#but you can seen the bones and the gears and the guts under the surface

[moondirti]

give peace a chance

I missed you, you want to say, but you know it’ll do nothing to change this routine. You settle on a question he’ll have a response to, for all it can do to uncover thoughts he’d want to bury deep.

pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ mdni) word count: 3.4k summary: you’re always there, waiting on him warnings: size kink, blowjobs, facefucking, thigh riding, masturbation, squirting, angst, brief mentions of death, canon typical violence, mild mild gore, fluff notes: had 'Yes to Heaven' by lana del rey on loop while writing this one. out of body experience fr. anyway, i finally gave in and wrote for the boogey man. he's been occupying too much headspace for me to not.

You don’t hear him come in. 

Crisp, white sheets gather in a knot at your midsection – previously pristine, wrinkles pull at its surface now. You can’t sleep, but that’s most nights.

Your curtains dance with an incoming drift, lazy gauze, sheer in the cresting moonlight. If you weren’t so absorbed in the white noise of your whirring fan, you could catch the quiet click of your backdoor. You always leave it open, just in case; people know not to dare take advantage of the liberties you exhibit. There’s the invisible threat, protection, of a shadowed mercenary over your toytown home. 

His missions are incalculable. That’s the one thing he cannot promise you. Come back soon, you beg, but he leaves you with a silent kiss and nothing else. 

There were once days where you’d tag along. Your chest twinges at the uncomfortable reminder. Cracked bone, spilt ichor; the bullet had barely missed your heart, lodged between the throbbing organ and a major vessel. He’d raged to get you decommissioned, incensed demands – they’d never seen him as angry. 

Carpet flattens under your bare feet as you crawl out of bed, soft, like all things here. You hadn’t the luxury of comfort before, when Simon was Ghost and you were a rookie under him, but he’d granted you a life you sought only in your dreams. The first few days in paradise, you were torn over appreciation and resentment at the act, bandages wrapped around your chest – but you’d healed and found the irreversible damage etched into the hard plate of your clavicle – a rounded, discoloured scar. 

You’re glad you’d left that life behind. 

Padding out to the kitchen, you pour yourself a drink. The cupboard underneath your sink contains only bourbon – blended, straight, kentucky – so you fish out juice from your fridge. It’s sickly sweet, all natural sugars, your ass. 

“Shouldn’t drink that stuff.” A voice cuts the tranquillity, rugged and choppy on harsh consonants – a cockney accent. You soothe the alarmed surprise racing in your gut, a gentle smile turning your cheeks. 

His eyes pierce back at you, a smudge of white against an otherwise charcoal canvas. He’s sitting at the dining table, just across your kitchen island, his massive form illuminated by the warm light you’d turned on. You don’t know how you missed him, but then again, the man lives up to his name. Ghost; creeping up like the dead. 

“We’re all out of milk.” You respond, your tease lilting to an affectionate whisper when it hits your tongue. Simon scoffs. “Not like whiskey’s any better.” 

You pour him a glass regardless. 

He’s still equipped in his tactical gear, his gun set on the chair next to him. It adds unnecessary bulk, layers on layers of insulation, conservation – impossibly, he looks bigger like this. Larger than life. Your hands run along the coarse material of his bullet proof vest; you think you can feel his muscles tense, despite the surfaces separating you. But he takes the bourbon with little fuss, wrapping a strong arm around your legs so your knees knock the side of his thigh. 

“Hi,” You giggle, beaming down at him. 

“Hey.” He mocks, setting the drink down. 

His hard-shell mask conceals any tells you may glean. In just the balaclava, you can catch the shape of his lips, the curve of his nose, when he smiles – the painted fabric pulls taut over his features. But a skull stares back at you, and all you have are his eyes, framed with ashen lashes. They’re only enough to tell you one thing; he’s happy to be home. 

You love the way they catch the light, a subtle glimmer in them. 

