#as in med nonsense to be precise

[the-ace-with-spades]

I have the urge to write a seven-season-long medical drama, so here is a concept for Top Gun Hospital AU with ER hate-to-love hangster AU that no one asked for.

as a warning: this is a bit incohesive and silly

All the aviators are doctors and all the WSOs are nurses. With the exception of Bradley (but there’s an explanation for it).

Mav — cardiothoracic surgeon; Ice — former neurosurgeon and Chief of Surgery, current Head of Patient and Medical Services (so, entirely admin). I imagine they have the same kind of relationship as House and Cuddy in this, including Ice keeping an entire legal team for Mav’s unconventional practice methods. They've met during med school and had been rivals up until they both finished general surgery residency. Slider is an OR nurse turned anesthesia nurse. Goose was an ER nurse and met Mav during his rotation as a med student and died after an incident in the ER during Mav’s residency (that was the moment he switched from emergency medicine to surgery).

Phoenix — emergency, but she managed the impossible (like Mav) and switched from obgyn residency after the first year (only chose obgyn in the first place because of her mom, a renowned obgyn in Oregon), she's still really passionate about the obgyn field but didn't enjoy the work enough to do it for the rest of her life; Javy — general surgery; Payback — emergency with sub-spec in pediatrics; Friz — respiratory medicine; Omaha — oncology; Yale — ortho surgery.

Bob — a former OBGYN nurse, left because of a toxic work environment, working in the ER six months now, Phoenix's favorite nurse now, duh; Fanboy — started in peds oncology, had to switch because it was too hard on him mentally and is now peds emergency; Halo — started as a palliative care nurse, switched to oncology after a few years; Harvard — OR nurse, switched from general team to ortho

Hangman is the new trauma surgeon starting in their ER. Born and raised on a ranch, was expected to take over the ranch but never wanted to. Thankfully, he had too perfect grades to not send him to college — his parents wanted him to be a vet, which obviously didn’t happen, so he could stay close to the family business. He moved to California for his MD. He has terrible bedside manners with patients and patients’ family, but is surprisingly decent with kids, has lost respect for nurses sometime during his first residency year, and had a terrible case of Ego hit him during his trauma surg fellowship.

Now, about Rooster:

Bradley got into a pre-med program, Mav (who had set up Bradley’s college fund) said he’s not going to pay for it since he doesn’t want Bradley to be a doctor (long hours, lack of work-life balance, burnout, high stress, etc. It was more complicated because Mav still has the Goose trauma). So they had the fallout, Bradley moved out and deferred college to find a way to pay for it and, wanting to gather hospital experience, started working as a CNA in Peds ICU at a children’s hospital which accidentally was having a new CNA intake at the time. He liked it, actually loved it, and started hesitating whether he should continue with pre-med and be like Mav or go for nursing, like his dad. Year after, he got an offer from the hospital that said hey, we’ll fund some of your BSN as long as you work for us while you study and then work for us for another four years after getting your license. So he became a nurse, got certified as peds nurse after working two years in PICU and after another three, switched to the Pediatric Rapid Response Team, where he stayed for another two years before getting a spot as a senior nurse in adult/peds ER in a different hospital.

His relation to Mav and Ice only came to light a few months after the hiring process, as Bradley didn’t even know they worked there when he applied and it’s still a hash-hash topic in the ER. He’s been in the ER for almost three years now and has become an unofficial second-in-command as one of the few with substantial experience.

I imagine he’s definitely one the best nurses you could have as a patient — he’s honest but in an empathetic way, he’s worked in the most demanding environments with the most complex patients (ICU and RRT), he’s skilled and experienced in most procedures. Because he is one of the few male nurses, he’s the one dealing with inappropriate patients, aggressive patients, patients that need restraint, frequent flyers, etc. and he genuinely doesn’t mind — he is the perfect mix of calm and firm that makes him very reliable in most difficult situations. He is absolutely most reassuring and guiding with new stuff, be it new nurses or med students that don’t know what’s happening, and he doesn’t judge. It does help, too, that he was partially raised by two very cocksure surgeons and therefore knows how to deal with doctors that turned a bit too arrogant.

Before I go to the hangster part of this shit, I want y’all to know it all started because I found this Rooster-coded scrubs:

I imagine that he buys most of his scrubs since the work-issued scrubs don’t fit well on men (most unisex ones are very much just female fit stamped with unisex label) and peds nurses can have lots of cute ones so the kids feel less nervous around them

Also, this is a warning that yes, Bradley is trans in this scenario, too, because I said so. It's relevant to a few scenes, I think?? and there's tw for transphobic OC

Now, a bunch of scenarios I can see for this AU:

On the first day at his new workplace, Jake makes a reputation for himself. He confuses Nat, in her hospital-issued scrubs and with her doctor tag clearly on display, for a nurse and literally talks over her in front of a patient. Same thing happens with Billy because he’s Filipino and there is a large number of Filipino nurses everywhere and he’s stereotyping. Then he makes another patient’s parents agitated. This is when he meets Bradley — he takes over to talk to the parents and calm them down before it can escalate, basically shushing Jake out of the room. Jake doesn’t clock he’s a nurse at first — he’s a big, very fit, very well-built, very handsome dude with a questionable mustache who looks comical in a pastel pink scrub top with a teddy bear pattern and a matching headband on his forehead, but also the sheer shock of how different to all the nurses he looks gives Jake a pause  — so he doesn’t say anything even if it pisses him off a nurse just forced him out of the room.

*

It starts innocently with Bradley though — Bradley comes up and asks, “Jake, can you put the narcotics order into the system for Lily?” and Jake scoffs and corrects, “Doctor,” tapping his full tag with Dr. Jacob Seresin.

Bradley, as the nurse’s tag says, raises an eyebrow and says, “Doctor Jake, can you put the narcotics order for Lily?”  Natasha, standing behind him, snorts. Jake doesn’t even have the time to tell him off because he’s already gone when his brain processes.

*

Natasha drops off a patient on him — a taxi driver who had a stroke while driving and had been in a car accident, that had been thrombolysed but might need emergency surgery because of a suspected GI bleed. He’s stable, so they're going to check if he can be admitted to neurosurg and wait for his turn there or if Jake will need to take over before that.

Bradley hands him a tablet the minute he walks into the room.

“What’s that?”

“Results,” he supplies before going back to setting up an oxygen cylinder at the bottom of the bed.

“I didn’t order that,” he notes. The blood and urine panels are what he would order with suspected operable GI bleed but he’s barely looked at the patient’s case before he walked in there.

“I did,” Bradley tells him as he switches the oxygen from the wall socket to the tank supply. “Faster this way.”

“No,” Jake says, blood boiling. “You do exactly what I tell you to do and only that.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows, high on her forehead. Bradley doesn’t hesitate — waves on Bob from behind the glass wall and they both grab each side of the bed.

“I supposed you want to put the CT order yourself then,” Bradley says as Bob takes the small back monitor and attaches it to the frame. He steps on the bed brake and rolls out the bed, straight into Jake and Nat, fast enough that he moves out of the way on instinct. “Better do it fast because it’s free now and I’m going.” *

“Did you see that? Who the heck does he think he is?” Jake asks Nat.

“Better put that CT scan order,” is all Natasha replies as she walks away.

*

It’s Reuben’s patient, an eleven years old boy with blunt trauma, and Jake makes a verbal order to Bradshaw, who is the boy’s nurse. “I understand but I think that—” and Jake goes, “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”

The whole room gets quiet and everyone looks to him — Reuben, Mickey, and the technician are wide-eyed.

Bradley just says, “Alright,” in a perfectly leveled voice and leaves the room.

 Mickey is not making eye contact as he quips under his nose, on his way out of the room, “You do realize he basically runs this ER, right? You’re making your life a lot harder.”

*

Jake orders IV fluids for one of his patients which is also in Rooster’s section that day and he bleeps the order info to Rooster. Fifteen minutes later he sees that it hasn’t been filled and is like, hah, I knew there is a reason I hate that guy. Finds him when he passes Jake in the corridor and is like, “I want you to start the IV for room 7. Now,” and Rooster  just tells him, “No, do it yourself or find someone else.” 

They have a little back and forth as Jake follows him down the corridor which ends with another, “No.”

There’s still no charge nurse in the ER (she’s on medical leave that will most likely end with her leaving employment, from what Jake gathers) so he makes a datix and the ER nurse manager (Warlock) following up is apprehensive because obviously, he knows Bradley, and hears about what actually happened — Bradley was getting an igel for a toddler from the peds side and deemed it more important than starting a bag of saline to bust someone's blood pressure.

Jake feels like an idiot.

*

Jake and Reuben are charting next to each other and Reuben gets bleeped his patient’s lab results. Jake, who is also waiting for lab results, complains about how he sent a pod to the lab before Reuben. Reuben just gives him a look and says, “Yeah, that’s because I asked Bradley to put my request in.”

And Jake is like, “What does he have to do with anything?”

Reuben looks at him like he’s dumb and says, “He has more sway with the lab,” and walks away with his tablet.

*

Javy is doing a consult for Nat and stops to chat to Jake (they know each other from residency days) and Bradley comes by and says, “Maggie’s becoming hypotensive again,” and Javy observes as Jake looks at the nurse that came, gives him a very long, very detailed look and licks his lips.

He manages to think Oh before Jake asks, “Maggie?”

The nurse looks seconds from rolling his eyes. “Mrs. Lawrence? Room 5?” 

“That's Margaret.”

“She prefers Maggie.”

And it goes on, with Jake standing there rigid, puffing up his chest and cocking his hip out. “Did you start the fluids?”

“Finshed already.”

“Start another bag.”

The nurse looks unimpressed and instead of confirming says, slowly, like he’s talking to a child, “Her fluid balance is positive. She’s usually on pressors.” Jake’s face gets red and he goes, “Then put an order for her.”

It’s kind of funny to observe and to be fair, the nurse does give Jake a minute to go over what he said, leaning his elbow on the counter, eyebrows raised, before he points out, in that damn slow, unimpressed tone, “I can't put orders for things like pressors."

He hands Jake the closest tablet and starts walking away.

Jake calls after him. "What, you're not even going to draft it for me?"

He doesn't even turn around and Javy is silently shaking from the laughter he's holding in, "I thought I wasn't allowed to do that, doctor."

*

Mav comes down to the ER to talk to Rooster on a slower day — about how they’re about to sponsor a new CRNA for the cardiothoracic surg unit and maybe he could put a good word for their development team for Bradley and yada yada.

It happens like that: Mav comes down, Bradley is charting next to the monitors station, Jake is going over a scan on the opposite side when The Dr. Mitchell himself comes down and stops next to Bradley. He gives Bradley and his pink Paw Patrol scrubs a look and clears his throat a couple of times before Bradley raises his gaze toward him, turning away a second later and ignoring him again.

Jake is freaking out — this is The Dr. Mitchell and one of the reasons Jake wanted to work in this exact hospital, along with the rumored to-be-announced cardiothoracic surg fellowship under Dr. Mitchell he had his eyes on. He’s been thinking about how to make contact with Dr. Mitchell since he started in the ER and here he is, telling unresponsive Bradshaw, “I heard you’re looking to go back for your Master’s in the near future.” Bradshaw doesn’t say anything and Dr. Mitchell adds, “We have a CRNA development spot for—” and Bradley tells him, not turning away from the screen, “I’m not an OR nurse,” and then taps his card on the computer’s reader to log out and walks away.

Dr. Mitchell is a fucking legend, a VIP of this hospital, so Jake just stands there, contemplating how the heck Bradshaw could do that and hears him mumbling under his breath, “Really slick, Mav,” and jumps on the opportunity to say, “I’ll be talking to his supervisor about this, his attitude is unacceptable, Dr. Mitchell.”

And Dr. Mitchell turns to him, raises an eyebrow and asks, “Excuse me?” 

“The nurse you were talking to. He might be senior in here but his attitude’s been horrible and I’ll personally step in. This won’t happen again.”

Dr. Mitchell gives him a look before slowly saying, “I suggest you mind your own business, Dr. Seresin,” and walks away.

Nat is silently laughing a few feet away and Jake asks her what’s so funny. His heart dead-ass stops when she says, “You do know Dr. Mitchell is Bradley’s dad, right? They might not be on the best of terms but that’s still his son.” And Jake has the urge to bang his head on the keyboard in front of him. 

* 

TW for transphobia.

There’s a new nurse practitioner to be (graduated, about to get her cert) that's rumored to be a candidate for the charge nurse position. Izzy. She’s quite young for that, younger than Bradley for sure, must have barely worked in the clinical area before going for her Master’s. Jake doesn’t know if it’s on purpose but the nurse manager and Bradley keep on putting her in his section.

She’s—well, she’s a bit too in his face. She agrees with everything Jake says and doesn’t roll his eyes at him, which is boring, and she’s, for an NP, not that knowledgeable. She doesn’t argue with him, which is a change, and Jake starts to hate it after about five hours. Her voice is saccharine sweet, she keeps on standing a bit too close to him at all times, and she’s decent with patients, but she keeps on asking him about the smallest of things.

Jake’s section is less busy, usually, since he deals primarily with trauma in the ER, but she never bounces off to help others when she is free, like Bradley did. She’s clinging to his section, a little bit, and he doesn’t get why. It’s not like he is any nicer to her than to Bradley or any other nurse.

She is busy taking bloods and Bradley finds him when he has a second alone, finally, and enlightens him about why.

“If you don’t believe me, you can just ask any other nurse. Everyone noticed.”

“If you really think that then why do you keep putting her in my sections?”

“I don’t. She’s senior as an NP, she’s taken over allocation from me now.”

Jake’s mind only focuses on one detail. “You were allocating yourself to my sections?”

“Only because no one wants to work with you and because I’m actually certified in trauma.” That makes sense. It’s not like Bradley would work with him voluntarily. “Look, all I’m saying, you watch out — you fool around with her and then reject her and she’s going to HR. I know the type.”

“The type?”

“You know, the girl that thought she’ll become a nurse, snag a rich doctor and never work again? Well, it’s not always women, there are guys who do that too, but in this case, she’s very much the type.”

“And you think she’s trying to—snag me?”

“She’s certainly not going after the residents that are getting paid twelve bucks an hour or Reuben who is married,” he points out. Which, again, fair, even if he didn’t know Reuben is married prior to this strange conversation.

Jake stares at him, processing, until he blurts out, “I’m gay.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Bradley says after a second, eyes barely noticeably a bit wider, before he walks away.

“Was he bothering you, doctor?”

She calls him doctor, always, and it honestly makes him grit his teeth. Now even more. He’s got a bad feeling about it.

It gets confirmed later when Jake is taking care of a six-year-old girl who had fallen down the stairs. She’s dehydrated and Izzy’s just tried to put a cannula on her three times before Jake told her to grab the bedside ultrasound and not make the girl cry even more.

Bradley passes by the room and Jake’s learned that he can’t leave a distressed child alone, so he comes in and gets the parents and the girl relaxed. He’s about to go in and tell him to leave it alone until Izzy brings the ultrasound when Nat grabs him by the arm and tells him, “He was in a Rapid Response Team, I’m pretty sure he can put a cannula in blind. Just let him do it.”

And he does let him. Watches, expecting the girl to burst into tears at any moment but she never does. Bradley’s literally been in the room for less than ten minutes and it’s all back to calmness.

Izzy comes back with the ultrasound. It should not have taken her so long to grab it. “What is he doing there? That's my patient.”

"He said he can put the IV line without the ultrasound.” Well, Nat said so. Jake can’t believe he’s saying but, “He’s a peds nurse, he’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure the girl's parents wouldn’t want him anywhere near her.”

This sets alarm bells in Jake’s head. “What do you mean?”

"People like him shouldn't be around kids," she says, to his horror. She leans in, way closer than needed, and conspiringly whispers, "Dr. Seresin, haven't you known that he is, you know, a she in disguise?"

He’s dumbstruck. "I'm sorry?"

"He's actually a woman, just pretending to be a man because he's mentally—You're the doctor, I'm sure you know better than I how the brains of people like them work. He shouldn't be around that girl, is what I'm saying. I certainly wouldn't like him around my child, if I had one."

Jake didn’t know this about Bradley but he understands what she means, even with how awful she is about it. This, however, should not be a piece of information thrown around in public if Bradley didn't wish to disclose it, and certainly not in such a manner. "And how do you know that, exactly?"

"Nurses share a locker room, it's not hard to notice how she, you know, mutilated herself."

Jake doesn’t say anything out loud but mentally he is preparing datix report in his head. He catches the ER’s nurse manager before he goes home, too, because that’s some shit he doesn’t stand for. He might be an asshole but he’s not a bigot.

Next time he comes to work, Bradley is back in his section and Izzy is no longer employed.

“Thanks,” Bradley says, when they’re at the station, next to each other, in a relatively slow moment. “If I went on my own, we’d have a weeks-long investigation that would probably end with her or me moving to a different unit.”

“She said this shit to your face?”

“Kept calling me she in front of patients,” Bradley admits after a moment. “I think most of them thought they misheard but—I knew.”

“Well, good riddance then.”

