#'yeah but it's still lacroix intensity' shut this is my preferred level of romance for this type of stuff

[derelicthorror]

yeah i think you had to be there

completely entirely oc-centric fic ahead, so abandon all hope ye who enter here. this caters ONLY to me. || [wordcount: 1,080; ocxoc; yanovan pov]

The nature of being maybe-sort-of-a-little attached to a Tenno – just because they’re all like that – is that every so often, she will do something that completely puts Yanovan out of his depth.

Whatever it is that lurks in the black and has no real name, right now it has wrapped its fingers tight around her uppermost vertebrae and her eyes have gone completely blank. She stands with her shoulders jerked up like a marionette in the grip of a forceful child, her lips moving soundlessly and breath gone still. It might look like a sudden bout of tinnitus or a psychosomatic pain rearing its head, but he knows her by now, and Junah looks afraid.

Shinoda’s talked about what happened on the Zariman before – in short bursts, because it is still a memory that stings to touch. There was a malfunction, and days of drifting. Then there was a shift, and the adults snapped. Shinoda has mentioned deals, in passing, some debt owed to a thing it’s probably best never to sign a contract with. Only the children. The children survived, she reiterates, forcefully, time and again.

But Junah wasn’t a child. She had been on the knife’s edge right before adulthood. So, if she walked the line between survival and a death by fractured psyche, then where would she eventually fall?

The first time she’d ever held Yanovan’s hand was on reflex. Her hand had shot out and grasped his, squeezing tightly, and, startled, he’d let it happen. She’d gasped quietly and shaken her head as if to clear a settling of snow, and she’d come back to herself only moments later.

He’d been curious, sure – but he hadn’t pried. She’d deemed him worth the story, anyway.

On the Zariman – I didn’t come out quite as unscathed as the others, she’d explained, self-effacing humor lighting her tone. His hand rested between both of hers, now, as she worried at where her nails had broken his skin; the marks hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as the apologies, because there was no reason, to him, for the latter.

Hushed, she’d leaned forward, as if at any minute the other crewmembers would come charging down the ramp. I hear its whispers all the time, Yano, she’d said, and hadn’t elaborated on what it was. It finds me very amusing.

Now, he isn’t squeamish or shy; he doesn’t consider himself someone who scares easily. He might even have the generalization about ‘all Tenno being like that’ wrong, because truth is, he really only knows the two. What he knows for certain is that the Tenno toe the strange, dangerous line between the real and the unblinking – and he was never of the Veil’s most spiritual, but even he feels a bit of the reverent chill that comes when thinking of the Lidless Eye.

From where she stands too still now in one of the Railjack’s alcoves, Yanovan can see the light tremble that’s overcome her entire frame. He is versed in these episodes by this point, and the familiarity does nothing to make it any less unnerving. But he doesn’t shy away from solutions to things; he strides forward, instead, to stand sentry at her shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, can you hear me? Listen. We’re on the Railjack,” he says, gruff, because of course they’re on the Railjack, and he understands grounding techniques but it doesn’t make him feel any less silly when he tries his hand at them, “you’re standing right next to me in engineering, Harlow, in the very back of the ship. I’m reconfiguring – well, I was reconfiguring the forges.” He shifts, casting around the ship’s interior in search of something to point out.

“The, uh. Rell. Okay. Let’s focus on our surroundings. The vibrating you can feel and hear under your feet? It’s, what, seventy decibels? That’s the negentropy capacitors being scrubbed. If you listen hard, you can also hear Arang and Morii shifting inventory a deck above us – Arang dropped a crate just now, hear that? If you look, you can see how the accents and displays are a little brighter. The overhaul of the light systems was fully integrated last week, but you weren’t here, so…” He’s digging his teeth into the inside of his cheek and scowling and absolutely not moving from his spot, because he’s helping as best he can, but this kind of gentle borders on excruciating. And he keeps talking. All he can do. Just keeps talking.

Junah is still stuck in her head, but her fingers reach out to wrap around, and then tighten, against his own; he can hear her breath beginning to even out. It is excruciating, but this is the sort of thing one endures for a Tenno that one is maybe-sort-of-slightly attached to. He’s worried and uncomfortable and he keeps holding her hand anyway even though he wants to crawl out of his own skin a little bit, because that’s what he does.

It’s his job, he would be quick to say, except that this really falls into the extracurricular zone, and there was never any fine print in the contract about the personal demons of capable people you think about too often.

He bears it like he does everything else, with a too-tight jaw and an intensity that couldn’t exist if he really, truly did not want it.

“… but what makes the Rakta Cernos broadhead different from the standard is the fletching. Helical, not offset. Stabilizes the shot – better for big targets. I don’t – use mine. Much. Lately. Not Tenno pristine, sure, but you might be able to do something with it –”

And Yanovan gets where he stands here. He knows that he exists on the outer circles of the Tenno and their liminal, oblique lives – barely a stagehand, if that. He’s not there to fully comprehend them. He’s there to play the support and the watcher, to have their backs and marvel at the artistry and sometimes, witness firsthand the pain it has caused them, to make it off the Zariman.

Suddenly, just like that, he would half like a chance to meet eyes with the thing lurking over his operators’ shoulders. Not to look at it in frozen, awed terror, but to snarl at it for its gall.

When he glances down to find Junah looking back at him, cognizant, the wry gratitude on her face is almost enough to soften the thought. Almost.

But he didn’t earn his name by smothering grudges.

#i was messing with the scheduling function so who knows when this will actually show up lol #staunch refusal to put this in the main tags though #junah harlow #yanovan #yanovan is one of my favorite ocs because he cares Too much after not expecting to . #this man recognizes that he attaches to abstract principles like a barnacle and has the audacity to be surprised when it happens with Peopl #i have a diatribe on red veil as respects wally but that is a story for another time. what matters now is how insane it is #that i hammered out 1k words of oc pairing content which has happened a grand total of like 2 other times In Life #'yeah but it's still lacroix intensity' shut this is my preferred level of romance for this type of stuff #i have dropped tens of thousands of words of oc/canon content but thats different man #but point of import: these 2 guys. some of my fave fandom ocs. i will never ever write them getting together bc idc. but i want 2 write the #u know . just hanging out. this is from july. #anyway i use yano as a vehicle to explore the inherent tragedy of being a zariman survivor from an outsider's perspective bc!!! #he will never understand!! he cannot! he knows it! he isn't equipped to get it bc it would destroy him!! #but dang it for better or worse corinn and junah r part of his People and he is ready to flip off the entire void for it #derelict drabbles #oc posting