For a while, the two of you just stand there, revelling in the weighted company of one another. His gloved hand presses circles into your flesh, just under the hem of your sleeping shorts, while yours find every bit of exposed skin you can. There’s not much – just the small stretch of neck you can reach, tucked behind his collar before the rest of him disappears. But you find it with reverence, smoothing over it, his heated body slowly easing by the minute under your ministrations. Some part of you realises the desperation you observe him with, the hurried glances at his back, his stomach, his legs. You look for darkened, sticky fabric. You look for blood. 

You don’t have the courage to speak your fears into fruition. 

Simon slowly begins to pull the heavier parts of his armour off. The night vision goggles on his head, the packets of ammo stuffed into available pockets. You move to help him, humming, shifting as you unbuckle the back of his plate carrier. His groans are wicked, deep waves of relief stemming from somewhere in his chest, and you hide the blush that arises at the sound, throwing the layer into an unknown corner. You remember the soreness, the knotted shoulders from days in the same kit, your spine in aching need of a good long stretch. You make a mental note to rub his back later.

You take off his gloves. There’s little give – they’re crusted in dried gore and gunpowder, the bones on their front almost entirely camouflaged. A sharp tug is what it takes to peel them off his hands. But then his skin is bared to you. You survey the grit that dusts the contours of his veins. Dirt has sunk through the fibres. 

When he’s left in just his mask and underclothes, he finally slumps, posture altering from that of a soldier’s to one of a tired man. His legs spread, thick thighs filling his pants, and he reaches for his drink again, lifting the bottom of his mask and balaclava to take a large gulp. His newly revealed Adam's apple bobs with the motion.

I missed you, you want to say, but you know it’ll do nothing to change this routine. You settle on a question he’ll have a response to, for all it can do to uncover thoughts he’d want to bury deep. 

“How many men?” You speak into the space. He pauses, his pink lips pursing at the brim of his glass. You have half a mind to regret asking, but you do this for your own solace. 

“Jus’ three.” Just. To anyone else, he may sound indifferent, his tone etched in that low timbre, unwavering with the grief over lost comrades. To you, you know that his pain is cavernous, a bottomless chasm he’ll undoubtedly return to. Indicatively, he pulls his mask back down over his face. It isn’t just three men. It’s three too many – but it’s on the lower end of the casualties the 141 usually faces. 

You wait for him to say the words you’re looking for. 

“They’re alright.” 

You nod. Al Bravo team was not amongst the fatalities. Gaz. Price. Soap. You cling onto the reassurance of your friends’ continued survival, a buoy until the next raging storm. 

Simon’s hand returns to its place on your leg, tracing long lines along the back of it. You shiver, suppressing the heat that spreads up your tummy like wildfire. His steel gaze is indecipherable as he looks up at you; your emotions flit across your face erratically. You wish he’d take the mask off, get on even footing with you, but it takes a while for him to come down from his missions. For as long as he’s racked with enduring adrenaline, he’ll keep his guard up. 

He’s surrounded by the safe walls of your – his – home, but he’s in over his head. 

You bow down, placing a gentle kiss on the curve of his jaw. The arm wrapped around you draws you closer. 

He smells like saltpetre, guncotton, hints of kerosene floating in the air between you. You push your face nearer to his, and you’re able to catch a faint whiff of his aftershave, traces of the cleanliness and cologne he leaves behind here, with you. You open your mouth to comment on it; he beats you to your cause: 

“Lovely girl.” He squeezes the flesh on your upper thigh – not quite your ass, but almost. 

“Mmm, Simon.” You start, capturing his eyes. They bear down on you with an intensity that makes your core ache. “Y’Can’t keep doing this to me.”

You imagine he’s smirking when he retaliates. “Can say the same for you, expectin’ me to focus out there when you look this good.” Like a giddy schoolgirl, you bite your lip at his compliment. 

Stirring to kiss his jaw again, you slowly start to unzip his windbreaker. Your fingers span the front of the black hoodie underneath, tracing the hard plane of his chest, feeling it rumble with a noiseless groan. His legs spread wider. You catch a telling bulge in your peripheral. 

“Need help?” You murmur, purring when he slips underneath your shorts to give your rear a feel. His callouses dig into you.

“Need you.” He says. 