Bradley snorts, but he’s looking down at the tablet in his hands, smiling, and wow, the apples of his cheeks are so round and his eyes so bright and Jake can't breathe for a second.

---

(there might be a second part coming because I meant seven-season-long medical drama literally-- including Jake realizing he's an idiot, Mavdad drama, Jake having his hands inside Bradley (in the literal, surgical sense) and jealousy that could rival the McDreamy/Dr. Grey drama)

#this is unrealistic b/c its a med soap drama-like #not the actual chaos of er-like #as in med nonsense to be precise #also I don't know how american ers work #ive talked to a trauma surgeon twice in my life so sorry #i’ve mostly written it while trying to stay awake in the break room at 2am or to not fall asleep on the bus home #still having cluster headaches btw we're just too short-staffed to not go to work even if I have to sit out for an hour in the break room #bradley rooster bradshaw #jake hangman seresin #hangster #icemav mention #tgm #tgm au #trans bradley rooster bradshaw #<< im going to fill that tag even if it takes me years #op #charlie writes #hangster hospital au

[firespirited]

So I have a bunch of 'war stories' about my long long time with violent gallbladder attacks trying to magically lose weight

(I'd already cut out all fat down to the gram) to get to an arbitrary surgery number except dun dun: hunger triggers bile.

The diy nonsense and prep you get up to when the pain is that intense, the moment when my body reacted post op with the biggest attack yet, crazy chaotic stupid stuff like at the hospital, i got unplugged from my IV and spurted blood everywhere...

All tiny compared to what was to come. During the post op attack, they gave me a painkiller that lasted 5 hours and locked me in my body unable to move or speak. It was relief and was nice and fine until

1/ I discovered my mother had terrible sleep apnea where she'd stop breathing for what felt like forever

2/ a power cut reset my heart monitor machine to a solid beep for 30 seconds and mum thought I had coded.

In those 5 hours and singular moments, 18 months of random blinding pain that makes you moan, rock uncontrollably and sweat enough to fill towels, elaborate precision scalding under the ribs with burns you treat later, the anti nausea/vagal nerve/fainting remedies, the post op pain: It was all trivial.

She went home next day because she was wiped. But they hadn't kept up my meds and I went into combo ssri and benzo withdrawal. I had a psychotic episode, made a very angry phone call to a very confused and distressed mum, called a taxi and had the guy sneak me out of hospital convinced my loved ones had abandoned me and wouldn't allow me home. So that there was my third withdrawal psychotic break and let's just say there's a very clear pattern, it's not entirely irrational and there's nothing I fear except THAT when it kicks in. Not too painful a memory as I've apologised profusely and know it was fake and know my deep faultline. Just a cherry on top of the mess sundae. Funny isn't it?

Mum's on a CPAP now and it's wonderful. I couldn't do a thing while that machine beeped and that moment was more potently awful than all of it.

—-------–-----

When I was 16 a doctor did botched local anesthesia surgery on my toe to remove my toenail and scrape the bone, the anaesthetic syringe didn't work. I was alone and the doctor thought I was just afraid of pain and hysterical (ask me about the surgeries and disinfections i'd done on myself someday lmao) I passed out multiple times. The syringe needle shifted right into a nerve and i spasmed and begged out. But the whole afternoon was fuzzy, I had dissociated on my way home from school after a rape threat and attempting groping by the local drunkard about an hour before my appointment so the whole very bloody gory and extremely painful moments are fractured like a broken mirror or a badly downloaded movie. It took me about a week to properly piece together the sequence of events and explain why I'd left the doctors and walked home with a shoe full of blood. I don't know if it would have been worse to be fully present.

—————

I had a series of daily treatments with the generic version of an intravenous antibiotic with a crap formula that crystalizes and burns. The brand name was too expensive for me to switch. It was very high pain both in the moment and the next hour. I have lumps of scar tissue that get in the way of my daily injections, large lumps of chemically burned lower hip/upper glute muscle. Those injections gave me back the ability to walk more than 10 yards, more spoons, less exhaustion agony so I kept submitting to it for as long as treatment was available. I resent that big pharma doesn't care if the generic has bad side effects. I only curse the scars when the needle jams and it hurts. I'd do it again.

–––––––

Pain is a constant but it's so varied. Bowel spasms, migraines, shooting pains, dull aches, burning sensations, muscle cramps, pain that itches your teeth, skin like a sausage ready to pop, the fibro zappy zaps. How do you choose a worst one without taking other things into account? Which part of the orchestra is giving you a headache?

=======

I have some really funny gory stories about the ingrowing toenails though. Oh and sis removed a large sebaceous cyst from my back with a disinfected exacto knife - we were sober but high on sleep deprivation.

I got pink eye last week and thought I'd put alcohol into some sterile water, i'd just got drips down the side and got 70% rubbing alcohol in my eye, sis nearly cried laughing when I said I'm fine with a high pitched wobble. It worked though.

I cracked my shoulder bone when I stood up to a bully age 10 and he pushed me so hard I hit the ground with no way to brace. Had to wear an elastic potato sack for 3 months and learn to write with my left hand. But I'm very proud of that one.

Others I'm too sore to talk about at least tonight. Toxic friendships, institutional neglect. Stuff I tried to ignore or didn't care to care for myself.

Eh. What matters is now and now I'm doing slow rehab and off to get some sleep.

#saf #Ramblings #Pain stories

[hekateinhell]

Okay Re: Hospital AU- I’m currently on call in a quiet hospital and now I can’t stop thinking about this. I think Lestat is the bro ortho surgeon nobody’s sure how he even got into med school but he has great patient outcomes. Louis is a vascular surgeon bc precision and patience is key. Armand, chaotic trauma doc/ER. And Daniel, 10000% anesthesia (sorry I’m biased towards anesthesia bc it’s my concentration lmao)

Omg, I can't believe more than two people are interested in my AU nonsense lmao 🥹

Dying at the fact that whether Lestat's a psychologist or another surgeon, our collective take is still along the lines of everyone being: "... That guy? Really?"

I love trauma for Armand, either doc or surgeon! I'm biased towards surgeon because then I get to talk about his hands and it's a nod to what he claims to have done to Claudia in canon. It's about the highest stress job I can imagine RIP (those pre-shift spankings are a downright necessity now).

Daniel is so the burnt-out anesthesiologist with his usual host of Daniel Problems™️.

(I actually have no idea what the anesthesiologist life looks like outside of TV, but I wish you luck just the same ♥️)

#<333 #you ask and hekate answers #fic ideas

[tesslucetram]

Happy New Year to me. After breaking my leg in three places on Christmas day (and dislocating my ankle at the same time, but we won't talk about that) I'm finally settled for at least 3 weeks.

I'm at my Aunt's house and I really could not be more grateful. She's a nurse and is very soothing and practical. We have a decent amount in common, both being seamstresses, even if she is a (yuck) quilter and I'm a costume maker. Which is not at all a dig about quilting. It's an amazing art form and I love quilts. But I do not like MAKING quilts. Quilts are too precise. Costumes have more flexibility.

Anyway, I'm staying in her guest room, which has a private bathroom, and I'm recouping until my follow up ortho visit.

My surgery was the 30th, to finally fix my broken ankle, and I have 2 plates on my fibula plus 2 screws in my tibia. I'm very grateful to my surgical team because it wasn't a sure thing if the surgery could even get done for another 2 weeks.

Due to the holidays and a little bit of incompetence from the initial ER I went to, I waited much longer than I should have for an ortho appointment and subsequent surgery. There was a lot of swelling and the ortho wasn't confident in the surgical team's ability to close my incisions because of it. If it was too much on the day of, they might have had to send me home with an "x fix" which is an internal splint, but it's where the surgeon leaves pins sticking out until they can go back and fix everything. Which would have been 2 more weeks. Yikes.

But I luckily avoided all of that nonsense and got fixed up properly. It is very painful. I'm trying to be measured about taking my pain meds, but Holy hell. I'm also not allowed to so much as touch my toes to the ground for at least the next 3 weeks and it will be 6-8 weeks total of no weight bearing.

Which means I'm out of work. I'm not totally screwed, fortunately. I've been with my company for almost 15 years at this point and they're relatively easy-going about this sort of thing. I have vacation time I can use for supplemental pay for the next 2 weeks, FMLA leave I can take, and I've been paying for short term disability insurance for forever (thank God). So I should be mostly okay with my regular financials.

Which brings me to the point of this wall of text. I did pick up a few unexpected expenses during all of this. I'm not super concerned about the balance of the hospital bill. I can pay that off slowly over time. But I did have to rent a hotel room for a few days while waiting on my surgery, and purchase a wheelchair to avoid another fall.

All total, those 2 things cost me about $1000. I could really use some help with those. That amount is a mortgage payment for me. If you'd like to help me out, please private message me and I'll give you my PayPal account. Anything helps. I'd also like to give something to my aunt. She would never ask, but I don't like not contributing.

#donations #please help #injury mention #surgery mention

[wolf-and-bard]

The Geraskier dark academia AU of my dreams (because writing these up keeps me sane; TLDR at the bottom because this escalated):

-Jaskier is so ready for college. Like, the readiest he's ever been for anything in his life. He couldn't wait to get out of his stuffy family home, away from his narrow-minded hometown, he is ready. He signs up for a Liberal Arts major, moves into a dorm, drinks his brains away during the first week. He makes an archnemesis, he makes friends, he live-documents the whole affair on Snapchat for his friend Triss who lives across the country, but is always with him in spirit. Life is good.

-Jaskier doesn't think twice when his roommate Zoltan invites him to come along to a party at the Kaer Morhen fraternity house because hello? Orientation week was last month, high time he goes to an actual frat party full of guys like wardrobes that eminate sexual self-assuredness and hopefully some sexual flexibility as well. He puts on his most revealing shirt and too tight jeans and joins Zoltan. The fraternity house is old, red-brick with sandstone pillars and iron-wrought gates which would seem rusty if not for the ivy that curls around them. It's chock-full with people of every kind of major and age, most of them drunk beyond reason by the time Jaskier and Zoltan arrive. Zoltan disappears in a tangle of rugby-players and leaves Jaskier to his own devices. He befriends a group of Archeology majors, their leader being a cute blond called Filavandrel, and they share a bottle of red wine, round and round. He meets his archnemesis, the one he spent all orientation week bickering about music with, Valdo or some nonsense, and they do tequila shots. It’s a nice party and Jaskier has the time of his life until he returns from the bathroom to find a god of a guy standing in the hallway.

-"Oh hello," Jaskier mutters under his breath. Before, his evening was aimless, he let the wave of the vibe take him wherever, let the alcohol blur the world around him. But now, he has an objective. And that objective stands all by his lonesome, scowling down the hallway. Man, does he brood well. Jaskier usually goes for people that are easy to read if some casual fun is what he has in mind -and it's not out of his mind just yet - but this guy intrigues him; there is more to him than simple dudebro-ness. He has shock-grey hair and startling amber eyes and seems to cast the longest shadow. Jaskier wants to ride him. Jaskier also wants to serenade him on a starlit wooden bridge and collect all the guy's deepest secrets and desires to keep under his pillow and draw divine inspiration from. Okay, that may be the Tequila shots talking. He scurries over to the bar, downs another two, then approaches the guy.

-"Hi," Jaskier says as he sidles up to him. The guy half-heartedly raises his beer in greeting.  Taciturn, dark, dramatic. Jaskier decides to go for it. "I absolutely adore the way you just stand here and brood." (Jaskier will only learn much much later that he accidentally used some weird Kaer Morhen frat code and set off a chain of events that changed his life forever). "Lamb," the guy calls out instead of answering, something that makes Jaskier think he's so far gone that he's actively hallucinating. But no, seconds later a guy with equally lush red hair and equally thick arms appears from the crowd. He wears a scowl which has Jaskier's throat tighten. "What is it, Wolf?" Wolf, huh? "Go collect Goat and Kitty-Cat. I found him." And Wolf-Guy grabs Jaskier by the back of the neck and hauls him through a door, down some stairs - is that marble? are those torches? GARGOYLES? - and into pitch blackness. Jaskier squeals. This is what he imagined when he dreamt of college. Well not exactly this, but close enough.

-They bind him with silk scarfs and put a blindfold over his eyes which, okay. Jaskier knows he shouldn't find this as sexy as he does, but he can't help it. He has no sense of self-preservation and this will just be the best of fuel for the first assignment in his screenwriting class. "Oh, this is fun," he murmurs when someone tugs off his boots and someone else smears a fatty paste onto his lips. It smells like... okay it smells lot like his uncle Matthew's pigsty. Weirdly disgusting. "Who are you guys anyway?"

-They don't speak at all that night, don't take off the blind-fold until way later. All night, Jaskier can hear them rustling around him, chanting in some language he doesn't understand. They give him several drinks, most of which honestly taste like asphalt, but make his insides go fuzzy. When the blindfold comes off eventually, Jaskier finds himself on the front-seat of a pick up truck, Wolf guy behind the wheel. They are parked behind the frat house. "Look, I don't think you're a suitable candidate. The guys all said they want to keep you, but my friend recognized you from the freshman introduction party and we usually only inaugurate sophomores." Jaskier blinks. He has absolutely no idea what's going in anymore. His friend Triss is probably worried sick because he hasn't checked in all evening. The faint taste of burned rubber clings to his lips and all Jaskier can think is: Fuck, is this man hot. "Go out with me," he blurts. "Go out with me, I'll show you how suitable I am."

-Over the course of a month's worth of introductions, preparation and inauguration traditions (which, among other things, have him dropped butt-naked in the middle of the forest, requiring him to find his way back to campus; have him spend more time learning long-dead languages than he is comfortbale with; have him getting thoroughly intimate with Eskel's (Goat) helper syndrome, Lambert (Lamb) and Aiden's (Kitty-Cat) ostentatiously loud fucking, Coen's (Hawk) frequent absences and Geralt's (Wolf) quiet, but passionate idealism) Jaskier learns the truth at the core of Kaer Morhen. It is more than a fraternity, it is a brotherhood of students that spend their free time in rituals to protect the college, its city, likely even the whole state from supernatural creatures that threaten to cross over into the world. The existence of these is no surprise to Jaskier who's come out of an adolescence of escapism and coping through fiction and song, but the fact that there are handsome tough guys who work to banish him is too much of a dream to be true. It is true. Unofficially, the call themselves Witchers. They catch wraiths in cricles of runes, they re-direct necrophages into Kaer Morhen's basement and slay them with blades of silver. They brew potions and cast minor spells to get rid of mutated insectoids. And Jaskier is to be one of them. They call him Lark.

-His first ritual goes bat-shit wrong. Jaskier is reasonably sure he did everything right, but the wraith doesn't stay contained after they bound it . "Fuck," Geralt growns after, pressing a cloth to the gaping wound in Jaskier's shoulder while they wait for Eskel to whip out the first aid kit. Jaskier shudders, can taste blood. "There shouldn't be fireflies here, right?" - "Ah, nope," Lambert says. He keeps snapping his fingers before Jaskier's eyes. "Hey, Lark, stay with us, okay?" - "He's fine," Aiden says, inspecting his nails. "If anything, it's Geralt we should be worried about. He's about to have a full blown panic attack." Geralt grunts and holds Jaskier closer.

-"Does this mean I can ask Priscilla to let me copy her homework," Jaskier asks later. He's in bed, bundled up in one of Kaer Morhen's bedrooms. Portraits of alumni line the wall and a hearth crackles away. Geralt sits next to the bed, a pretense-book on his lap. His eyes bore into Jaskier, wide, haunted. "Jask," he breathes out shakily. - "Hello, big guy. How are we doing?" - "Better now that you're awake. We... we had to call in Vesemir. He will want to talk to you." - "Alright, okay," Jaskier says. He knows who Vesemir is of course, but he has no idea what exactly his job entails or what having to talk to him means. "Geralt?" - "Hmm?" - "What did I do wrong?" - "Nothing. You were uncharacteristically precise... but it turns out I was right all along. You're not suited for this kind of work." - "Because I'm not big and buff like all of you?" Jaskier asks, pouting. Geralt has the audacity to laugh. But he also takes Jaskier's hands and kisses his knuckles and huh? What? Jaskier's brain short-circuits. Fuck when did he fall so hard for Geralt? "No, Jask, you're perfect. I mean, uh, ah, perfectly annoying." That bastard. "The wraith went crazy because it turns out you're an amplifier. That means supernatural creatures are pulled to you and can draw from you to manifest easier in our world. You wouldn't have noticed this unless you ever passed by a spot where the spheres overlap significantly. As it is, your participation in the ritual poses a danger." - "TLDR: I'm fired?" - "That's for Vesemir to decide... truth be told, I don't want you to go. But I can't stand the thought of you being in danger. Because of me, this." - "Go out with me, Geralt. Please. One coffee," Jaskier practically begs. Yes, his shoulder is minced meat and he feels exhausted from the blood loss but Geralt has never been this open and honest with him. "...fine."

