean we should stop progress.”

She stood up and pocketed the handkerchief. “The good thing is that you just helped us make implants even better. Good job finding the weakness, now we can make our cyberwares even stronger.” She gestured at Makk to release the kid. “It’s called ‘evolution.’ Look it up.”

Makk lifted the kid up on his feet. He turned to Zela. “Wanna get your revenge?”

Zela thought for a second, looking at the frail kid shaking next to Makk, who looked like a behemoth in comparison. “Nah. I just want to go home and sleep. Let’s get this organic trash to the client and call it a night.”

That evening, Zela laid on her couch, bundled up in a fuzzy blanket with her now trusty black handkerchief in hand. She watched the rain slide down in rivulets on the window, blurring out the city’s neon signs.

She’d brought the kid’s computer to Rob in the hopes that he could crack the viruses faster, but Rob had said that simply getting the data out of the computer would take days. Zela would just have to suffer through it until the virus ran its course. She couldn’t believe people used to do that in the Old World.

A knock at the door brought her out of her semi-comatose state. She checked the camera with her Neuronex. It was Makk, holding a grocery bag. She unlocked the door and yelled at him to come in. There was no way in hell she was getting up from her couch for the rest of the night.

“Hey. How are you feeling?” said Makk, removing his jacket and placing it on the kitchen table.

His tone would have bothered the hell out of Zela mere hours ago, but if she was honest with herself, she’d grown fond of his caring side. As much as the tougher part of herself wanted to fight to keep up with appearances, she was too tired to care about how vulnerable she looked right now.

She did feel vulnerable, after all. That’s one thing the kid had gotten right. And maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to feel vulnerable every once in a while to remember to be on her guards. But it didn’t have to be such a bad thing.

“I’m… doing pretty shitty,” she said with a hint of a smile, wiping her nose for the umpteenth time.

“Sorry to hear,” Makk said, sitting on the couch next to her. He put the grocery bag on the coffee table. “So, I did some research about this ‘rhinovirus’ thing. Apparently, it’s also called a ‘cold.’”

“That explains why I’m freezing.”

Makk scoffed. “Maybe you have a low-grade fever. They did say it was common.”

He scooted closer to her and put a hand on her forehead, then her cheek. Zela closed her eyes, her whole body humming from his tender touch.

“You do feel kind of warm,” he murmured. His eyes lingered on her for a few seconds until he moved back to the grocery bag. “Anyway, they said soup is supposed to help, so I got you some wonton soup. And some tea. They said to put honey in it, can you believe it?”

Zela raised her eyebrow. “Was everyone rich as hell in the Old World? Who can afford to buy honey just to dump it into a cup of tea.”

“I guess it wasn’t as rare back then,” he shrugged. “I just got you some sugar instead.” He plopped the box of tea and a bag of sugar on the coffee table. “Also, apparently everyone just wants to watch movies when they’re sick.”

Zela smiled. “Actually, that sounds pretty g—good… Ehh… Ihh—TSChhhh! HHh’TSCHhheew!”

“Bless you,” said Makk with a pout. “Why don’t I get this tea started to make you feel better, and then we can watch something. Your pick.”

“You know what I’m going to pick,” Zela said behind her handkerchief.

Makk stood up, rolling his eyes. “Whatever new horror movie just came out?”

“You got it.”

Zela grabbed the container of soup and sipped it, feeling the hot liquid warm her from the inside, soothing her throat. It was nice. People in the Old World were on to something.

She leaned back on the couch, savoring the quiet moment, looking forward to watching a movie with Makk. They never did take the time to do stuff like that, preferring to jump from job to job and keep busy.

Maybe having a cold wasn’t all that bad, after all.

#sneezefic #sickfic #caretaking #illnessfic #snz fic #snzblr #snzfic

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aforrestofstuff · 4 years ago

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Miscellaneous Zombieman, Metal Bat, and Garou Headcanons:

Zombieman:

Does not wear mitts when taking shit out of the oven because burns mean nothing to him. It’s a useless investment when you can scarcely feel pain and recover from every injury imaginable.

Drinks even though he can’t get drunk. Likes beer for the taste.

Feeds the stray cats whatever food he doesn’t eat. Has a habit of cooking too much for himself.

Even though he’s Zombieman and can regenerate pretty much anything, he still has to get any debris out of his body because it’s really uncomfortable to just leave it in there. Keeps a surgeon kit on hand at home, takes any pieces out of him in the shower, and has acquired a very basic knowledge on human anatomy from this.

Keeps a gun in the shower because paranoia + negative wisdom is a deadly combination.