The hand that was on his chest inches downward now, your nails raking along. You give a half-suppressed laugh as his abdomen tightens, bracing against your ticklish assault. You want to feel it bare – to extricate the exhaustion from an uncovered torso and watch as his muscles roll, solid brawn unravelling with the slightest touch. But you’ll settle on this, you know he needs it. His mask does unspeakable things to you, anyway. 

“Relax.” You encourage with a breath. Simon doesn’t listen; he still kneads your flesh with an unforgiving grip. His thumb brushes close to the soaked patch on your panties – with the appreciative grunt he gives, you know he senses the arousal emanating from you. 

His cock strains his pants, taking up all the space it can. You coo, poor thing, as you cup the underside of it. He gives you a reproaching spank, and your hips buck in tandem to his. As you do, you realise now how uncomfortable of a position you’re in – your neck cramps in this angle. Really, it’s a silly thing to be hung up about, but Simon must read the subtle cringe you give, for he urges you to kneel, guiding you by your head to crawl in between his open legs. 

You’re halfway under the table when you look up at him again, cheek pressed adoringly against his knee. He’s seemingly content like this, petting round your forehead to the ridge of your chin. His palm is large, dry, warm. You quickly lose trajectory as he caresses you, all droopy eyes and small smiles. 

He catches when you rub your legs together, chasing a friction that will never amount to him. You can never escape his scrutiny; Simon captures everything. 

He pats your cheek and pinches it before his touch leaves you. Newly awake, you perk up, perching on your haunches to lean further into him. You’re always eager, but his chuckle at your barely concealed anticipation beckons a stone to lodge itself in your throat. It’s a ball of desire, denser than most things, snowballing with every passing moment in his presence. You’re tuned in on him, rapt to every subtle thing – the deep exhales, the anchoring of his boots to hardwood floors. It’s take, take, take, an absorption of anything he’s willing to give. It tends to be like this after he comes back –  was like this back on the base, when you’d known nothing but his moniker and callsign. 

You recall rubbing one out to the staticky crackle of his voice over the channel, your headset pressed tight to your ears. You’d never told him that; you figure now’s a good time as any. 

“Used to fantasise about you, y’know.” You sigh, ironing over his calves. You move your brushes to his hulking thighs when he begins to undo his pants, wetting your lips. 

His next exhale is torn, steadiness ripped to shreds by your less-than seductive words. “Oh yeah?” He remarks, scooping into his boxers to pull his heavy cock out. “What about?” 

It springs free just then, angry head flushed a deep red, blood supplied by pulsing veins that branch to the top. You keen at the precum that beads at the top, rushing to catch it with your index to slip it onto your tongue. He says nothing, merely contemplating as you wriggle with the heady taste of him. 

“This,” You add after a long moment, before licking a long, wet stripe up the base of his dick. His whole body jerks unexpectedly, and he grabs onto your head to steady your impatient efforts. 

“Fuckin’ hell.” 

“Gone soft on me? I see.” Chortling, you play with his tip, batting it back and forth to tap your lips. He is anything but soft – regrettably, though, the rise you get from teasing him is too great to pass up. 

“Shut it, pet, before I turn your insides over.” He urges you forward once he’s settled. You don’t tell him how much you’d really like him to. In due time. 

Your lips wrap around the bulbous head, sides stretching to accommodate his girth. You’re familiar with the drill by now; hollow your cheeks, keep your jaw nice and loose. Use some teeth, he chokes at the pain. 

His skin moves with you as you sink down , rolling your tongue over the ridges that cross your path. Your breath is hot, your mouth even hotter – sweltering, you suck him in and coat his rock-hard with a film of saliva, which aids you when you bob back up. You can’t reach the root of him, not yet – he’s way too big – so your hand wraps around the length not in your mouth. 

“That’s it.” Simon rasps, now pushing you down in support. Your hum is lost in the lewd slurps, but he twitches with the vibrations it produces. A glob of drool leaks from you, seeping down to gather in his scruffy curls – you use it as slick to twist your wrist around his base. 