-Jaskier heals up under the diligent care of his friends. Priscilla is allowed over too, practically drags him though his classes with tutoring and copies of her homework and sugar-coated emails to his various professors. Triss video-calls him three times a day. Eskel's med school expertise leaves Jaskier with the most neat scar he is ever going to get out of this, Lambert and Aiden hang out to play Gwent with him, a strange card game they invented and custom-painted, Coën even pops in to bring Jaskier his guitar and a venti Matcha Tea Latte even though the nearest Starbucks is miles away. Geralt... Geralt is there almost all the way. He sleeps in the chair at first, then - on Jaskier's stern insistence - in the bed with him, though careful to keep his distance. He helps Jaskier into the shower, something so strangely intimate without feeling innately sexual, he takes him out on slow walks. Geralt doesn't talk much, but Jaskier knows he feels responsible. It's fine. Sure. Absolutely fine. Jaskier is so far gone for this man by the time he moves back into his own dorm that he considers getting injured again just to have Geralt by his side. They never do go out for coffee.

-Vesemir doesn't so much invite Jaskier as have him called out of his choir session by a girl about Jaskier's age. She has the same hair color as Geralt and Jaskier thinks he's seen her around Kaer Morhen's bigger parties. "Hello, Jaskier," she says sweetly, but one look at her tells Jaskier she's deadlier than any of the frat boys. If his drunk memory serves correctly she also does a phenomenal keg stand. "Ves sends me to collect you." Which has Jaskier even more impressed with her. None of the boys dare to call him anything but Vesemir or Sir, even when he's not around. - "I've been expecting this," Jaskier says, shouldering his bag. The girl laughs and grabs his arm to guide him out of the building and across campus. - "You are cute," she says. "Geralt said so, but I thought that was just because he's so infatuated with you. I'm Ciri, by the way, his younger sister." Infatuated, huh? Jaskier has just enough brainspace left to save her name. Ciri. They will have to become very good friends. Infatuated.

-It turns out, Vesemir isn't half as scary as the boys made him out to be. He's closer to sixty than fifty, has a stern face, but a kindly voice and the first thing he does after dismissing Ciri with a meaningful glance is offer Jaskier a glass of whiskey. Jaskier sneaks a photograph of the bottle's label when Vesemir stands at the window and glances down at the campus, hands clasped behind his back. Triss will never believe this. It's the sort of alcohol that exists only in myth, at least to college students. "So, Mr. Pankratz. I'm afraid apologies are in order." - "Please, I prefer Jaskier." - "I know," Vesemir says and turns. "I would kindly ask you to delete that picture, my office and its contents fall under the terms of the non-disclosure agreement you signed when entering our brotherhood." Jaskier gulps heavily, the whiskey suddenly sour on his tongue. But he's quick to paste over a smile. He's gotten this far with the mysterious Kaer Morhen fraternity, he can pull all the way through. He deletes the picture. "Good," Vesemir says. "Now down to business." Vesemir gives him two options. Jaskier can consult a local magical artisan and have his memories of Kaer Morhen's true purpose removed. It is an easy procedure, won't cost him anything. Except for his new-found friends and the love he feels for Geralt. Except for the only place he's ever truly felt at home. Jaskier chooses the latter option which is to become the fraternity's chronicler.

-After that, things are supposed to calm down and they do, for a bit. Geralt still dodges any and all attempts Jaskier makes at flirting even though it's evident his resolve is thinning out. Jaskier observes and documents the rituals, begins to collect old notebooks. He's planning to go above and beyond his job and compile a comprehensive history of Kaer Morhen and its members before he's graduated. He may not be able to partake in the rituals or help the guys protect this city from monsters, but he can play his part. Leave behind a legacy.

-Between that and his normal studies, hanging out with his theater group, meeting Triss on alternate weekends and throwing epic frat parties, all of Jaskier's time is consumed. There are several instances in which Geralt and him almost manage to have their coffee, but then they have Eskel on the phone because Lambert and Aiden managed to give themselves poisoning over a simple Endrega job, or Priscilla needs an emergency stand-in for her weekly performances at a local bar, or Jaskier is simply too tired and falls into bed, sleeping over Zoltan's aggressive snoring. Jaskier doesn't mind so much. They catch glimpses of intimacy, Geralt's hand on the small of his back as he guides him downstairs for another ritual, a good night kiss on the cheeks once it's done, a spot of quiet homework-doing in Kaer Morhen's common room together, their legs pressed close under the table. One of these days, Jaskier will find the courage to close the last bridge between them. He just wants to wait until Geralt seems absolutely comfortable with it.

-All is as well as can be until Vesemir comes up with an idea. Because more and more creatures have been getting through and they are unable to hold off all, he wants to capture one of them, an Archgriffin, to bind in their world and act as guardian against lesser creatures. "You're mad," Aiden says. "That's fucking brilliant." - "It's a good idea," Eskel and Coën agree. Lambert keeps exchanging grim glances with Geralt because they both know what this means. They will have to use Jaskier to lure the beast. Which is why they both protest the idea heavily and Geralt gets into a fight with Vesemir. Jaskier is not there for it, but Aiden and Lambert tell him later, once he's back from theatre rehearsal. He watches them fight over it too and then it's only him and Lambert. Jaskier steals one of Zoltan's bottles of spirits and they get stupidly drunk, wandering around campus all night until Eskel collects them and tucks them into bed at Kaer Morhen. "I will not stand to lose you," Lambert slurs, arm dragged over Jaskier's chest. "You're like, almost my best friend. Plus, Wolf would be devastated." - "Aiden seems to think it'll be fine," Jaskier says, snuggling up to Lambert. - "Yeah, fuck him." They fall asleep like that and the first thing Geralt does when he finds them is kick Lambert all the way down the stairs.

-In the end, Geralt and Lambert are outvoted, not that they can stop Vesemir. Geralt is more silent than usual throughout prep and Jaskier can't seem to cheer him up. He knows his life is likely on the line, but he wants to help so badly. These guys are his family after all. If he can make their lives a little easier by doing this... well, he wants to. He needs to. Being in Kaer Morhen is the first time he seems to have a purpose other than writing angsty teenage songs. Eskel keeps checking up on him. Vesemir writes preliminary excuses for all Jaskier's exams which leave him with only A's, something Priscilla does not appreciate in the slightest. Lambert and Aiden fight and fight and won't stop fighting over this whole affair until Jaskier sits them down and makes them talk. Geralt... remains quiet. Jaskier can tell he doesn't sleep. Can tell he rarely eats. He decides now is as good a time as ever.

-It's the night before and the others have all returned to their dorms, but Jaskier stayed in Kaer Morhen under the pretext of Zoltan having his girlfriend over, and Geralt rarely ever goes home. He has a flat off campus, but Jaskier suspects it's drab and lonely. He gets it. Kaer Morhen has soft fluffly beds and fire places and wards and books. Currently, it has the two of them, bundled up in one of the upstairs rooms. They share an armchair before a low fire, not an unusual sight for them, not anymore. And still, Geralt pretends they're just friends. It's ridiculous. "You know I'll be fine, right?" Jaskier says. He has his head tucked under Geralt's chin and has been humming show tunes under his breath for the last half hour, something that usually puts Geralt right to sleep. Not so now. "I can't know that," Geralt replies. He lifts Jaskier's hand which he's been holding and traces the veins on the back of it with his thumb. "You've no idea how dangerous the ritual is. Even more so with you being an amplifier." - "So protect me." - "I will. I promise, I will." - "Geralt, when are you going to finally give in?" Jaskier sighs and pulls back a little. Geralt stares at him, a little cross-eyed and Jaskier gives a shaky laugh. "I'm going to kiss you now. Pull back if you don't want to, but allow it and I'll never let you go." Geralt allows it, kisses back. It's the first night they indulge in a love that has been growing for almost a year and it's gloriously sweet, blazing, beautiful. It leaves Jaskier with faith that, even if things go sideways, Geralt will get them both out of it alive.

-The ritual goes well thanks to the Witchers' meticulous preparations, the dozen or so warding spells they put on Jaskier and Geralt's reflexes that save him from a swipe of the Griffin's claw. They bind the creature to one of the basement holding cells and celebrate with excessive amoutns of vodka and cake. "All is well that ends well, huh?" Jaskier asks from where he sits on Geralt's lap. Strong arms hold him and his chest is full of nightingales that flutter and sing. He watches Eskel drunkenly dance-offing with Coen in a corner, watches Lambert and Aiden make out in another. Vesemir took off, but Ciri is there, lounging next to them on the couch, nose buried in her phone. "I will never put you through such danger again," Geralt grunts, his nose buried in Jaskier's hair. "Of course, love." Jaskier relaxes into the embrace. All is well, though it is not nearly the end of this story.

-TLDR: Kaer Morhen is an occultist fraternity that keeps supernatural beings away from campus. Jaskier, unable to participate in the actual rituals due to a genetic predisposition, becomes their chronicler. Geralt worries a lot. Jaskier tries for the longest time to get him to go on a coffee date or something. Lambert and Aiden are a disaster couple. Eskel keeps them all together, literally and figuratively. Ciri is the one who got all the brain cells.

#witcher #the witcher #modern AU #dark academia AU #geraskier #geralt x jaskier #gerlion #geralt #jaskier #lambert #vesemir #eskel #aiden #coen #priscilla #zoltan #triss merigold #lambden #lambert x aiden #my writing #I just want someone to write this for me #novel length please #maybe I'll return to it one day #also greatly inspired by Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo #a fantastic novel #filavandrel #kaer morhen #college AU #headcanon #my geraskier dream AUs

[kumapillow]

Psycho-Pass Radio CID 24 Hours a Day: Mandatory Happiness #03 Learning Crime Prevention Measures with Komissa-chan [24H]

Here’s a translated summary of the third audio drama from the Mandatory Happiness web radio, a.k.a. the mandatory Komissa PR program episode per season.

Read after the cut. I hope you enjoy 😀

(I also opted to post the audio for this since Tsurugi and Kou imitating Komissa-chan’s voice sound ridiculous lol)

—x—

Tsurugi (monologue): "Psycho-Pass is the indicator of a happy life." That has become an accepted truth, and with it a lot of things have changed.

     Crime prevention is one of them. Before, "crime prevention" meant taking measures in order to steer clear of crime. But in this day and age where the Sibyl System is in operation, the crime rate is virtually zero. Because of this, the meaning of "crime prevention" has also changed. Now...

Tsurugi and Kougami have been assigned to present a kid-friendly crime prevention program. Tsurugi expresses his surprise at this, and Kougami comments that it's probably the PR department's doing again; apparently they always seem to request for CID Division 1 whenever there's an event where Komissa is slated to appear. Tsurugi says this kind of task is more suited to Akane or Kagari, but Kougami mentions they're busy with another case, so it's up to the two of them.

Tsurugi: Oh, yeah, Gino-san mentioned that you're the Komissa pro, 'Gami-san... Kougami: What kind of nonsense is that guy telling now...      Whatever, this is also part of the job. We gotta work for our paychecks.

Kougami then asks for tomorrow's script, so Tsurugi brings it up. Kougami's really not up to it, but decides they should at least see what's in it. Tsurugi reads the program's title:

Crime Prevention Quiz with Komissa-chan! Which of these keeps your Hue clear?

He gets confused at this, asking if what they're doing isn't a crime prevention program after all, and Kougami answers that crime prevention in the PSB's definition is preventing people from becoming latent criminals, so the program's content isn't technically wrong. Tsurugi thinks about it and agrees; if someone is thinking of some crime like burglary, their crime coefficient will have increased and they probably won't be able to freely walk outside. Kougami says that the premise in their society now is that crime doesn't and won't occur, which means that crime prevention nowadays means thinking of oneself not as a possible victim but a perpetrator, so it's become important to take preventive steps from becoming a latent criminal. Even though in reality, crime does still occur.

Tsurugi then comments that's just turning a blind eye to what's happening, and he doesn't particularly like it, but if that's what the government is saying, then so be it; with Kougami adding that them hounds just have to follow along with their owners' whims. He then urges the junior Enforcer to continue reading.

Tsurugi: Umm... (imitates Komissa voice)     Question no. 1: "Early to bed, early to rise" is one of the first steps to have a clear Hue. But one night before a rest day, you carelessly stayed up late. What will you do? Kougami: (imitates Komissa voice)     A. Wake up at the usual time, and sleep at the usual time later.     B. It's okay to oversleep.     C. Wake up at the usual time, and sleep earlier later.

Tsurugi says it's probably okay to oversleep if it's a rest day, but Kougami disagrees, noting that since they're talking about keeping your Hue clear, then A is the correct answer because keeping your habits is one of the basics in mental care. Tsurugi isn't convinced, saying it's also important to loosen up a little, and it's difficult for a child to be sleep-deprived, so Kougami thinks maybe it's C, since sleeping earlier next time will make up for staying up late.

They then look up the answer: All choices are correct! (Tsurugi: What the hell?!)

Kougami reads the explanation: "A is correct because it's good to keep your regular habits. B is correct because it's good to keep yourself well-rested. But let's make sure to sleep at the usual time later. C is correct because it's good to wake up early. We should make up for the lack of sleep by going to bed earlier later."

Tsurugi then continues reading, that in case they're not sure what to do, they should consult their home secretary AI that monitors their condition, which will surely give them a good answer. Kougami then notes that a commercial for one of the sponsors is going to play right after, a company called Paradise Shift which specializes in creating home secretary AIs.

They proceed with the next question.

Kougami: (imitates Komissa voice)     Does everyone here eat their food without being picky? Enjoying different flavors and tastes is good for your Hue. Tsurugi: Hm, yeah, that's true. Kougami: (continues in Komissa voice) But if there is something in your meal which you don't really like, what do you do? Tsurugi: (imitates Komissa voice)     A. Eat it without leaving anything.     B. It's okay to not eat it.     C. Add some flavors to it that you like and eat it.

Tsurugi chooses C, saying that if you're gonna eat it anyway, at least make sure it'll taste good. Kougami disagrees, choosing A, adding that the hint is there in the topic (enjoying different flavors is good for your Hue). Tsurugi counters that that would only make them feel unpleasant.

Looking at the answer: All choices are correct! (Kougami: Wha-! Again?!)

Checking the explanation, Tsurugi relays that A and C are correct based on what the two of them surmised, and B is also correct since "the nutrition content of Hyper Oats-based products can be adjusted, so leaving food you don't like will not have a bad effect on your health."

Kougami continues reading, that auto-servers can always make food to your liking, and can also help you get used to tastes you don't like. Then another commercial is going to play, this time for Gusto, a company that makes premium auto-servers.

Tsurugi: Hey, 'Gami-san, isn't this program just a— Kougami: Don't say it. Tsurugi: But look at the next questions: "Who do you consult when you get into a fight with a friend?", then, "When is a good time to stop and take meds when you're depressed?" Kougami: All of that is relevant to mental care. Tsurugi: Then, commercials for a counselling employment agency and a pharmaceutical company come right after! Kougami: All of that is relevant to mental care. Tsurugi: This program is just one huge commercial! And it just basically tells you to rely on Sibyl for everything! Is this really ok?! Kougami: It's fine, right? We don't really have the right to say anything about it. In this world, to abide by the Sibyl System is the right thing to do. Tsurugi: Man...is it really wrong to feel strange about all of this...? Kougami: Don't worry, I feel the same way. But that's precisely the reason why we became latent criminals.

(both sigh deeply)

(end)

#psycho pass #audio drama #psycho pass radio drama #translation #psycho pass mandatory happiness #lol a summary this is not #I practically translated the whole thing #give or take a couple of lines #I'm stupid lol

[captaincravatthecapricious]

Ill and Alone- Prompt Fill

cw food mention, nausea mention, fever, anxiety, the concept of not feeling bad enough to merit comfort, depression, isolation

Hi!  I am still accepting bingo prompts!  The crossed out prompts are already written, the starred ones are ones that I have gotten, but not posted yet!  Let me know which character you want and if you prefer writing on a drawing! Bingo sheet by the wonderful @celosiaa​

Jon wakes up to Martin leaving before dawn.  Walks him to the door, hands him breakfast and a thermos of tea.  Goes back to bed, the sticky exhaustion nipping at his heals, at the back of his skull.  Inserted in the grit in the corner of his eyes.  

He wakes up to an empty bed, Martin’s side of the room looking sad and empty, usual trinkets of their cohabitation lacking.  No prescription on the nightstand, no glasses, no poetry book, no neatly folded outfit set out for the morning, closet looking empty.  

The room is bathed in the grey light of early morning.  Jon goes back to sleep.  

He wakes up properly at nine.  He makes tea, staring at the faded sticky note that Martin had written precisely how both he and Jon respectively take their tea.  Jon remembers by this point.  It’s been years since he Needed to look at the note, but he still looks at it because… well… it’s Martin’s writing.  Instructions written with care and precision, with a little heart and a smily face.  He doesn’t trace the writing, he isn’t that pathetic, and he doesn’t want the paper to disintegrate any faster than it already is… but he wants to.  

Martin will be back in a couple days.  He shouldn’t be this clingy…  But the flat already feels empty and cold.  Jon shivers, holding his tea close to his chest, and resisting the temptation to make a second cup for Martin.  