Does not vibe with the concept of authority and will treat all of his higher-ups like he treats an acquaintance. He doesn’t go out of his way to be disrespectful or anything, but he wouldn’t be caught dead kissing anyone’s ass either.

He’s not the guy you want to talk to when managing money. He has not filed his taxes since the nineties.

Keeps a card on him that lets security know he has metal implants in his body whenever he needs to step through a detector. Makes up a different story each time (steel aorta, brain implant, metal kneecap, etc.), when it’s literally just the stupid gun he keeps in his chest.

Metal Bat (Badd):

Probably one of the most normal people in the S-Class, in my opinion. Like he’s still very unique as a person but in terms of the life he lives, it’s pretty much just ordinary.

Likes horror gore fest movies. Hates blood in real life but finds comfort in having the control to see it onscreen or not. Sort of like a coping mechanism, but he’s also just liked stuff like that since he was a kid.

Very into the giant robot sub-genre of cartoons and anime (Voltron, Gundam, Transformers, etc.). Basically just any cheesy 80s cartoon or movie. He’s very interested in the idea of the “perfect hero” as it’s portrayed in most of this media and often holds himself to that ideal, although naively.

Is a very patient person when he wants to be. He can be very pissed off but also extremely kind and understanding. He’s smart enough to assess whatever situation he’s in and apply the best parts of himself to it, which makes him very adaptable.

Has ADHD, is unmedicated. Suffers in school because of this.

Has been prescribed medication for anger and depression but never takes it unless he’s having a seriously bad time.

T-shirt and jeans are his default outfit choice when not in uniform. Has an unholy amount of graphic tees and Levi’s that he’s accumulated over the years.

Loves listening to heavy metal.

Garou:

Is allergic to cats. Hates Tama because of this.

Also lactose intolerant.

Eats a lot in one sitting because it’s a survival mechanism. He stockpiles calories because, for the longest time, he wouldn’t know where his next meal would be coming from. It takes him a while to unlearn this behavior once he’s in a steady home life.

Hates being touched. Some part of him always interprets it as an attack. Also another behavior that takes him a while to unlearn once he’s in a safe environment.

His hair SUCKS and it literally has the texture of dried grass.

Silverfang used to keep an old TV and VHS player around for the kids in his dojo, and Garou would watch all the tapes over and over until they wore out. His favorite show as a kid was Thundercats.

Is straight up the most awkward dude on the planet once he’s not trying to kill anybody.

Actually not helpless when it comes to cleaning, cooking, and maintaining a home because those are all skills Silverfang would’ve taught him at the dojo. He’s a decent homemaker when he has an incentive to be.

Sucks at video games because he’s never played them in his life.

Does not understand a lot of pop culture references due to him being a recluse for most of his life, both socially and physically.

#one punch man #opm #zombieman #garou #metal bat #Batarou #YES I THOUGHT OF THESE WHILE WRITING MY STUPID FANFIC WHAT ABOUT IT #he completes some stupid part of me #headcanon #opm headcanons

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snackhobi · 5 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To get it perfect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You dismiss it with a hard cut of your hand.

“It’s nothing,” you say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then you break that silence.

You laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

(Giving it to Jungkook on a platter.)

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

And he keeps making you smile.

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

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

(Not, now, when he’s with you.)

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

Drift compatibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Jungkook’s shield.)

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

But you’re not alone.

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

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

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

Barely.

Barely alive.

(One hand gives, the other takes away.)

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

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

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

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

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

You hate it.

(It should have been you.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

(You know Jungkook feels the same.)

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

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

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

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

The door swings shut behind you.

You lift your hand.

It’s an orange.

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

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

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

But Jungkook hadn’t.

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

You do cry.

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

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

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

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

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

You’re scared.

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

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

But there are no secrets in the Drift.

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

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

“Baby.”

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

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

Yoongi just continues to thread his hands through your hair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he wants you along for the ride.

(Burns bright for it.)

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

(Because he’s nervous, too.)

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

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

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

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

Not yet, at least.

“We’ve got this.”

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

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, we have.”

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

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

—the timer hits zero—

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

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

(But this?)

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

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

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

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

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

(—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He doesn’t look away.)

(Can’t look away.)

(Doesn’t want to.)

(Never wants to.)

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

(And he doesn’t want you any less.)

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

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

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

Because he wants this.

He wants to be your comfort and your support.

He doesn’t want it to end.

(You don’t want it to end.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m yours.”

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

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

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

“I love you,” he says.

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

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

Burns bright for you.

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