He’s ripe with the salty taste of sweat and precum, a dizzying combination – you hope you’re subtle as you slip your free hand down your pants, pressing up into the plush of your cunt. You find where you’re most sensitive, a tight bundle of nerves, and touch yourself, all the while savouring the masculinity that engulfs you – his muscled thighs by your ears, his giant hands pressing down on your head. 

A particularly loud groan sounds from above. You triple your efforts, delighted at your part in helping him unwind. At one point, his added pressure pushes you down all the way. You gag, blubbering with choked gasps, but your lips stay sealed around him, an unforgiving vacuum. His happy trail scratches your nose,

“Gonna cum, you lovely thing. Righ’ down your throat. Take it all, understand?” He asks. You’re able to discern the wobble in his abrasive voice – his balls spasm at your lips, ready to erupt at any moment. You nod, gaping at him earnestly, with wide, watery eyes. His own soften, downturning at the corners. “‘Atta girl.”

With the hazy memory of his face before he’d left, you can draw an abstraction of what he might look like right now. You trick yourself into thinking he’s smiling down at you. Gentle, caring. 

You don’t have to try as hard to believe it. 

Your fingers work fervently over your sopping cunt, slipping between velvet folds. Your exertion, combined with his pure fucking magnetism, is almost enough to tip you over the edge. A cluster in your gut stiffens, grows, upends. You stroke yourself impossibly faster. 

Simon curls inward, his mask now directly above you. A bit of his cock drags from your mouth – your bottom teeth scrape a vein in consequence. He jolts. Then, rich, long ropes of cum shoot into your awaiting mouth, painting you with musky white. You keep jerking him as he does, urging more, more, more, milking him to spill his all into you. 

A tap of your shoulder is all the evidence you need to pull off him with a pop. You didn’t cum, it doesn’t matter, you hardly feel the mounting desperation amidst the grand scheme of things. Simon’s back hits the chair, his head tilting as he takes you in. 

“C’mere,” He grunts, pushing backwards to allow you space to stand. You oblige, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand – it only serves to smear the mess across your cheek. Your back brushes the table – he beckons you closer – until your bruised knees hit the edge of the chair. 

When he’s satisfied, his hands run up your sides, starting at your arms, then downward, so they can hook into the waistband of your shorts. You lock onto his all-consuming stare, dark with an unspoken question, his pupils blown wide with lingering lust. 

“Go ahead.” You coax. 

He nods and pulls your shorts off with one, swift movement. 

Cold air meets soaked cotton – you tremble, whether with goosebumps or the weight of his study, you don’t know. You’re the farthest thing from a blushing virgin, but Simon manages to propel you back into that bashful headspace. Every time with him is ruthless – stifling broken sobs while adjusting to his width, utter pleasure and the smallest bit of pain. 

Perhaps you’ll forgo that this time around. He’s quickly softening against his pelvis. You understand – stamina tends to dissipate after holding out for so long. Though he’s anything but a selfish lover.

He guides you to straddle his thigh. 

You squirm, hip flexors burning with the strain of splitting over the breadth of him. He keeps you steady with his hands on your waist – you clutch onto his wrists. His sleeves have rucked up to reveal his tattooed forearm. You trace the ink, reverent, requiring as much skin-to-skin as possible. It flees the fastest, that sensation, running up behind him when he exits the door. The bruises, the bites, the cramp from hitting your cervix one too many times, on the other hand – they all endure, keeping you sated long enough so that you aren’t compelled to rejoin him. He might do that on purpose, in fact. 

Your clit folds as it meets his leg – a new surge of slick spills from you. 

“A-Ah! Simon, y–” 

“I know, pet. Jus’ ride me, yeah, like that.” 

Your bottom half ruts into him, finding purchase on the solid surface of his thigh. Your panties slide, preventing the potential for divine friction, so you push them to the side, wedging it in the crevice of a lip and your pubic bone. You stutter apologies to Simon for the mess – your natural lubricant smears onto his cargo pants, sullying the fabric. He assures that he’ll wear it proudly. You’re a prouder medal than blood. 

You’re whimpering now, wailing about everything and nothing all at once with your face tucked into his neck. He embraces you – sturdiness forcing you to stunt your movements to short, hurried grinds – and says nothing. 