Jon teaches his classes.  He eats lunch in his office.  A sandwich that tastes like chalk and fills his mouth with cement.  He grades a few papers.  He teaches another class.  He rides the tube home.  He falls asleep on the couch.  He wakes up on the couch.  The flat cold around him, the cushions stiff and frozen against his slight and hurting frame.  Joints stiff against the chill.  

He thinks about making dinner, or even just reheating some leftovers, but he doesn't.  He texts Martin.  'Love you, hope the volunteer training is going well.'

He falls asleep.  Heavy and aching and so tired.  

He wakes up on the cold couch to a buzz from his phone.  'Going well, just finished up for the night.  Love you!'

It's dark now, but not late.  Daylight doesn't last long in the grey of winter in London.  Jon shivers.  He thinks again about dinner, and how Martin would want him to eat, but he just wants a warm shower and to go to bed.  

He considers his cane, but doesn't feel it worth the effort.  It is out of his way, and he would just like to get this over with.  

Jon hates sitting in the shower, but he hates baths more, and his hurting limbs won't keep him up any longer.  

Jon wakes up in a cold sweat.  Salt on his lips, saltwater on his lashes.  The flat is cold.  Cold like his dreams.  Panic on his breath as the Lonely dreams still hold him in their vice.  He wraps his arms around his chest.  He tries to rub his own back despite aching muscles, trying to make his own boney hands sooth him like Martin can.  He shakes and he cries silently.  

He checks his phone, the low brightness still stinging his eyes, and smears the numbers of the time beyond recognition, but he makes out no new messages.  

He pushes himself out of bed on aching legs, and shaking arms, pulling on one of Martin's sweaters and stopping by the loo.  

He makes tea.  And tries to take comfort because it is almost as good as when Martin makes it.  

Jon goes back to bed.  

It's morning and Jon's head hurts.  His head hurts and his arms hurt and his legs hurt and his back hurts.  

He almost pushes himself up to get ready for work, but he remembers it is Saturday.  

Jon rolls over to Martin's side of the bed.  Placing himself in the divot where Martin would be, if he were not out of town.  

Jon texts Martin.  'Morning, have a nice day, love you.'

Jon dozes.  

He should make breakfast.  But he isn't hungry, and he doesn't want to move.  Even if his small frame isn't holding heat, even under the thick covers of their bed.  He wants the weighted blanket.  He wants the heated blanket, but those live in the closet.  Those are for bad nights.  Mostly of the time He and Martin under the thick duvet is enough.  

But it isn't night and it isn't that bad, is it?  And even so, that is more effort that he thinks he can spare.  

He texts Martin.  

He texts Martin.  

He texts Martin.  

He texts Martin.  

Meaningless texts with the mundanities that are beyond him.  Little messages about missing him, about making tea, about reading.  None of them lies, but cutting out the dragging exhaustion that has given way to a dragging fever.  

And Martin texts back.  

Jon bundled in the heated blanket and Martin's jumper on the couch.  Dosing off to the Archers.  He still hates that show, but it's easier to hate something for the content than admitting he feels too shitty to even enjoy the documentaries he has been saving for the weekend.  

He grades some.  Not much.  And he makes tea.  

He thinks again about the leftovers in the refrigerator, but he doesn't have the energy to eat them.  Lacks the appetite.  

Jon falls asleep on the couch.  Tea cooling on the coffee table.  Papers spread around him in uneven heaps.  

Jon texts Martin.  And Martin texts back.  

Only the buzz of the phone keeping him from sinking deeper into misery.    

Jon texts him whenever he is awake to do so, and Martin texts back during his breaks.  

Jon's head hurts.  He is shivering despite the heated blanket that is tight around him.  Woken from another nightmare by his own gasping breath.  The Stranger this time.  

He calls Tim.  

"Jon?  Everything okay?"

Still gasping from the phantom hands rubbing him down, fighting the nausea that comes with that particular brand of terror, of that trauma of his invaded personal space.  And the desperation that someone come and save him from his cold and empty flat and end this lonely weekend.  

"Jon, are you alright?  Where are you, do you need your inhaler?"  

Jon probably does, but he fights for breath for a minute and he's more or less okay.  

"I'm home.  It's fine, sorry for calling."  He feels foolish for being needy, and more foolish still because he's fighting back tears now.  Tears over nothing at all.  Just the fever.  Just the dreams.  Martin will be home tomorrow, and Jon will probably be feeling better by then, and if not, it's probably mostly exhaustion anyways.  He's been having a hard time getting restful sleep.  

"Hey, hey, hey Jon.  It's okay to call.  Are you alright?  Do you need someone to come over?"  Tim isn't angry.  It still surprises Jon that there is no bite to his voice.  No snipping, not sarcasm, not annoyance.  Just... warmth, caring.  

"Just a little under the weather.  I'm okay.  Sorry for bothering you... Had a dream... and just... Sorry it's foolish.  I'm alright."  Jon shivers, and hoping he doesn't sound too soggy over the phone.  He aches.  Stupid joints.  Stupid immune system.  Gives out the minute Martin leaves.  Which... good.  He guesses… at least Martin isn't losing sleep over him this time.  He hates that Martin doesn't sleep when caring for Jon.  He Hates it.  He hates stealing sleep for him, even if this is the mundane way of doing it, he still has cost Martin too much over the years.  

"I'm gonna come over, okay?  It's not a bother, it's not an inconvenience, I had been planning to give you a visit anyhow, I've been too busy to drop by in a while and I want to see you because you are my friend, and if I make you soup as well, hey we both get dinner out of it.  I promise I Want to.  Sasha still has work, so I don't have any company tonight anyhow.  No plans.  Nothing."

"Not been hungry."  That's all Jon has the energy to argue.  

"Feeling queasy, or just the usual fever nonsense?"  Tim asks.  He sounds too cheerful for this.  

"Nightmare queasy now, but mostly just... fever probably."

"Oof.  One of those nightmares?  Yikes.  Well, that kind usually passes in a bit, then we can make you some Spicy Stoker Sick-day Soup.  This Is to my benefit.  Sasha isn't a big fan, and Martin isn't either.  It's a good excuse to make some good comfort food."

Jon almost smiles.  "'kay."  

Tim must guess he's falling asleep again.  "Get some rest.  I'll be there soon with some soup stuff and meds.  Don't worry about letting me in, I have a key, remember?"

Jon falls asleep on the couch.  

He wakes up to tea being set in front of him.  

Jon groans and rubs at his eyes.  

"I know I've said it before, but that note in the kitchen is fucking adorable!  I mean... a little sad that it took you that long to learn how to make yourself tea, but still fucking precious that the note still has a place of honor.  Not to mention, it's good reference for when I want to make you the perfect comfort cup of tea!"  Tim smiles at him.  

And it isn't the same as with Martin, but it still warms him up.  At least a little.  

"Hey bud, how are you feeling?"

Jon tiredly rock his hand in a so-so motion.  

"Mind if I take your temperature before you drink that tea?"

Jon turns his attention inward to see if what remains of the Eye wants to be helpful today.  "38.6."

"That... I can't tell if that is handy or inconvenient.  In any case, not bad but not great.  You okay if I start the soup?  You can either get some more rest of join me in the kitchen and we can watch some Buzzfeed on my laptop?"

Jon nods.  He gathers his blanket and his tea, and limps to the kitchen.  

Tim sucks in his breath at Jon's clearly stiff movements, and rushes to plug the blanket back in before Jon can move to do so.  

"You.  Are not gonna help, okay?  You can help by drinking your tea, and some water and then getting back to the couch and using me as a pillow and eating a little something."

Jon opens his mouth to argue, but sees the steel in Tim's glare.  Nothing unkind, but still solid resistance.  He nods.  

Jon falls asleep on Tim.  On the couch.  Empty bowls stacked next to Tim's laptop, cord plugged in next to Jon's blanket.  

Tim stays the next afternoon until Martin gets home.  Marin scolding Jon for not telling him he was ill.  Martin thanking Tim for coming.  Martin wrinkling his nose at the soup.  

Martin's prescription and glasses, and clothes and book back in their proper places.  Martin in Martin's divot in the mattress, Jon smooshed against Martin, still a shade too warm, but much better than earlier.  

Jon falls asleep in Martin's arms.  

#the magnus archives #tma #jonmartin #jonathan sims #tim stoker #timothy stoker #martin blackwood #jontim #fever #cw nausea #cw anxiety #cw isolation #cw depression #cw food #fic #my writing #my fic #my words #my art

[chantillyxlacey]

Mystery March #4: Storm

Vivi isn’t sure where she first heard the phrase ‘color storm’ in relation to migraines, but in her case at least it’s uncomfortably apt.

They’re about as predictable as the weather, for one thing-- which is to say it varies wildly whether they’re predictable at all. Sometimes she can tell when one is looming ominously in her future, like seeing dark clouds huddling on the horizon. Sometimes it’s all blue skies until suddenly the sun vanishes and the sky cracks open and sends all of heaven raining down around her ears.

It really does feel like a storm when she’s having one, too. Immense, echoing pressure pressing outward against the inside of her skull, with lances of sharper pain threaded through like lightning. Her visual auras even frequently look like billowing clouds, though instead of dour grays they’re luridly neon magenta for some reason. 

She’s starting to hate that color.

It didn’t used to be this way. She’s dealt with migraines since she was a teenager, and she’d been under the impression that she had a handle on them. They had been more and more infrequent the past few years; her meds helped exactly like they were supposed to. She’d gotten a good handle on what her triggers were and when she needed to be extra careful about them.

Now she’s lucky if a week goes by without one; with even less time between if she counts prodrome and auras without the actual headache. They’re more intense than they ever were, despite all her experience and coping strategies they’re often as debilitating as they were when she was fourteen and scared out of her wits because she didn’t know what was happening to her. Her meds aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be at any stage. She suddenly has dozens of new, seemingly nonsensical triggers, and she learns about more all the time; always the hard way, if she can even tell what they were at all.

She thinks she can pinpoint precisely when everything took a turn for the worse, but it just doesn’t make sense. None of her research points to single traumatic events leading to worsening migraines. There’s no reason why that night in that cave where Arthur lost his arm should have been the pivot point between The Way It Always Had Been and The Way It Was Now. But, unless she was missing something-- and god knows she probably was, given how her memory seems to have gone down the toilet lately too-- that’s what all the signs pointed to.

Memory. It seems like that was at the center of all of this, like some treasure nestled safely in the eye of the storm and kept from her by a wall of bright pink pain that she cannot cross, that she pays for dearly every time she makes the attempt.

Something is missing, she knows. She can puzzle it out if she tries, if she really focuses and forces her brain to concentrate on the holes in her memories that it usually tries to skirt around. There’s a chunk of time from the cave that she’s lost-- that is the easiest of the gaps to think about. Others are harder to concentrate on: the old conversations that skip around like scratched CDs-- or like one extra participant had been neatly edited out, with everyone else’s words left completely untouched. Events that seem to have played out in ways that didn’t make sense, but where every fault in the logical progression can be erased if there had been one more person involved.

Whatever it is that Arthur is pushing himself past the brink to find. Or whoever it is.

She’s almost solved the mystery dozens of times, it feels like. She’s gone on the same voyage through her own head again and again, until she meets the same fate she always does: she’s dumped out of her proverbial rowboat and left to toss and drown in another migraine. When the clouds clear and the dawn comes, she’s forgotten again just how close she came to the answer, until the next time she tries.

What is it? What’s missing? Where are you? Who are you?

Her head is swimming. That familiar, thunderous, awful color booms so brightly inside her skull that it makes her nauseous. If she keeps forcing herself to focus like this, she’s liable to make herself pass out again.

She watched a documentary about storm chasers once, about people who dive headlong into the wildest wraths nature can conjure up. She thought they were possibly the stupidest people in the world.

Now though. Now she kind of gets it.

#MysteryMarch2021 #Mystery Skulls #Mystery Skulls Animated #MSA #Vivi Yukino #lacey writes #ms fic

[mental-mona]

So You've Just Been Diagnosed With a Chronic Illness - an Orientation

So you've just been diagnosed with a chronic illness, huh? Welcome to the club; there are a lot of us here! I wouldn't presume to guess what your exact illness is, but most of us have some kind of fatigue and physical and/or mental pain going on, so that seems like a safe bet. Since you're new here, I thought I'd give you some idea of what to expect and what to do as you battle your illness.

First and foremost, accept it. Life is not going to be the way it was before. You will always either have some kind of symptom or be on the lookout for signs of a flare/episode. I'm not going to tell you to "suck it up, buttercup" because that would be neither useful nor fair, but you do need to grieve your past life in your own way and then look toward your future life with this condition. It really is a process of grief - the whole idea of the 5 stages of grief is nonsense, but whatever grief looks like to you, this will be a form of it. You had this whole, lovely, capable life before, and now…what? You have no idea, and it's scary, and most likely right now life is pain. It's a tangible loss, and that fact shouldn't be denied. You need to mourn for the life you had, but you also need to accept that this is your new reality and not keep trying to do things you can't or shouldn't. It's frustrating as hell, but sometimes you'll find yourself simply unable to do something that you used to do without thinking twice about it. Feel that frustration, then accept it and learn to work with it. Your job depends on computers but your wrists are killing you? This is why wrist braces and ergonomic mouse pads exist. Can't see the screen in its default state, or its default state is so bright that it gives you a headache? This is why it's possible to mess with the brightness and contrast settings on your computer. Whatever your problem is, there's probably a workaround or something that will at least temporarily relieve the symptoms. You've got this.

Ok, so whatever you have isn't curable, it can't be treated well enough that you'll have an overall good quality of life, and/or it's degenerative? When you've reached a point where it becomes clear that basic workarounds aren't going to cut it, it's time for some planning. Do you need someone to help you with your job? Transportation? Basic tasks? Who do you think should help you, and how? Obviously you don't want to think about being debilitated, but I'm afraid you're going to have to swallow your pride here lest you find yourself stuck without a way to get to a doctor appointment, or worse, stuck in bed with no one to feed you and help you get to the bathroom without falling over. Again, the goal is to accept your illness and work with it. I'd give you more concrete suggestions, but I don't know your precise condition nor would I presume to ask.

Ok, now let's discuss how to live within your new, more limited reality until you adjust to whatever its default state ends up being. The first thing you need to do is find a doctor who specializes in whatever system of your body is a problem, preferably one with specific expertise on your condition. There may be paperwork to fill out before your initial visit - pages and pages of it - but hopefully the results will be worth it. You need to develop a working rapport with your doctor; don't forget that unless you live in an area with really crappy healthcare or you have really crappy insurance, you can always "fire" your current doc and find someone you like better. There is no good reason to put up with a doctor who doesn't listen to you and/or has a God complex if you don't absolutely have to.

Once you've found a specialist whom you feel listens to you and whom you can work with, it's time to discuss what you want to tackle first. Which symptom(s) you find most bothersome may determine which medication or therapy the doctor tries with you first. Then it's time for an unpleasantly prolonged game of "Symptom or Side Effect?" as your body keeps doing weird new things and you keep talking to your doctor. That patient information they give out with every drug they dispense at the pharmacy is your friend; at the bare minimum look at the parts about side effects so that you can at least make an educated guess in the game, and if it seems like the med is doing something nasty to you then your doctor can change it. Unfortunately there is no magic pill that will fix all of your issues with no side effects; the question is more the pro/con ratio. The med's doing wonders for one symptom but now you can't pee? Nope, sorry, that's not acceptable. (Yes, side effects can be that weird; let's just say that that example was not pulled from thin air.) The med doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly bad, but doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly good either? Also not acceptable. The med's making your illness better but now you're always tired? Up to you whether that's acceptable; if it is, great, and if not, hopefully your doctor will have something else up their sleeve.

Depending on your illness, until you and your doctor get your symptoms under control and figure out what normal looks like for you, you may unfortunately find yourself spending a lot of time in the ER as well as the doctor's office. There may be no help for it; some diseases cause emergencies when they're out of control, plus it can take time to learn to differentiate between "normal" pain and "something's really wrong" pain. If either of those is the case for you, life is going to be really hard for a while. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but there's simply no sense in sugarcoating it. You may become a bit of a hypochondriac, but your body and/or brain doing all sorts of weird new things is bound to have that effect on you. Eventually you'll learn what "normal" looks and feels like, and until then all of your "but this shouldn't be…what if…?"s are understandable.

Now let's talk about something really evil that happens to the members of this club: the societal expectation that you will either die or permanently get better, and if you claim to be able to do x one day but not another day then you're malingering. This is total malarkey and we both know it, but it apparently seems to be a common attitude toward the disabled and chronically ill. You may have gotten it so much that you've internalized it; if that's the case, mentally take a step back and remind yourself that you are not faking, you are not just looking for attention, and that your energy and ability levels vary day by day and you simply have to work with that or suffer even worse consequences later. Read about spoon theory for more on the whole energy thing, and I've posted a few other compositions (which I will soon be editing and reposting) for you to read and share with your loved ones if you so choose.