Something terrifying begins to burn in you; promising a cataclysm. It’s him. His scent, his strength, his size, his presence. I missed you. I missed you. Your impending orgasm crawls up the tendons in your pelvis, seeping into bone and flooding like a high tide. Your pants grow shallower. Your lungs feel cramped. Something about this, here, with him, lights every synapse in you, flashing bright with colours and promises and safety. I miss you. 

“I miss you,” You finally gasp, broken as you peer up at him. He stills – you keep your pace. Sweat beads at your temple. 

He slowly removes the mask. 

The balaclava follows soon after. 

Simon then bows down, pressing his lips to your furrowed brow. 

And then, everything in you compresses, fierce and tight. You wind your fingers into his hair, pulling his head back to bite the column of his neck. You do it to muffle the sob that bubbles when you erupt in searing agony atop him, back arching, toes curling. Your body goes completely rigid. 

He groans with the cut of your teeth, and your cunt pulsates again, spilling down on him, your fluids draining to double your mark on the man. 

“Missed you too.” Simon rustles in response. You seize his mouth with yours, uncaring for how messy it is. It’s what you need; to feel your teeth knock, to bind yourself to him. 

You kiss in him the intent to never let you go. You know it won’t last, but for now, it’s enough.

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[glimmerglanger]

Hey there! Hopefully it’s an OK time to make a request! I truly love your Alpha17/Obi fic, “Just Right”!

Hoping that a prompt of Alpha 17 finally making it to the Negotiator and pretty much stalking Obi and courting Obi in a very gentle and patient un-Alpha 17 way ends with some sexy and soft love making?

Anything will do! I just love this trope and the story you’ve created has been on my mind since it was published!

🥰😍🥰😍

Oooooooh! Well, I couldn’t quite do all the courting (that probably would have gotten longer than the original fic) but! I did do a little bit about the next time they run into each other! Thanks for the request! I have a few more in my inbox that I’m working on, as well!