Speaking of loved ones, now is the time to refine communication with them regarding your needs. If they're micromanaging you with "Should you really be eating that? Have you taken your meds today? No, you know you can't do that. You know you need to do this symptom-relief thing" type things, that's probably getting really annoying. Remember, their hearts are in the right place, and they may even be right about whatever they're saying. However, tone and expression matter; there's a world of difference between "I seem to recall the doctor saying that you shouldn't eat that" and "Don't eat that;" between "Have you taken your meds?" and "Consider this a reminder to take your meds if you haven't yet;" between "Do this to relieve your symptoms" and an implicit "we know x works for you" along with an explicit "Have you tried x to relieve your symptoms today?" Basically, the difference is command vs. suggestion. Most people respond much better to suggestions and relatively hands-off reminders than they do to commands and reminders that seem to come with the assumption that you're a forgetful idiot. It's a thin line and a hard one to walk, but if you give them some feedback eventually your loved ones should get the hang of it. (Also, if you really are going against doctors' orders, then perhaps you actually do need to listen to the annoying things your loved ones are saying!) As for all the "Hey, I read this article about something resembling your condition; could you have the rare thing I just read about/could this new treatment I just read about help you" nuisances directed at you, they are actually expressions of love and concern. If they're really annoying then tell everyone to just buzz off, but your better bet is to smile, glance at the article or whatever to see if there really is something of value there, and if there isn't then just quietly get rid of the article and dismiss the advice.

Anyway, that pretty much concludes your orientation; if you have any more questions feel free to ask someone in the chronic illness club or consider joining a support group for your specific condition, and good luck!

#chronic condition #chronic illness #chronic illness 101 #orientation #so you've just been diagnosed #new diagnosis #long post #text post

[purkinje-effect]

Asking for Trouble

Cait gets a terrible first impression of Melancholy, my Sole.

This blurb has sat in my drafts for a few years now, and I decided to polish it up and finish the thought. Not sure if the encounter will be canon to Anatomy, but it’s here nonetheless. (For those curious to timeline placement, we’ll say this is roughly after the Park Street Station stuff in Fourth Instar, and sometime after his falling out with Mac.)

TWs: Heavy angst, injury and death, drug use and alcohol, explicit description of drug side effects, and violence-baiting.

Cross-posted on AO3 here if you’d rather. Likes, comments, kudos, etc. are all greatly, greatly appreciated.

_____________________________________

Someone at the Dugout Inn had mentioned this place. ‘Choly had come here with a vague recollection that the Combat Zone had once paraded skin. It only served to live up to its name now without any innuendo. Observing a little violence could be cathartic, too, and damn, if he couldn’t use some catharsis after his myriad missteps in Goodneighbor. All his life a spectator, vicarious in every regard.

He belonged here far before Goodneighbor or Diamond City, regardless of looking the part. Who could say a quavering, grey little man wearing a white three piece suit over head-to-toe leather orthotic braces didn’t fit right in among these earthly, physical misfits? He certainly couldn’t see any hackneyed political messes or territory wars erupting here: only people blowing off steam any way they could find it.

He couldn’t entirely say he minded that Angel’s compulsive cleaning habits almost always nettled the Hister Handy into picking up after social locations like this burlesque theater which now showcased cage fights. The possibility any of these raiders might hack it almost avoided him altogether, since he seemed like the only one with a Pip-Boy with which to do so. Such a worry would stick with him long-term after what he’d seen the Rust Devils do to Lowell.

His mind sang praises that Angel had allowed him to resume adding alkaloids to his meal replacement beverage, the Melancholia. Hubeine gave him negligible trouble compared to other options.

The fight unfolding before him was the billed spectacle for the night: for one hour, plus implicit encores, Cait would take down any body foolish enough to step foot into the cage to fistfight her unarmed. He swirled at some bourbon in a shot glass, from his bar seat to one side of the stage. His cataract eyes raised as he watched her continue through the athletic redhead’s performance. Somehow she managed restraint just shy of lethal blows, despite her precision and brute force. Any composure belied the depth of her murderous and bottomless rage. Glassy and lugubrious, he followed her bared teeth and retracted lips, her unblinking eyes, her adrenaline-wired and overworked musculature, her leaden instinctual footwork.

Despite having knocked out seven opponents in twenty minutes already, she wore more of their blood than they did.

In every mannerism, he recognized his enlisted in her. He stopped sipping at his liquor and threw the glass back, only to refill it.

Cait danced with the eighth opponent for about a minute before things escalated. The burly, hairy man pulled a switchblade on her, and managed to gouge her in the arm. In the physical sense, it didn’t faze her. In the mental sense, it had shattered the sanctity of her performance. She roared at him and lunged to sink her teeth into his face.

The crowd exploded. Her ghoul manager stepped in and attempted to stop the match-up, but he knew better than to get between her and the fool. She refused first aid, intent to fuck the guy up. The man kept his distance from her, knife still drawn, clutching at his gushing cheek. she voiced her displeasure to her manager, and he seemed to walk away and leave her again to her opponent... Only to bring her a baseball bat. A bloodied grin ripped across her face as she choked up on it like a familiar friend.

‘Choly smiled quaintly, head askew. The ghoul knew that the crowd demanded results--and more importantly, he knew that the crowd needed to see the consequences of forsaking what little honor they agreed upon in this dive.

She slugged him in the head. As he fell over, she proceeded to beat the shit out of him. The resultant din deafened much how ‘Choly might imagine Fenway Park during the World Series. Not that baseball had been his druthers. God, he wished that had been him on the receiving end. Between her hair, her leather corset, and the carnage, red was so very much her color. Head to toe, she was rage incarnate.

No one wanted to challenge her after that, especially not if they had to step around the bloody mess she’d splattered across the stage.

Time blurred a bit in ‘Choly’s shot glass. The next he looked up, he realized the champion sat beside him to drown herself in a fifth of vodka straight from the bottle. He straightened as coolly as he could, shifting to watch her. He adjusted his half-moon glasses, but could otherwise not obfuscate his alarm. He couldn’t leave alone the familiarity of the untethered ferocity with which she carried herself.

“Forgive me if this is forward of me, but I will get you any chems you want, if you will swear off cyclomorphine. The Psycho.”

“Bull shit,” came a potent Irish twang. She slammed down the bottle. Beneath the indignity in her glower, a tinge of fear felt more like the pressure of desperation. “You suggestin’ I couldn’t possibly fight as well as I do, weren’t I doped up? Your stupid mug hasn’t been here before. I’d remember. Who the hell do you think you are, to go around insultin’ the talent?”

His heart begged hot for her to retaliate. His gloved fingers tapped gingerly at the barely varnished countertop.

“I mean it. Name it. Med-X. Calmex. Anything but Psycho. I’ll even get dirty and brew you the most potent Jet you’ve ever had, if what you really need is escapism and not a low. CM isn’t a chem. It’s a death sentence. And... even if that’s the desired end result, that’s just about as gruesome and painful as it gets.”

She swiveled on the bar stool, resting both hands squarely on her spread knees. Her dead gaze bored through him.

“The fuck do you care so much about this wild theory of yours? You go around cold readin’ everybody’s vices tryin’ to hock your snake oil? Some salesman you are. You’ve got the Charisma of a Mirelurk egg that’s been in the sun.”

He raised his hands in defense, and then said what he meant sooner than meaning what he said.

“I’m not trying to sell you anything. I keep trying to offer solutions to the people I’ve hurt with my life choices, fix the damage rather than enterprise on it. Please let me get you chasing a different devil. Anything but that.”

“You’ve never met me in your life, and I don’t know your name or face from a Molerat in the floorboards. Don’t you try and bullshit me into believing you’re capable of fixing what ails me--and don’t you dare try to take credit for anyone that’s wronged me.”

“I’m the reason Psycho exists in the quantities it does in the Commonwealth. So yes, your pain IS my fault, at least part--”

His jaw seared. ‘Choly found himself sprawled in the floor. He felt around for his glasses, and as they returned to his face, he smiled up at her imploringly from where she stood over him. She cracked her knuckles sourly.

“I don’t have time for this nonsense. Tryin’ t’say I’m the one’s got a chem problem. What color is the sky for you? Forget you.”

Her hard exterior began to show signs of crumblign, in a series of stifled tics, most noticeably a corner of her mouth and the same ear. He could only begin to speculate to what exactly it was she’d taken exception, but he had to keep her attention, hold her contempt. Charm had never come naturally to him, so instead he had to sound the part of insisting at all costs that he was right.

“--Fine, you don’t want to quit. That’s a choice, too. I’ll make however much Psycho you want. You want to go out like that, I can help you with that. But I want you to know just exactly what that death looks like. Abscessed injection sites. Your gums and cuticles bleed. Your tear ducts bleed. It weakens all your capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels in your body. Internal bleeding. Organ deterioration. The numbness doesn’t turn off the pain--it only makes it so you don’t care. Is the anger easier than the hurt? If that’s how you want to go out, I’m not in any position to question it. But you might as well have an expert supplying you with it.”

Rather than help him up, she bore a heel down on his right hand. With an anxious chuckle, he winced, but welcomed being pinned in place. She glared down at him, seething. She didn’t want to hear another word from him, but she had to. Something about him surely sounded more deranged than intoxicated, and it threatened to haunt her.

“Do you know why cyclomorphine exists?” he continued, breath stuttering all the while. “Do you know what it is? Of course not. It was a prewar chemical--I can’t even comfortably endear it a chem--that the military developed so its soldiers no longer felt injury or fatigue. They endeavored to engineer soldiers who wouldn’t quit when hurt, even fatally. And it was only one of a dozen projects of its kind, to exploit the different aspects of human limits. Nothing human came from refining Psycho. It destroys something fundamental to a sense of humanity. The perfect formula didn’t concern itself with whether the patient came back in one piece, or alive at all. The Deenwood Project wasn’t poetic, wasn’t artistic, didn’t make a single beautiful thing. The fact that CM fell into paramilitary use after my tenure ended with the Army... and the fact it now as a result flows freely throughout the country as holdovers from... from the police attempting to keep the peace through intense and consistent violence... The fact is, I’m one of the chemists responsible for cyclomorphine’s end product. Responsible for it being one of the devices of America’s victory at Anchorage... So yes, yes I am. Responsible for what ails you. You’re civilian collateral of the United States Army.”

Her posture shifted slowly from anger to bitterness. She ground her heel into his palm. He pretended the token of her grief got through the reinforced officer’s glove.

“It’s not my place to question the source of your pain, and it’s not my place to insist that I be the one to take it away. I simply know that no matter how great the pain you’re in... Psycho dissolves parts of you, every time you use it to numb you. It begins physically, then advances to spiritually. It robs you of who you are.”

“That’s just the thing. I can’t handle bein’ me. This is the only part I’m fit to play. Besides, Tommy only cares if his juggernaut brings in the caps. I’m beholden to a contract. And the way I see it, you’re tryin’ to come between a man and his money, pokin’ around where your nose doesn’t belong! You’re lucky we’re out here and not in the cage, creep. Either I’m paid to beat your arse, or you’re askin’ to get blackballed.”

He sighed dreamily up at her, almost regretting that she let up on his hand. She drew her fists when his hand went to the lining pocket of his vest, but he chuckled producing a sack of caps.

“I thought you’d never ask. I admire one who rests their agency in someone else’s hands--or pockets, as it were. Surely, this is to the tune of you doing the honors. Add a black eye to the busted jaw. Tack on whatever you like. Ladies’ choice.”

She snatched the sack from him, frowning incredulously.

“What kind of sick flirting game is this? You tryin’ to buy me into bed? I know I’m easy on the eyes, but this isn’t a brothel these days, in case your damaged brain can’t tell the difference.”

He knew he wouldn’t be getting back the sack, but at least he’d tricked her into accepting some fleck of reparations from him.

“How many caps would it take to break your contract? To get you out of here?”

A broken sarcastic laugh crackled out of her. He’d long since surpassed overstepping, having moved on to stepping on toes.

“You’re insane if you think I’d ever want to leave the Combat Zone, especially not on the arm of the likes of you. I’ve got everything I could want here--except right now, not a place without you. You’re the one who needs to lay off the chems. Get your stupid brain-damaged arse out of here before I ask Tommy what I can do with you.”

He whistled for Angel, then retrieved his cane to stand.

“I suppose if you won’t let me help you, obliging you is the least I can do.”

With his Handy by his side, the two left without further question.

On his walk back to Hotel Rexford, he accepted that he’d probably never know the answer, but still he wondered if he had the same or opposite trouble as Cait: Were the two chasing a perpetual numbness, or were they chasing the futility of trying to feel anything again, at any cost?

#fallout #fallout 4 #fallout cait #cait fallout #sole survivor #combat zone #melancholy #deplorable karma sole survivor #battle for anchorage #psycho #whump

[arianalilyblack]

Come home to me - chapter 2

Title: Come home to me

Chapter no: Chapter 2

Author: @arianalilyblack

Pairing: Harry Wells x Reader x Eobard Thawne/Harrison Wells

Word count: 1740

Summary: The wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West is finally here. You and Harry are caught up with the wedding spirit and start to slowly realize that maybe you developed deeper feelings for each other. Everything is perfect until Nazis bust into the church ruining everything. And alongside Earth X villains guess who shows up? Your ex flame, Eobard Thawne aka the Reverse Flash, complicating everything in your lives.

*gif credits to @girl-in-the-suit​*

You heard the alarm go off, you tried to get out of the bed, but you were too weak to move. You couldn’t hide either; you just hoped that everything will work out without your help.

 ~

 The two speedsters were back at each other’s throats again, fighting at a monstrous speed, leaving a red and yellow streak behind them. No one could follow their combat with the naked eye, except Supergirl. She managed to toss the yellow speedster thus buying some time for the team to regroup. They fought hard and almost won the battle, when a metallic thing showed up. In the heat of the fight, Eobard received a message from the Fuhrer. He had found the woman Eobard was looking for.

„Great! Don’t you dare lay a finger on her” he said into the communicator. He was grinning, excitement building up in his body. He was looking forward to the meeting.

 ~

 „What the bloody hell?” you asked mortified when you saw Arrow walking into the room. But it wasn’t the Arrow that you knew. He had a full black outfit with red stripes. It was so familiar and then you remembered the enemy archer from the church. You tried to send out a lightning from your palm but only thing that you managed was a little spark. You felt embarrassed and weak.

„Now, calm down little lady. I’m not going to hurt you, not yet anyways. You see, my associate won’t let me do that, that’s too bad.”

„Who the hell are you and what did you do to my friend?”

„I did hurt them, of course, but they are still alive, locked in the cells of the Pipeline, for now.” He turned around and stepped out of the room not wanting to lose any more time on you. You were weak after all; you weren’t a threat in his eyes.

You were so furious that you didn’t feel any pain anymore. You drew strength out of your anger and managed to sit up. You were still shaky, but the thought of your friends hurting pushed you forward. The infusion bag was almost empty so you pulled the needle out from your arm. There was a bottle of water next to the bed, you drank it out and you with that were on your feet. You went through the Cortex, out into the halls and turned left towards the Pipeline. You didn’t get too far though, because a red streak whooshed you away back to the med bay.

You froze in an instant, your mind going blank from the shock. You stared at him as if he was a ghost, because for you he really was one, a poltergeist more precisely. Eobard stood before you with a cocky smirk on his face; he was enjoying himself far too much.

„It can’t be…” this was all you could muster.

„Hello my little minx” he murmured as he stepped closer to you. His movement woke you up from your startled state.

„Don’t!” you said in a low voice.

You were filled by mixed emotions: anger, sorrow, fear, and maybe a tiny bit of love as well. You were upset, you wanted out of the room, away from his presence. He tried to embrace you, but you discharged a small electric wave out of reflex from your body which astounded him. You took a few steps back until you felt the bed pressing to your legs.

 ~

 A glimpse of sadness crossed Eobard’s face. He was hurt by her welcoming. He was hoping that he’d be greeted with passion and open arms. Instead he was met by a pair of terrified, teary eyes.

„I won’t hurt you, Y/N” he assured her, taking a little step towards where she was standing.

„You caused me enough pain already, Eobard.” Her words stabbed him in the heart, or what was left of it anyways. „You left me here alone; threw me into the deepest, darkest misery. I thought you were dead. I mourned you by myself, cried countless nights because of you. I couldn’t be around the team, because I was ashamed about what you did and what I felt for you. I was all alone…”

She started crying and despite all her negative reactions, Eobard rushed to her and took her into his embrace. He couldn’t stand the sight of her pain. Y/N tried to get out of his arms, she wriggled, kicked and electrocuted him, but he didn’t let go. He held her still in his arms against his chest.

„I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you. Please, forgive me” he pressed a light kiss on her forehead. She flinched at his touch. „I’m here now, and I won’t ever leave you alone.”

„Let me go” she said while pushing him away with her hands. Her palms rested on his chest as she couldn’t push him. „I don’t need you anymore.”

„So that’s what it is.” He felt the jealousy surge inside his body. „You found someone else.”

„No. That’s not…” she paused. It wasn’t that she had found someone else, just found herself. Found her strength to get back on her feet after the horror that she’d been through because of Eobard and his schemes. And of course there was Harry as well, who helped her in so many ways to get over him.

„Don’t lie to me, Y/N. I know you are quit close friends with Harrison Wells from that other Earth” he hissed as he thought about the other one. „I can’t blame you though. You had to replace me with the second best you’ve got, right? But this doesn’t change what you’re needing. And that is me.”

 ~

 „Enough” you shouted and sent a jolt into his chest, where your palms were resting. That did the trick and you managed to escape from his tightening arms. „He is so much more than you could ever be.”

„I doubt that, dear Y/N. I’m the best version of Harrison Wells in the whole multiverse. You know that deep down” he winked at you and before you could react he was already locked onto your lips.

His kiss was intoxicating, something that you’d been missing for so long. You couldn’t help yourself but to kiss him back. You could feel his big hands roaming up and down your tensed body. Your hands wandered into his curls, feeling the soft hair caressing your skin. You were lost until something from the back of your conscious screamed at you. “What are you thinking, stop it right now”. You felt embarrassed and guilty so you attempted to break the kiss, but he was too strong. Noticing that you were trying to escape he pulled you even closer, pressing his whole body onto you and deepening your kiss. You didn’t reciprocated anymore, so he became more and more aggressive.

In your desperation you leapt into action, you hugged him tight and while you were distracting him with your kiss, you sent all the electricity you could produce in one shot straight into his body. You needed some water, and fast, because if not you would end up dead. With your last strength remained you took your chance and ran towards the Cortex. “How pathetic of me to run from him” you thought. Soon enough you stopped, there was nowhere to run from him. Maybe if you were a speedster, but even then it would be questionable. You found a bottle of orange juice and you drank it, you had to stay hydrated as best as you could. You needed your powers if you wanted to get away from him.

„You can’t run from me, love” he whispered into your ears as he hugged you with his left arm from behind. He planted small kisses on the back of your neck which sent shivers down your spine. „Be a good girl and stop this nonsense fighting. Your lips can tell any lie you want, but your body will always betray you.”

He was right and that made you angry as hell. Your body still ached for his touch and his kiss, even if your mind knew that it was wrong. His right hand went down your waist to your hip and grabbed it tight not letting go of your neck with his mouth.

 ~

 „Have you finished playing around, Eobard?” Overgirl’s voice came behind him. He groaned in frustration. „We have work to do. Why are you fooling around with this weak woman anyways?”

„General” he exhaled unsatisfied. „Don’t be disrespectful with the object of my affection, if I may ask.” He turned to face her with a wide, dangerous smile.

„I didn’t realize that you were capable of such emotions. Pardon me, uh, what is your name?”

„Y/N, Y/L/N” she said. Now that Eobard’s attention wasn’t focused on her only, she managed to get rid of the man’s hand from her shoulder. Before she could slip away he grabbed her wrist stopping her movement.

„I can see that you are very important for my colleague. Sorry for interrupting your sweet reunion, but Oliver and I need your help Eobard.”

„Of course, General. I’ll be there in a second.” With that Overgirl left the Cortex. „What should I do with you, love?” She knew better than to answer his rhetoric questions.

„I promised you that I won’t hurt you, so until you calm down a bit…” he took her in his arms and they were in the Time Vault in an instance „…you will stay here. Don’t even try to escape, because you can’t. But you can watch as the plan is set in motion.”

„Why are you doing this?” she asked not looking at him.

„If you are talking to someone, you should face them” said he and turned her face to look into her eyes. He could only see sorrow and hatred, no sign of love or the lust she had when he kissed her minutes ago. „I did it to get back home, to you.”

It was true. He wanted to return to her, but he couldn’t without help. The Nazis were controlling the portal, so he agreed to help the Fuhrer and the General get what they want in exchange of a ride home. Home to where she was. He gave her a gently kiss before he left her alone in the room.

Part 3 

#harrison wells #harrison wells x reader #harrison wells fanfiction #harrison wells imagine #harry wells x reader #harry wells x reader x eowells #eobard thawne x reader #eobard thawne fanfiction #eowells x reader #love triangle #the flash #the flash fanfiction

[lockedstuck]

moving your mouth to pull out all your miracles

April 2021 - Gamzee Makara

You don’t like the way your thoughts proceed on halo, helldog, or haloperidol, or whatever Karbro calls it. After you take it, the world feels blunt, impersonal, and grayscale, like you’re a motherfucking puppet with a head full of straw. Your brother used to love a poem about that, about some guys with straw heads, but mostly about the world ending.

Kurloz liked a lot of motherfucking things before he did nine months in Rikers for cocaine distribution. Originally it was only supposed to be six months, but he got into a fight and got three months added on. When he got out, he was thoughtful and quiet, even a word of acknowledgment seemingly beyond him. You’ll be damned if that ever happens to you, if you let the system hollow you out until you can’t express the simplest serendipity.

Right now you’re sketching your friends, quick sketches with the charcoal set Dr. Levin brought you. One of Karkat having a rare smile for June, one of Sollux and Roxy talking about programming, one of Dr. V addressing the group about healthy coping mechanisms, and one of Porrim braiding Calliope’s hair. You always feel more like yourself when you’re sketching or painting. Fewer thoughts in your head to get jangle-tangled together and create nonsense. You can keep your miracles straight this way.

You’re cool. You’re easy. You’re loose. No snapped strings, heads full of straw, or blasphemies here, no motherfucking way. The ativan caravan marches through your head, sings your sharp edges to sleep. Nurse Dolores knows what’s up, she only makes you take the medications you want to take. Your cognition flies free, like birds in a breeze, a calm going on between your ears.

Roxy turns and grins at you, her face pale as the moon against her dark hoodie and darker lipstick. She has a smile all her own, a knowing smile like the two of you are in on the greatest secret in the world. You wish you knew precisely what that was about, but everyone has their own internal workings. You can’t know and fix everything about everyone all the time. That’s what you were trying to explain to Sollux last night.

He’s a good guy, but he takes too much on. Same for Karkat. They take on everyone’s issues and make them their own. Only the mirthful messiahs should be able to do so much; humans like trying that hard is a minor sacrilege. If the pair of them would just stick to themselves, maybe they wouldn’t be so sick. You’ll fold more flowers for them - paper flowers that banish repetitive, ruminating thoughts.

You like Roxy a lot, though. She dances through each emotion in its totality, riding the waves of her feelings without fear. Okay, maybe not fearlessly, but with more abandon than you would expect. When she looks at you, you feel warmth all the way to your core, the way you are when you’re about to fall asleep all curled up in your sheets.

Speaking of sleep, Dr. V says that if you keep sleeping through the night, and keep what he calls “disruptive outbursts” about the Dark Carnival to a minimum, maybe you’ll get discharged in a couple of weeks. You’re not exactly in any rush to go home. Home means having to fend for yourself, and fewer friends to keep you in good spirits. Besides, Kurloz is home, and for all that he may be your brother, he gives off bad motherfucking vibes. You wish he’d be easy, like old times, but those days are a long way off.

You remember when you used to be able to relax at home. Relax, smoke a joint, sell an eighth or two, and have dinner without having to fend off your brother’s brooding.

Karkat takes the seat next to you, and you clap him on the back. Physical contact may be discouraged here, but there’re no narcs around to encourage law and order at the moment. You think a support team got dispatched to address Feferi wandering around with no clothes on again.

“What’s up?” Karkat asks.

He nevertheless looks preoccupied and far away. That’s unfortunate.

You take another folded flower out of your pocket and hand it to him.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts,” you recall from a play you had to read in AP English a couple years ago. You can’t exactly remember what the play’s about, but stray lines here and there stick out to you like a sore thumb. Except neither of your actual thumbs are sore.

“That’s from Hamlet, isn’t it?” Karkat asks, shaking his head at you. “What’re you, the bard of 3 East?”

Now you’re not certain about that, but you’ll take it.

“Someone’s gotta be, ain’t they? I got more poetry if you want it.”

Karkat sighs. “Yeah, lay it on me, Makara. Dr. Vandayar told me I’m not getting discharged next week so I’m not feeling great at the moment.”

Poor Karbro looks like he’s full of thunderstorms. Maybe a calm vista will quiet him down. You pull a few lines of poetry free from your memory.

“I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach... I have heard the mermaids singing each to each... I do not think that they will sing to me.”

“Go on,” Karkat says, looking all at once pensive and a little sad.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves... Combing the white hair of the waves blown back... When the wind blows the water white and black,” you recite. Now, Roxy, Calliope, and Porrim have stopped to listen to you. You go on, establishing a proper rhythm.

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea... by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown... ‘till human voices wake us, and we drown.” When no one says anything, you interject, “That’s the end of the fuckin’ poem, y’all.”

“It’s beautiful,” Porrim whispers. “Did you write that?”

You shake your head in the negative. “Naw, that’s some other motherfucker’s ideas outta my mouth. I wrote a couple of my own lines last night if you wanna hear ‘em, though.”

“Sure,” Calliope says, smiling and clapping her hands once.

“My muse distills my melancholy, pins it to the corkboard with a tack. She presses down upon the pigments, bleeds my blues into the boldest black.”

Even Karkat looks surprised. He narrows his eyes at you.

“If you don’t go study art or literature, or something along that line, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Ain’t no need to resort to murder, brother,” you reply. “And while I’d like to go sit in a motherfucking college somewhere, I ain’t got shit for tuition.”

“If I have to take up a goddamn collection, I am sending your ass to college. Tout-suite.”

You guess now is not the time to inform him that you straight up flunked outta college after you kept forgetting to go to class. You sat in the grass memorizing poetry and sketching the first dandelions of March, which got in the way of your learning anything or taking your exams, or any of the shit college students are supposed to do. You didn’t mean to forget, but you’ve never been great at any routine shit.

And you’ve always had a knack for going where your thoughts take you. When you were a kid, you would leave the house and walk up and down the streets of Harlem unattended. Your grandmother used to read you the riot act for doing something so reckless and nonsensical. Later, during your hospitalizations, you learned that the way your thoughts stuttered and tangled was called schizophrenia, and doctors medicated you accordingly. They called your prophecies delusion, and you beg(ged) to differ.

The medications ground your thought process to a stuttering halt. You hated it. You hated being cut off from yourself. So you stopped taking your meds. And here you are again, with your strange thoughts and remembrances.

“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio,” Karkat murmurs.

You grin at him. He understands more than he lets on.

June winks at you, and then walks away to the women’s side of the unit, presumably to call her father. She calls him every day at 8 am and 3 pm, like clockwork. Karkat gazes at her as she walks away, the back of her short dress fluttering behind her.

“June looks nice today,” you say to him.

 He stops staring and glances at you for a moment.

“Yeah, um, she looks nice every day,” he replies. “Not that I make it my business to notice.”

You point to the delicate paper flower he has in his hand. “Sometimes the most miraculous thing you can fuckin’ do is give another person a taste of serendipity.”

Roxy smiles her cheshire cat smile from her seat by the television.

“That’s right, Crabby. Dontcha think June deserves her very own miracle?”

Karkat reddens, looks at the flower in his hand, and takes off for the women’s side.

“Hey, Egbert!” he shouts. “I have something for you.”

By the time you see June again, she’s wearing the small red flower in her hair. Roxy gives you a satisfied little nod, then asks you if you’d like her to put your hair in braids.

“I’m not as good as Pomary with hair, but I’m alright, I guess. Your hair looks like some birds took up residence in it, dude.”

“Why, thank you,” you reply. You take a seat at her feet, after she grabs her comb, brush, hair grease, and spray bottle out of sharps.

She’s right. She’s not a thing like Pomary when it comes to braiding. You’re used to the gentle motions of Porrim’s hands as she manipulates flowers into your hair, but Roxy tugs great fistfuls of your hair into twists. It feels nice, like she’s tethering you to the present, to the here and now.

You tell her that, thank her for bringing you back, and she blushes crimson.

“Aw, I’m not tryna do all of that,” she responds. “Just tryna work through my anxiety. Dolores gave me an ativan an hour ago, and I don’t feel it yet.”

Roxy bends low, and plants a kiss on your forehead, right where your skin meets your greasepaint. Her lips are the softest thing you’ve ever felt.

She keeps braiding, manipulating your hair into cornrows. With Roxy near you, you don’t necessarily have to be a prophet or an apostate of the mirthful messiahs. You don’t have to deliver special messages to special people. You can just be Gamzee Motherfucking Makara, doing you as per usual.

#gamroxy #junekat

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 105

 SYNOPSIS: Operations is faced with a dilemma at the failure of the mission when he hears that the teams have returned to Section One. Madeline and Dougal Mackenzie are waiting for them and see that their operatives are battle scared and in a worse condition than they imagined. Jamie helps place Claire on the gurney to be taken to Med Lab for assessment but it is he that is in greater need of attention.

I am very grateful for your support of this story and I THANK YOU for reading, the likes and or posting a comment on the last chapter.   I appreciate it most sincerely.

 This is the link for Chapter 104 , while all previous chapters  can be found at … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

  CHAPTER 105

Dougal Mackenzie stood in his office looking down on the Common Area deep in thought. Section One was his entire world and he’d devoted the greater part of his life to the ethos of their work here capturing the terrorists that others were unable to apprehend. To him success was everything and he expected nothing less of the operatives under his command. Recruited into Section One during the Vietnam conflict, he worked as a military special intelligence officer but was captured and interred as a POW by the Viet Cong. The essential fact is that he possessed the inner strength to survive the worst of combat experiences imaginable as well as seven years in an internment camp. If he hadn’t been recruited into Section One against his will, he would have returned home to the United States as a war hero.

However, he woke up inside a spare white cell, just like every other Section One recruit. His survival instincts were taken and used to mould him a deadly anti-terrorist operative. In the post-Vietnam world, the standard rules of warfare were jettisoned in favour of political and ideological conflicts which followed no rules at all. He became a new type of soldier – cold, merciless and efficient. He strongly believed that Section’s mission was to protect innocents from terrorists and that sometimes Section had to be more ruthless than them in order to defeat them.

Hence the fact that the Rising Dragons had managed to gain an upper hand riled him considerably. Jamie and Claire had failed on this occasion and so he was caught in a dilemma and a conundrum of the highest order. He was not a happy man and it showed on his face. 

Pondering his next move concerning those two, Operations’ immediate response was that failure was not an option and to place them both in abeyance. But on the other hand, he had to reluctantly admit that Section needed Claire Beauchamp and James Fraser to see this mission through to its conclusion. Jamie had been defiant ... bordering on insubordination ... something that would put any other operative into abeyance. However, Fraser had also succeeded on this mission. Operations weighed up his initial response to his pre-eminent operative’s request to search for Claire and his reaction. Then there was his about face. Madeline had placated his riled temper and soothed the savage beast, but he still questioned his motives. Was he jealous of his Level 5 operative or in admiration of his determination? Jamie and Claire were their best two field operatives bar none ... but Section One was far, far bigger than any two individuals ... even if they were their finest.

Pacing back and forward in the perch a myriad of thoughts invaded his mind, however, upon hearing soft footfalls, he turned to see Madeline standing in the doorway. She had an uncanny sense when it came to interrupting his muses and here she was again. He looked at his second in command then without a word waved her in not at all surprised by her sudden appearance. No doubt the news that the teams had retrieved Jamie and Claire was filtering through the place like wildfire. Although it seemed incredible to his way of thinking, it was true. They were both alive and were on their way back to Section One. “You’ve heard?” “Yes.” Madeline gave him a solemn smile. “The retrieval mission was a complete success.” Operations frowned. “That's one way of looking at it.” Studying him for a moment, Madeline’s eyes filled with understanding. “You can’t blame yourself Dougal for the outcome. Section will live to fight another day. We will get Sun Yee Lok and the other triad members who were responsible.” Operations continued to watch operatives scurry through the Common Area to their various stations in Section. He shook his head. “I don't see how you can be so ... so …” grappling for the right word, he paused before giving Madeline a forceful look, “… accepting of the situation Madeline! You know I don’t like failure and especially not from our two most experienced operatives. Obviously, they are not as competent as I thought they were.” Madeline raised an eyebrow at his statements. “You’re not going to do something rash are you?” He gave her a look that indicated his thoughts before he even spoke. “I’ve thought about it.” Ever the pragmatist and with a mysterious smile on her face, Madeline tried to soothe the savage beast. “Acceptance doesn't automatically mean an admission of defeat Dougal.” Madeline had hit a chord and, not for the first time either. Operations gazed at the woman beside him in admiration. Did she really understand how much he relied upon her calming influence? Madeline just had a way of diffusing a tense situation that returned his sense of equilibrium. She knew him well and knew which buttons to push to ease the tension. Suddenly her dark eyes locked with his. “How would you like to deal with the situation then?” “Have Jamie and Claire checked out by Medical on their return … then depending on the severity of their injuries place them back in the field A.S.A.P.” “May I suggest another idea?” She stated realizing that what he has suggested would not be remotely possible given the injuries to Claire alone that they had viewed on the disk sent to Section about her torture.  It was highly probable that the triad had inflicted more pain on her and on Jamie as well for that matter. Medical assessment would be crucial to how their recovery played out before they could even contemplate them returning to the mission. “Certainly.” “Give them some downtime to recuperate.” “What?!?”  Dougal exclaimed in shock at her reply.  

 He was quite adamant that that would not be possible. The two operatives were strong and physically fit because their Section training had given them endurance to face oppression.  Hence in his mind, any recuperation could be done at Section One. He anticipated that they would only need a day or two.