This is VERY SPICY. SO SPICY. NOT SAFE FOR WIZARDS. Feat: intercrural and bjs and Feelings that 17 wishes he weren’t having.

~~~~

17 felt jittery in his skin from the time he heard that the Negotiator was going to make a stop on Kamino. It was an...unusual feeling, and one he found he disliked immensely. He tried to burn it away sparring with his brothers and, when that failed to work, he grabbed a group of shinies and led them on a run around one of the longer loops on the city.

After the third such loop, he still felt itchy along his bones and gave it up for a loss, retreating to his quarters and the quiet of his fresher.

He’d received a few messages from Kenobi since they’d last worked together. They’d been the usual sort of thing. He’d kept track of mission reports coming out of the Third System Army, too, making sure they routed through to him and reading over the lines of text.

He scrubbed a hand back over his short hair. He’d wanted Kenobi to come to Kamino, wanted an excuse to go back into the field. He hadn’t expected this strange twisting in his gut when he finally got what he’d been hoping for.

That did nothing to diminish the feeling.

He blew out a breath. Kenobi was still a day away, but 17 could imagine him well enough, picture his flashing eyes and that pleased little smile of his. He recalled - their memories were, after all, perfect - the stretch of bare skin and the tight, wet, marvelous heat around his cock.

He’d imagined it all, often, while touching himself in his bunk.

His own hand didn’t come even close to comparing. But it was what he had. What he’d had, anyway, but Kenobi was coming to Kamino…

17 frowned around his bunk and wondered how one went about asking for a repeat of the three days they’d spent in transit, fucking on every available surface.

#

Kenobi walked into the city with his cloak damp and sodden across his shoulders and a grin on his face. He nodded a greeting at 17 and fell into a conversation with Master Ti, and 17 tried not to think about how easy it had been to capture both of Kenobi’s wrists in one hand, pressing them down against the floor and sliding into his body, impossibly, and--

Kenobi glanced his way, an eyebrow raising, and 17 met his gaze evenly, shrugging with one shoulder. He’d made no secret of how much he’d enjoyed their activities. It would be pointless to try to pretend he hadn’t thought about it. Often.

Still, he knew how to be professional. He set the thoughts aside and focused on the discussion.

#

17 managed not to dwell too much on what they’d done throughout the day, but that didn’t stop him from steering Kenobi back to his quarters when evening finally arrived.

His quarters were built larger than most places in the city. The ceilings were tall enough to allow him to stand easily and the bed actually fit his proportions; it would swallow Kenobi, make him look so small, sprawled across it. Compared to the cabins on the cruisers, his room must have seemed huge.

Kenobi looked around, nodded, and said, “Certainly to scale, I have to--”

And then 17 backed him against the wall, slid a hand against his shoulder, and curled down enough to kiss him.

Kenobi moaned against his mouth, shifting from a conversation into the kiss easily, like switching gears on a speeder. He tasted good, mouth hot and sweet, his hands sliding up over 17’s armor, and 17 had taken him against a wall, held him up so easily - Kenobi barely weighed anything - and encouraged Kenobi to curl legs against his waist, because they wouldn’t fit all the way around 17 and--

“How do you feel,” 17 panted out, drawing away just enough to speak, “about a good hard fuck?”

Kenobi rasped out a sound, hair still a little damp from the rains outside, and said, “Oh, I’d quite enjoy that, but, hm, our options are somewhat more limited, this time.”

17 frowned, keeping Kenobi tucked against the wall; it was easy, blocking him in, and satisfying on some deep level. “Why’s that?”

“Well,” Kenobi said, clever fingers sliding along his armor, undoing latches, so he must still have been interested. “It’s been nearly two months since last I’ve seen you.”

“So?” 17 asked, not following, as Kenobi floated his chest plate somewhere across the room and placed it down quietly. He wanted to get his own hands on Kenobi, start taking off his robes, but once he started doing that, well…

Following the train of this conversation would grow harder.

“So, I’ve spent two months around all the men in the 212th,” Kenobi said, dry, and for a moment that made no sense as an explanation, until it did. Kenobi had explained, during one of the periods where they’d both needed a rest, how his people’s reproductive systems worked.

After two months, his reproductive organs would be perfectly compatible with all the men in the 212th. There was no way he’d be able to take 17. Not safely. 17 frowned, something twisting fast and hot and unpleasant in his gut at that thought, wondering if any of them realized. If they’d like the thought as much as he’d liked it, when Kenobi fitted him just right.

“Oh,” 17 said, drawing back, setting aside the flash of unknown emotion and a deeper sense of disappointment. Kenobi had been the only person he could--

“But I’m sure there are other options we can explore,” Kenobi said, following him, an arm sliding over his shoulders. “Unless you’re not interested?”