 “No … That’s out of the question. I don’t think that’s necessary.”

However, Madeline continued knowing that his idea was nonsensical. “On the contrary … Jamie and Claire will perform better if they are well recovered emotionally and physically from their torture at the hands of the triad. It will make them keener to bring the perpetrators to justice much quicker.” Although not happy with the situation, the wisdom of her words struck a chord. His second in command always made sense, that is why he relied on her counsel. Dougal Mackenzie knew she was right in her assessment of the two operatives. “You may have a point but we cannot give them special privileges just because they’ve been tortured on a mission.” “We’ll work around that. Jamie and Claire will expect me to carry out a psych evaluation of the two of them. It would be appropriate considering the trauma they’ve faced.” He contemplated the wisdom of her proposition. “Hmm ... that is your forte after all.” Operations then looked at his second in command with a wry smile. “I see where you’re going with this Madeline. Some downtime would be an appropriate outcome of their evaluation.” ”Precisely ... Not only that but it will be a tactic that they won’t be expecting. It will keep Jamie and Claire both guessing as to our motives. It will unnerve them which will be to our advantage.” “Agreed.” Their eyes met in a look of perfect understanding. “Very well then,” Madeline replied tongue in cheek. “When we find out the extent of their injuries, we can reassess the situation if needs be. I will make an appropriate decision  when I have all their medical facts after consultation with Jeremy Foster.” “Of course.” Meanwhile …

Murtagh Fitzgibbons awoke with a start as the Section plane landed safely and the occupants prepared to alight into the waiting van on the tarmac for the short drive back to Section One. Geillis issued orders and the team got to their feet and moved toward the exit door. Collecting his belongings Murtagh nodded towards Jamie asking tacitly if he needed assistance. The two men exchanged looks. As he made his way over to them, Claire looked up. Her friend stepped forward sheltering both of them from the view of the other operatives leaving the transport plane. Murtagh watched as Jamie, despite his own injuries, instantly pacified Claire as she moaned trying to get up. He stroked her face softly, trailing his fingertips lightly across the gentle curve of her temple before tracing the long line of her eyebrow. “Claire … Jamie … it’s time to go.” The two operatives didn’t immediately respond and Murtagh edged closer a worried concern on his face. He spoke once more and this time the two glanced his way. They appeared a little disorientated so; stepping forward he helped them to their feet knowing they were both trying to cover up the fact that they were in severe pain or worse. Brushing off his assistance, they stubbornly tried to walk on their own. Jamie gently placed his arm around Claire to steady her tentative steps and tightened his grip when she stumbled a little. Although movement was difficult, together they slowly managed to make their way to the exit where Geillis Duncan stood waiting for the three friends near the Section van. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Section’s computer expert stood tentatively on the threshold of the entrance to the perch and observed that his superiors were locked in conversation. He hesitated for a moment before entering not wanting to interrupt their discussion. Madeline watched as he came in noticing the sallow colour of his skin. “Do come in Mr. Claudel,” she stated seeing the way he’d vacillated at the entrance. To her keen eye Fergus knew something that he was a little hesitant to relay. “Is anything wrong?” “No … everything’s fine.” “Well … What is it then?” Operations barked testy at his procrastination. Fergus hesitated. He wanted to say something to his superiors, and yet he didn't. Seeing the thunderous scowl cross Operations’ face, he wondered how he could communicate Geillis’ request without having his head blown off. “Is this about Jamie and Claire?” Madeline asked seeing the impasse between the two men. There was no point in avoiding her question. The techie paused slightly before he replied, “They’re both badly injured, but alive.” “I see. Is that all?” Operations could see the nervousness in the young man’s eyes while his scrutiny made Fergus feel uncomfortable. Eventually looking him in the eye, he blurted out, “I’ve also had a request from Geillis Duncan regarding Jamie and Claire.” “What is it?” “Geillis wanted …” Shifting his stance from one foot to another Fergus was just about to say, when they were interrupted by another operative. “Sir the team has returned.” Operations terminated the connection. He turned, looked at Madeline and then at Fergus. “I guess she can tell you herself now sir.” “Yes … I guess she can,” he replied dismissively. Operations and Madeline then made their way out of his office to van access with a relieved Fergus Claudel following behind. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* The journey back to Section One had been quicker than expected and in no time they were there. Exiting the transport vehicle all the operatives prepared to file through the inner portal that led to the corridor into Section One where Operations, Madeline and Fergus waited for their return. Geillis exited first. She looked around thankful that Fergus had organised her requests as Medical staff and the gurneys were waiting for their arrival. She stood to one side as her team made their way past. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jamie finally emerge with Claire by his side. She watched as the two operatives carefully stepped into the entrance with Murtagh keeping up the rear like a sentinel overlooking his charges. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* All eyes seemed to be focused on the two returning operatives but one pair of eyes strained to see another. Worried eyes scanned the operatives yet they failed to find the one person who Fergus needed to know was okay … his friend Murtagh Fitzgibbons. Although Geillis had said he was fine, he needed to see for himself, to make sure. The proficient computer genius was very glad that Claire had been rescued and that the team had been successful on the mission, but Where was Murtagh? His eyes strained towards the portal door … then he saw him stride through none the worse for wear. Fergus was so relieved Murtagh had returned safely. Happiness welled up inside of him at the sight of his best friend. Fergus grinned to himself. The old codger was back ... and alive. He’d never been so worried in all his life. The weapons’ expert was like a father to him and if anything had happened ... if God forbid ... he’d lost him ... he didn’t know what he would have done. Fergus then looked past his friend at the two returning, battle scared operatives they had rescued. He watched and saw James Fraser help Claire Beauchamp along the corridor. But just who was holding up whom? By the looks of things, they were both in need of some urgent attention. He let out the breath he was holding in a whoosh and shook his head, frowning. Claire was beat up pretty bad. She looked shocking. So too did Jamie. He could see what Geillis Duncan had said was true. It was blatantly apparent that she and Jamie needed medical attention as soon as possible. They both needed to be taken to Med Lab straight away. Yet despite their injuries, he couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. His best friends were all back and safe. It felt as if it was a homecoming for them. Fergus sighed. After so many months of being in Hong Kong on this dangerous mission and having suffered the ordeal of being kidnapped and tortured, Claire was finally back in Section. When she was feeling better, he would ask her about the mission but right now she didn’t need to be bombarded with questions ... she needed rest and care. He grimaced. The young techie’s eyes misted over thinking about what she had endured at the hands of the Rising Dragons. The bastards! As soon as Claire and Jamie were well again and they’d regained their strength and conditioning ... they would get who was responsible and he and Murtagh would help him in any way they could.  Jamie would take no prisoners for what they had done to his material Claire. Who could blame him? He wanted to be around when the might of Section One closed in on the triad members ... as it would. Next time the Rising Dragons would be the vanquished not the victor ... and would meet their fate once and for all. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Making their way along the corridor, James Fraser quickly scanned the faces of his superiors and the worried yet relieved face of the Section technical mastermind Fergus Claudel who had coordinated their retrieval mission.

He noticed that Madeline and Operations stood quietly to one side. Although they showed a sign of concern and acknowledged his tacit look, they seemed to be indifferent to the state both he and Claire were in. As usual it was hard to read the thoughts of their leaders as their conduct gave nothing away of their feelings. However, he knew that an underlying curiosity by Madeline and Operations would need to be appeased when the time came. There was always a hidden agenda with them. The looks they exchanged could mean a range of things including a modicum of real concern for what both he and Claire had endured, but more importantly he knew they were both thinking about what would happen now that the mission had had this set back. Operations would want a full debrief and Madeline would ask her probing questions as usual about the mission. 

However, despite their scrutiny, Jamie ignored their glances. His main concern was for his Claire. Tightening his arm around her in a caring gesture, he helped her along the corridor toward the waiting gurneys. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Operations and Madeline watched the exchange between their two operatives. It was apparent that Jamie was protective ... very protective of Claire Beauchamp. Madeline’s dark gaze assessed the situation. 

Had the two of them become closer than she thought over the course of this mission? It appeared so by the gestures James Fraser was exhibiting towards his partner. Things had definitely changed between the two operatives. Although Jamie tried to disguise it, Claire was undeniably his weakness ... his demeanour towards her was positive proof that his concern was genuine. But was that all there was to it, or was there more?

This played on Madeline’s mind.

 Could she exploit their relationship further like she’d told Dougal was a possibility in their previous discussion about giving them some downtime together? Having Jamie second guess their motives would give them the upper hand. Her belief was that there was no one that she couldn’t manipulate ... Jamie, however, would be a lot more difficult.

 Madeline cast her eyes his way again. Her brow furrowed; her eyes glinted then she smiled enigmatically. She already knew several of Claire's weaknesses. She could be controlled ... but could James Fraser? Time would tell. Right now, though, it was imperative that Section’s best operatives recovered from the trauma they’d faced at the hands of the Rising Dragons. Manipulations would begin soon enough.

Standing beside Madeline, Operations’ manner was sullen; his eyes were fixed on James Fraser and Claire Beauchamp as if weighing up his options. At the sight of them, his initial anger had been appeased.

 It was understandable why Jamie was behaving in this way towards Claire. Judging by the look of her, it was easy to see how much she had endured for the Section. Claire looked dreadful ... but so too did he, although Jamie was doing a good job of disguising his own pain. It was also clear that it may be some time before the two of them had recovered enough to be sent back into the field. Madeline was right as usual.  He was a bit rash in his projected assessment of the two operatives. That would not be possible now given the apparent poor physical condition they were in. The Rising Dragons’ mission would have to be put on hold unless there was another way around it. 

Madeline had been correct in her summation; they would need some downtime to recuperate ... and they could keep an eye on them at the same time. Operations glanced at them more closely. A bond between two operatives was a good thing, but had things progressed further than either he or Madeline had expected?

His eyes became fixated as his mind raced with the consequences of his thoughts. Her plan was indeed a stroke of genius. Jamie and Claire would need to be watched though. Section One could not have a relationship between two operatives that put the very essence of their goals in jeopardy. He wouldn’t hesitate to put them both into abeyance if that occurred. 

Dougal Mackenzie’s stoic stance gave nothing away of his thoughts while any conclusion he may have about what he’d witnessed, was only displayed in a brief glance he conferred Madeline’s way. Her reply indicated that what they’d witnessed may become problematic. They would need to be more vigilant where their two operatives were concerned. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Jolted back to reality Madeline and Operations severed their enigmatic look as a cry of “Coming through!” echoed around them. Two Med-Lab technicians pushed past Sections’ leaders and into the narrow access entryway obviously anxious to get Jamie and Claire on the gurneys and to Medical for treatment as soon as possible. When one of them stepped forward to place Claire on the gurney, Jamie stopped him in his tracks with a look. The man knew that he was not to mess with James Fraser. It was clear that the operative wanted to make sure that Claire was carefully placed on the gurney and he would see that she was.

 “No … It’s okay … I have her.” 

Stepping aside the Med-tech exchanged a silent glance with the other technician. Jamie somehow couldn’t relinquish his hold of his Claire. It was something that he had to do himself. He gently lowered her onto the gurney, then slowly slipped his arms out from beneath her body. Claire, however, clung to him and dug her hands into the front of his jacket. Jamie winced as her action pulled his wounded shoulder lower. Putting his hands over Claire’s, he gently pried them loose carefully keeping her shielded from any onlookers’ gaze especially those of their superiors, for if Madeline and Operations saw anything too overt, they would pounce on their actions. He could not show too much affection towards her; however, Jamie threw caution to the wind despite their audience. Gathering the thermal blanket at the bottom of the gurney, he drew it up Claire’s body, tucking it closely around her shoulders. His eyes held hers with a probing look as his knuckles accidentally brushed her soft strands of hair. When the med technician screened his body from Madeline and Operations’ line of vision, Jamie couldn’t resist bending down to her. With his face close to Claire’s, his eyes travelled all over her face tenderly. He felt his fingers tingle with a longing to entangle themselves in her tresses resting in the crook of her neck. Then whispering just loud enough for her but no one else to hear he said softly, “I’ll be right here mo ghràidh,” and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. Slowly he straightened up, but the pain he felt in his shoulder was excruciating. Jamie gritted his teeth in agony while trying to show no ill effect from the exertion of placing his Sassenach on the gurney. He stepped back to let the technician take over grateful that Claire was as last in capable hands, but he still kept guard at her side. His sole concentration was focused on her and not on his own well being. Jamie’s actions, however, had taken their toll on his remaining strength. He was feeling a little woozy after exerting the last ounce of his energy but at least Claire was stable.

Once she was on the gurney the technician strapped her in and stood aside to wait for James Fraser to be put on the other gurney by his colleague before taking them both to Medical. Judging by his manner Jamie looked as if he would resist being taken to the infirmary and would expect to walk there on his own volition. The Med tech was concerned about him. To his medical eye he could see the deep, dark circles under James Fraser’s eyes while his face was far too pale. The level 5 operative had taken a hard beating, yet he watched over Claire Beauchamp with lack of concern for his own injuries. 

The Med-Lab technician looked over to his colleague who stood waiting, but there was some delay as Operations spoke to Jamie before he could do what needed to be done. “How is she doing?” He heard the question; however, Jamie’s concentration was on the beautiful but battered woman he loved in front of him. His eyes caressed Claire as she lay with her eyes closed on the gurney. Without turning around he answered, voicing his thoughts out loud.

 “Better than any of us.” 

Operations and Madeline shared a look at his cryptic answer but didn’t respond to his accusation. They merely stared at his back then looked over at Claire once more now that they could see her much better for Jamie had obscured their view before. “Jamie?” Although he heard the sound of Operations calling his name, he didn’t immediately turn around for had he done so Jamie would have surely passed out. Rather, he forced himself to gather what inner strength he had. Through the foggy haze of his mind, he realised that it was Operations who was addressing him again. Slowly he turned to look at his superior.

 “Yes?” 

Dougal Mackenzie watched the slow, calculated but normal antics of his operative. Even though he appeared a little worse for wear, it was nothing more than what he’d already seen on previous occasions. James Fraser had returned to Section One injured after a mission before and as far as he was concerned, Section’s leader didn’t see anything that majorly wrong with him.

 “We're glad you're back Fraser.” 

Jamie’s soft reply was barely audible. “Thank ye.” Raising an eyebrow at his patent answer he asked, “Were you able to extract an RP on the Rising Dragons?” The inflection of Jamie’s voice rose, answering Operations’ question with another question. “An RP?” Noticing the blank expression on Jamie's face Murtagh stepped forward. “His Retreat Point's still not known. I think we should take Jamie to Medical too before he debriefs. There was quite a bit of interrogation equipment at the site and both he and Claire were tortured badly.” At Murtagh Fitzgibbon’s announcement, Operations and Madeline studied Jamie more carefully. Slight concern showed on both of their faces. “Are you all right Fraser?” Without making eye contact with them he gave a vague reply. “Aye. Just ... need a little bit of ... rest.” Unfortunately, the banal conversation with his superiors drained what strength he had left from him. Jamie teetered a little then suddenly lost his balance as his legs buckled from under him. Had it not been for Murtagh, he would have fallen to the floor. “Hey … easy there Jamie.” “I’m ... f-fine,” he answered shrugging off his help in front of his superiors while standing on shaky legs. But Jamie was anything but fine. Disorientated, his eyes rolled back in his head, then without warning he fell to the floor trembling. “Quick!” He called out alerting everyone to Jamie’s plight. “What's wrong with him?” Fergus asked worriedly. Murtagh’s eyes examined the collapsed operative more closely. Noticing his blood-stained jacket his eyes widened with concern when he saw some fresh blood beginning to seep from his shoulder. All eyes turned his way. The sight of James Fraser incapacitated in such a way was a shock. Suddenly his trembling exacerbated. “Damn it, do something! He's convulsing!” Murtagh exclaimed looking over to where the Medical technician was waiting with the second gurney. His eyes were succinct in their meaning. “Get hold of him!” The Med-tech pushed the gurney towards Jamie quickly making it to his side. Bending down to assess the situation, his appraisal was succinct when he noticed all the tell-tale signs of Jamie’s condition. “He’s going into shock. Let’s move, let’s move!” the Med tech shouted. “C'mon!  Move it!  Move it!  Move it!” “Do something!” Murtagh ordered alarm etched on his face. “Help me get him onto the gurney,” the medic specified looking at Fitzgibbons who was kneeling down to where Jamie had fallen to the floor. Without hesitation the weapons expert’s strong arms lifted James Fraser up and placed the weakened Level 5 operative on the second gurney. “Aaarrrgghh! ... Urggggh!” he moaned in distress. Murtagh’s raspy voice whispered close to his face, “It’s okay Jamie ... I’ve got you.” As the drama unfolded, those gathered looked on in astonishment.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued on Friday 13th March

#Jamieandclairefanfic #jamieandclairecrossover #jamieandclaireau #outlander fanfic #the lallybroch library #covert operations #LFNoutlander

[harmandy]

—- ☼ (keri russell, forty-one, cis female, she/her.) have you met HARMONY ANDREWS? they’ve been living in PEARL HEIGHTS for ELEVEN YEARS now, but are originally from ESSEX. you can catch them working as a RECEPTIONIST, which makes sense as they’re GOOD-NATURED and OPTIMISTIC, as well as OVER-PROTECTIVE, and HOT-HEADED. keep an eye out for them! (ooc: pace, 21+, gmt, she/her)

hi, friends ! y’all can call me pace, and you may remember me from such roles as ‘admin that calls everybody her pals and uses too many exclamation marks’ ! i’m super excited to get bayhaven up and running ( and hopefully thriving ! ) and writing with your glorious muses ! i’m also playing FREYA and SOFIA, and their intros should be up just after this one ! so, in the words of shania twain, let’s go girls ! p.s i’m famously bad at intros at the best of times, but i’ve been wrestling a migraine for the last few days and i’m actually writing these up early and scheduling them; i’m hoping to be around, but want to be prepared for if i can’t be. so i gotta be honest, these are all a lil rushed, but hopefully they give a vague idea and enough of a gist !

ABOUT:

so, harmony’s actually a lot of fun for me -- she actually started as an npc from a different character’s background, and i just grew really attached to her ! i loved harmony as a concept and as a character, so thought it was about time i played her properly ! so, i revived her ( did i mention she was always dead before ? my gal was always dead before oopsie ) and here she is !

she’s a receptionist up at bayhaven’s hospital, so sometimes works funky hours, and has four smashing lil’ children ! i say children,,, two of them are grown adults, but... her kids !!! she’s dedicated her life to those little demons !

harmony is a chocolate loving, pasta making, scrapbooking, junk journal doing, laundry folding, zero-luck-with-love-having, legend, and she just has a lot of love to give.

i miiiiight be open to putting up wc’s for the two oldest kids at some point ( with like lots of wiggle room and ofc as Different characters than the ones i’ve developed before ) but i’ll have to see ! i keep flip-flopping between wanting to and not so i feel like that’s a ‘i should think on it and see how things go’ kinda sign !

i tried to whip up a a condensed rundown of her backstory, her kids and how they came to be, etc. but it got so long and rambly. however, i’ve copy and pasted the bullet points and whacked them HERE instead if you’re curious, especially while her full biography is a wip !

so she’s a mother of four to nevaeh ‘nev’, faith, harvey, and avalon ‘ava’ and they range from aged six to age twenty-four. she had her eldest at seventeen, and has been cut off from the rest of her family ever since. 

however, her aunt didn’t plan on dying when she did, so hadn’t gone over her will recently ---- if she had, she may have realised that she never took harmony out of it, and harms inherited her house in bayhaven when her youngest child ( at the time ) was four, and she and her family have lived together in pearl heights ever since. 

she loves the community in pearl heights. she loves that everyone seems to have eachother’s backs, and actually like she fits in somewhere. they have a nice lil four bedroom house ( or three bedrooms and a box, as she calls it ) and since the arrival of harm’s fourth and final kid six years ago, and w/ nev being older, they converted the loft into an extra bedroom, so nev sleeps in the attic like a rat !

she’s a busy bee, tbh ! she works full time, has a herd of youngens to keep track of, loves cooking so makes nice hearty, homey meals almost every night, has a Very precise laundry routine, and she’s a creative lil fuck ?? really into bullet journaling but also making junk journals and loooooooves a scrapbook. 

she’s a very sort of No Nonsense lady. she just doesn’t have time or tolerance for bullshit anymore, life’s too short and she’s had enough shit thrown at her. 

however, her heart is Big. her life is dedicated to her kidsies, but she’s always known for taking in strays. a mate of her kids’ need to stay ? okay cool lemme grab you a blanket and the guest pj’s. her house is very Busy, like all the time. everyone is welcome at all times. friends over for dinner !!!! extra kids running around because harm is absolutely nuts and probably thought ava having three friends over would be fiiiine !

she has stats !

as well as a pinterest board !

CONNECTION IDEAS:

friends friends friends !!!

neighbours !!

friends thru their kids ?? her kids are 24, 21, 15, and 6, so if other folks have kids near those ages ! yeehaw !

youngens she’s basically adopted because she’s such a ‘your parents suck ? i’m your mum now’ person tbh.

harmony has such potential for angst and i’m always for it my guys. 

EXTRAS:

i know bayhaven exists in a wonderful world where the dreaded c-word ( no, not that one -- not that one either... ) doesn’t exist, but we’re sadly not so lucky, so i hope everybody is keeping well and looking after themselves, and that bayhaven can function as a nice distraction, as well as a creative outlet and something to fill the time !

i usually am a ‘i love rp icons, i love gif icons, i love gifs, use whatever and i’ll match’ kinda person, but two out of the three fc’s i’m using are ones i didn’t have a folder for before the rp, and keri has zero gif icons until i make some ! i’m workin’ on it ! but she’s beeeeautiful and has lots of gifs and some rp icons, and i’d be happy to make more in the future too, so we’re goin’ with it for now !

i’m a small text gal, but if you wanna make it bigger when reblogging our threads, you’ll get no complaints from me ! the only thing i ask is that bold/italic text is left alone and not reformatted, as they’re almost always used as ( in the wise words of josh peck ) emphasis, when it comes to me !

a bit too personal, but i’m actually currently coming off my adhd meds, and one of the things i’ve noticed, is that i find spotting typos harder and that kind of thing, so if we could just Bear With, i’d really appreciate it ! it also makes me forgetful as sin in the short-term, so again, please just !!! bear with !!! and patience is reaaaallly appreciated !

#bhintro #i'm so sorry i'm half asleep and my brain hurts hopefully these make sense!! #♡ *ﾟ ━ ◣ ooc. ◥

[soleilstm]

(  jennie  kim  ,  twenty  -  one  ,  &  cis  female  )  who  ?  these  days  ,  it’s  all  about   soleil  ‘ sol ’  ryu   ,  who  comes  from    san  francisco ,  ca   and  is  making  headlines  as  an    actress    .   she  currently  has  a  fan  count  of  38k  ,  no  thanks  to  the  rumors  of  them  being  peevish  !  but  ,  on  the  other  hand  ,  their  most  devout  fans  say  they’re  actually  wilful  .  last  i  heard  ,  they  caused  quite  a  buzz  when  she  got  casted  for  the  lead  role  in  the  next  a24  film  !  it’s  no  wonder  they  remind  me  of   glitter  eyeliner ,  bitten  fingernails ,  the  quiet  grey  before  a  thunderstorm ,  deep  breaths  before  leaving  the  house ,  sickeningly  sweet  fake  laughter  &  the  addictive  flash  of  the  cameras   . 

     hi hi, how are y’all doing ? my name is bea, i’m twenty yrs old, i use she/her pronouns and i’m from the gmt tz ! i’m super excited to be rping with y’all and i hope my brand new muse sol might spark some interest in a few people so we can plot, plot and also plot ! you can find a little bit more about her underneath the cut as well as a couple wcs. if you like this post i’ll assume you want to plot and IM you, so click the heart at your own risk ! x 

statistics.

background. 

the  story  goes  as  following:  man  meets  woman.  both  man  and  woman  are  fresh  out  of  med  school,  trying  to  survive  their  internship  as  the  only  two  immigrant  interns.  they  get  closer  and  closer.  two  years  later,  a  baby  girl  is  born.  she  is  not  who  this  story  is  about.  she  is  the  warning,  to  the  man  and  the  woman.  she  says  ‘  you  are  great  doctors,  but  you  are  not  good  parents.’  sadly,  they  don’t  hear  her,  because  they’re  busy  at  work  while  a  nanny  takes  care  of  her.  she  grows  into  a  lonely  toddler,  until  that  fateful  moment,  at  age  five,  when  the  protagonist  of  this  story  is  born.  they  say  she  cries  and  giggles  in  the  delivery  room,  making  sure  no  one  can  miss  her  or  ignore  her.  even  her  own  mother  can’t  help  but  stare  at  her  scrunched  up  face,  stuck  between  a  frown  and  a  laugh.  they  call  her  soleil,  for  the  sun.  or  sol,  to  her  older  sister,  who  finally  has  someone  to  play  with.  

the  years  pass  the  ryu  family  by,  settling  into  a  peaceful  routine  for  the  most  part.  sol’s  parents  are  at  work,  vying  for  another  promotion.  her  mother,  olivia,  stops  by  the  house  every  once  in  a  while,  because  she  heard  daughters  that  grow  up  without  a  mother  turn  elsewhere  for  attention.  and  really,  she  won’t  have  either  of  them  falling  out  of  track.  there  is  a  path  laid  out  for  them,  of  science  and  medicine  and  upholding  the  family  legacy,  that  she  reminds  them  of  every  time  she  hugs  them  in  that  precise,  medical  way.  sol’s  sister,  rose,  listens  intensily.  sol,  on  the  other  hand,  becomes  very  good  at  pretending  she  is,  as  well.  it’s  all  thanks  to  the  theater  club  she’s  joined,  after  getting  a  half-asleep  signature  from  her  father  on  the  one  day  of  the  week  he  sleeps  at  home.  she  excels  at  it,  forming  her  own  little  world  where  they  can’t  see  her.  except  for  rose,  who’s  determined  to  make  her  care  about  what  their  mother  cares.  so  sol  goes  along,  because  she  doesn’t  want  to  hurt  rose.  she  would  never  do  anything  to  hurt  the  only  sincere  hug  of  her  life.  

but  peace  can’t  last  forever,  and  this  she  learns  on  her  junior  year  of  high  school.  her  mother  finds  her  early  acceptance  to  juilliard  by  accident,  stumbling  home  after  her  congratulations  party  for  becoming  chief  of  surgery.  rose  is  long  gone  by  then,  graduating  top  of  her  class  and  enrolling  in  medical  school.  sol  had  gotten  so  good  at  pretending,  they  all  believed  she  would  follow  suit.  in  that  very  moment,  sol  walks  in  to  see  her  mother  rip  the  letter  to  shreds,  her  face  a  massive  red  welt.  they  fight,  the  entire  night.  her  father  comes  home,  and  they  fight  some  more.  there  is  no  way  she’s  pursuing  this  nonsense.  there  is  no  way  she’s  ever  becoming  an  actress.  no  matter  how  much  she  cries,  cloudy  skies  taking  over  her  delicate  features,  they  don’t  hear  her.  they  never  hear  her.  she  gives  in.  she  accepts  her  fate.  she’ll  follow  rose’s  path,  if  that’s  what  they  want.  they  hug  her,  still  as  mechanical  as  ever,  and  she  goes  to  bed.  the  thing  with  being  as  gifted  as  she  is,  is  that  lying  becomes  an  art  none  of  them  will  ever  appreciate.  so  she  packs  her  bag,  a  hundred  dollars  in  her  pocket,  and  escapes  with  the  moon  high  in  the  sky.  

she  wishes  she  could  say  her  path  after  that  moment  is  without  flaws.  that  none  of  it  involves  days  upon  days  of  couch-surfing,  of  scrambling  for  minimum  wages,  of  terribly  missing  the  life  she  had  before.  at  night,  she  goes  to  sleep  wondering  if  her  dream  is  worth  all  of  this.  and  when  the  sun  rises  in  the  morning,  she  wakes  up  knowing  it  is.

after  that,  she  hustled  doing  a  lot  of  short  films  that  went  for  the  most  part  unnoticed  while  waitressing  on  the  side,  until  one  of  them  actually  made  it  to  a  major  film  festival  where  she  began  to  gain  traction  and  more  movie  roles.  it  wasn’t  until  she  got  the  role  of  joi  in  blade  runner  2049  two  years  ago  that  she  really  made  a  dent  and  got  noticed  by  the  big  producers.  now,  she’s  lives  her  life  day  by  day,  putting  her  work  above  everything.

personality. 

sol  is  the  most  stubborn  person  you’ll  ever  meet.  nothing  can  ever  get  in  the  way  of  what  she  wants,  and  it  doesn’t  matter  how  long  or  how  hard  she  has  to  fight  for  it.  .  .  she’ll  get  it,  in  the  end.  despite  her  confident  persona,  she  is  also  extremely  anxious.  she’ll  always  see  everything  through,  but  she’ll  spend  the  entire  time  imagining  everything  that  could  go  wrong.  it’s  a  part  of  herself  that  stays  perfectly  hidden  behind  gummy  smiles.  she  can  be  unpredictable,  as  well.  her  patience  levels  dim  day  after  day,  and  before  you  know  it,  something  that  made  her  smile  a  week  ago  now  irritates  her  to  no  end.  fame  definitely  has  something  to  do  with  it.  the  more  love  and  admiration  she  receives,  the  harder  she  finds  to  control  her  moods.  basically,  she’s  turning  bit  by  bit  into  a  diva.  right  now,  you’ll  miss  it  if  you  blink.  but  she’s  steadily  running  towards  it.  she’s  an  introvert,  and  though  she  can  carry  a  conversation,  she’ll  need  several  hours  to  recharge  afterwards  from  the  effort.  it’s  common  that  after  shooting  a  movie,  she’ll  retreat  into  her  apartment  for  a  week  or  two  without  contacting  the  rest  of  the  world.

connections. 

i’m  a  lot  more  open  to  either  brainstorming  or  fitting  in  your  wcs  buuut  i  could  see  one  of  these  three  tbqh.  but  like  i  said,  i’ll  mold  into  yours  or  we’ll  make  something  from  nothing  !

childhood friends if  anyone  comes  from  the  bay  area,  maybe  they  let  sol  couch  surf  at  their  place  for  a  while.  they  know  each  other  better  than  anyone  else,  but  it’s  also  something  really  chill  and  sweet.

rivals in  the  industry  could  be  a  lot  of  fun,  as  well.  they’re  always  battling  it  out  for  roles  and  polls  and  all  of  that,  maybe  it’s  positive  and  drives  them  to  do  better  or  maybe  it’s  just  a  lot  of  cattiness  and  low  blows  because  why  not  lmao.

exes, from  the  beginning  of  her  hollywood  chase  and  now  that  they’re  both  rising  it  got  harder  and  harder  to  be  with  each  other  so  they  called  it  quits  for  the  sake  of  their  careers  but  there’s  still  a  lot  of  lingering  feelings  and  jealousy  and  all  that.

#‹ ☀ ❝ the mun speaks . . . ❞ ┊ 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓾𝓷 𝔀𝓲𝓵𝓵 𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓮. › #cala.intro #whew i'm done

[elftwink]

i know it isn't your post But i still want to make a point on your most recent reblog, which is that a big criticism of academia that the post just. brushes off even though someone in the notes apparently pointed it out (in terms of polysyllabic vs long) is that it's often heavily inaccessible in terms of language (eg using very dense language that can be hard for people whose second language is english, for neurodivergent people etc)

oh absolutely academia is rife with overly-complex, self-important, buzzword-y nonsense that prides itself on being that way because the people writing it think of themselves as smarter than everybody else and take criticism like “hey this is literally incomprehensible” to mean “i’m too dumb to read this” and pat themselves on the back for it (i know that’s specific but i have specific beef). god knows i have read so many papers and been like. there sure were a lot of words there. don’t know if they said anything though. & i think if you feel the need to like... decode a paper or “translate” it to simpler terms that indicates to some degree a failure on the part of the author

on the flip side, though, sometimes dense language is necessary as the knowledge gets more and more specialized because you have to be more precise. ‘polysyllabic’ is a good example, actually. you could argue in this case it was unnecessary, but polysyllabic and long are not actually synonyms, and once you start getting into the nitty gritty details, it’s gonna be important to differentiate between a word that is “long” and a word that has multiple syllables, especially because a lot of ‘simple’ descriptions (like long) are subjective and relative. specialized fields have to have specialized vocabulary and to some degree that’s necessary. while it’s the author’s responsibility to be able to summarize and explain themselves in an accessible way, it’s also the reader’s responsibility to be aware of the context the work sits in. a science paper on DNA may be inaccessible to me because the language is hard to follow and convoluted, but it could also be inaccessible because i know fuck all about DNA-specific research and the vocab used in that field.

also this is going to sound rude as fuck but polysyllabic is a buckwild word to complain about in the first place (the original complainer, not you). it’s uncommon, sure, but the root word and the prefix are not uncommon and it’s like............. use context clues. while you are able to articulate an actual problem w/language use in academia that is much broader than the word ‘polysyllabic’ and is actually worth discussing and criticizing, i would bet that op didn’t bring it up themselves because the initial complaint was (or was interpreted as being) pedantic or nitpicky or weirdly hostile. like i know if i would have made that post and someone was like “why did you use ‘polysyllabic’ instead of ‘long’” i would have been like “because they are different words and i meant polysyllabic get off my post i don’t know you”

like... if i were op i would not have had the patience to use it as a jumping off point either because i would assume anybody nitpicking specific words was doing it for the sake of starting shit and not because they had anything to say, because in my experience, that’s a correct assumption a good 80% of the time on this website

sorry this is so long i took my meds and now im opinionated tl;dr you’re right but also i can’t blame op for not articulating what you did because this website sucks. also ive written polysyllabic so many times its lost all meaning to me

#long post / #anonymous #answered