17 considered it. His disappointment almost had him shaking his head, sending Kenobi to his own bunk. But��� they’d enjoyed themselves plenty, last time, and not just when he’d slid into the sweet embrace of Kenobi’s body.

And he didn’t want Kenobi to run off.

He frowned and asked, “What do you have in mind?”

Kenobi grinned, pulled himself up to take a kiss, and said, “Come here, let me show you.”

#

Kenobi positively got lost in the middle of 17’s mattress, just like 17 had known he would. He looked small - smaller than usual, even - spread out across the sheets, bare skin all on display, covered in freckles and scars.

17’s cock ached, a solid throb of need between his legs as he stroked himself with the lube Kenobi had pressed into his hands. Kenobi had told him to get very slick before rolling onto his stomach, 17’s pillow shoved under his hips.

“You’re sure this is what we should do?” 17 asked, hearing the doubt in his own voice.

Kenobi glanced over his shoulder - kriffing hell, the way he looked - and flashed a smile. “I think you’ll quite enjoy it,” he said, “just give it a try.”

17 grunted, but, in truth, he felt utterly incapable of refusing Kenobi when he was all stretched out, back bowing from the pillow under his hips, the insides of his thighs slick and shiny with lube.

“Come here,” Kenobi coaxed, shifting his ass back and forth, and, well. 17 wasn’t going to say no to that. He slid forward, hands moving over warm, perfect skin, knees making the bed dip, tilting Kenobi back towards him.

It was so easy to blanket him. 17 could cover him completely, and had, before, on a battlefield to shield him from shrapnel. But there were no explosions in his quarters. Just slick, warm skin as he sank down over Kenobi, cock brushing over the curve of his ass.

Kenobi hummed, tilting his hips back further, and 17’s cock slid forward, easy, between his legs.

“There you go,” Kenobi murmured, pressing his strong thighs closer together and - oh - the pressure felt good, good enough that 17 rocked his hips forward, cock sliding on slick skin, feeling all the lean muscles in Kenobi’s thighs and--

And the hot, wet slide of him, of the place where 17 could no longer fit, and he groaned, frustration and want all tangled together.

“You feel so good,” he rasped out, hips dragging back and pushing forward again, feeling the head of his cock just catch at - at the edge of Kenobi’s body and oh he wanted, but he could only drag the top of his cock along, sliding between the tight pressure of his thighs, muscles flexing against him and--

He dropped to his elbows, his arms long enough to still hold him up off of Kenobi’s back. He could look down, across Kenobi’s bright hair and the bunch of muscles in his shoulders. He could see Kenobi’s hands, clenched in the blankets as 17 moved between his legs, lube making the glide easy, friction building up the heat between them, Kenobi’s ass hard and firm against his hips each time he pushed forward.

He could remember taking Kenobi like this. Force, he’d remembered taking Kenobi like this, so many times, cock sliding in instead of forward, he’d be so tight, so wet, so hot, and--

17’s orgasm caught him by surprise and he groaned, head dropping forward as his cock jerked between Kenobi’s thighs. He shifted his hips back, unthinking, wanting the come all over skin, not his pillow and sheets.

“See,” Kenobi started, tilting to look over his shoulder, “I--oh!”

He looked gratifyingly startled when 17 pushed onto an arm, grabbed his hip, and flipped him onto his back. His chest was flushed - but only a little - and his cock stretched up towards his stomach, still hard.

17 could fix that. Wanted to fix that, so badly it made his jaw ache.

He shifted around, put a hand on Kenobi’s chest to keep him still, and bulled his way between Kenobi’s legs, curving over.

He tasted his own come, when he licked over Kenobi’s cock, sliding his lips down over heated skin. His come was everywhere, there always seemed to be so much of it when they did things together. It streaked over Kenobi’s thighs and--

And 17 couldn’t help but bringing his other hand up, sliding over skin, between Kenobi’s legs and - kriffing hell - it was there, too. He groaned, helplessly, and Kenobi echoed the sound, fingers scrambling at 17’s hair as he rubbed two fingers through the slick smear of his own come.

Kenobi cried out, all thick with pleasure, when 17 slid those two fingers over him, and then, with a renewed throb of want, into him.

Kenobi felt so tight around his fingers, hot and wet and squeezing. He knew how thick his fingers were, wondered if they were just about all Kenobi could take in his present state, and the thought made something in his spine go all white hot.

He bobbed his head, sucking as he moved his hand, curling his fingers while Kenobi’s legs curled up around his shoulders, while Kenobi gasped and tried fruitlessly to squirm under him, the sounds escaping his throat getting thicker and louder and--

17 swallowed when Kenobi gave it up for him, smiling at the feel of Kenobi’s body squeezing around his fingers, clenching in waves. He slid his fingers back and out, giving a last suck, after a long moment, and Kenobi gasped his name.

He looked...dazed and relaxed, sprawled on the bed, uncomplaining about 17’s hand on his chest, his heartbeat translating up into 17’s fingers. He looked...soft. And peaceful. And 17 felt, again, the way he had on their trip, that he’d very much like to keep Kenobi looking that way all the time.

He shivered at the thought, shook his head, and said, “You’re right, that was a good idea.” He cleared his throat, and, before Kenobi could start gloating, pulled both of Kenobi’s legs up, over one of his shoulders, and went on, “Do you think it would work like this, too?”

#glimmer replies #ask me anything #spicy #SO SPICY #not safe for wizards #follow up to Just Right #alpha x obi-wan #obi17

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

hear those bells ring deep in the soul (a katsuki bakugo/reader fic)

Summary: Pro Hero Dynamight was Japan’s Number Two Hero. He'd worked hard to achieve his position, his fame. And now it was all going down the damn drain, along with his hearing.

~*~*

Bakugo is suffering from hearing loss as a side effect of his quirk, and he struggles with how to face this new challenge. Enter Reader with a healing quirk.

Pairings: Katsuki Bakugo/Reader; Katsuki Bakugo/You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Blood & violence. 

A/N: No spoilers or anything. This is just a self-indulgent AU fic with aged up characters. Everyone’s in their mid-20s. Fic title is from a song called “Achilles Come Down.” 

Ao3 Link: Here 

*****A/N Part 2: This post has now been updated to include the links to Ch 2

Ch 2 Tumblr Link: Here 

Pro Hero Dynamight was Japan’s Number Two Hero. Actually, he’d argue he was tied for first place with the current Symbol of Peace, Shitty Deku. Their victory statistics were basically the fucking same, the only difference was the freckled idiot was made of smiles and sunshine and stupid fucking sugar or something. The whole world ate out of his scarred, fucked up hand, and Darling Deku ate up all the media’s attention in return. 

In contrast, Bakugo wasn’t a “people person,” as Deku loved to put it, but… he also wasn’t the same fifteen-year-old brat who got muzzled on live national television. Pro Hero Dynamight was known for his crass, blunt language, his vicious streak of justice when it came to villains, but people also looked up to him. Extras cheered for him in the streets as he exploded past mid-battle. Children ran up to him on patrol and asked him to sign their books, their photos, their Dynamight merch. On one memorable occasion, that he may or may not have saved on his computer, a national news channel ran a live clip from a disaster site, a villain attack turned rescue mission after a building collapsed. The soundbite was only thirty seconds, a close up of a pale, dusty woman with a shallow cut on her brow. The splash of crimson and her bloodshot blue eyes were the only spots of color on her, everything else washed out in white plaster and cement dust, tear tracks carving grooves down her cheeks. 

But the smile on her face could have lit up goddamn Tokyo. 

“Dynamight saved us,” the woman had said to the news reporter, her voice full of awe and tears. “I-I got stuck under some debris, but I heard the moment Dynamight arrived, and I just knew we were safe. The battle was over a minute later, and then he just… pulled me out of the wreckage. He pulled us all out. He’s… the greatest hero I’ve ever seen.” 

That was a nice stroke to his ego. And the dazed woman had been right. He had pulled everyone out of that building, and not a single person died that day, which only confirmed what he already knew: 

Katsuki Bakugo was the best of the best. Deku might have been the better show pony, but Dynamight was an undefeated hero, fierce, fearless, ferocious. 

Except right now… he was fucking scared out of his mind. 

This couldn’t be happening. 

“What?” he snarled at the extra in the white coat standing before him. 

The man flinched and visibly recoiled, shuffling back a step and partially ducking behind his tablet device. When he spoke again, he’d raised his voice an entire fucking octave. 

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” the doctor stammered, but then he seemed to regain his composure and lowered his voice a little. “I… I wish I had better news for you, Dynamight, but…” 

He trailed off and swallowed, the jut of his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the thin skin of his throat. 

“But what?” Bakugo spat, something like magma roiling in his veins, pops of heat crackling against his palms like splatters of hot oil from a stove. 

“B-But this… can’t come as a complete shock to you,” the doctor said as he glanced back at his tablet. “Other physicians before myself must have warned you of the risks.” 

The risks. Bakugo bared his teeth in a silent snarl. What did this fucking extra, with his soft hands and softer body, know about risks? The heat in his palms grew until he could see their red-hot glow out of the corner of his eye. 

“Well, who and how much do I gotta pay to fix it?” Bakugo demanded as he shoved his hands in his pockets. 

“That depends,” the doctor hedged and adjusted the square black glasses perched on his stupid face. “There are a variety of aid types—” 

“I don’t want fuckin’ support gear or aids,” Bakugo sneered. “I want mine fixed.” 

Now, the doctor’s face grew pitying. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible, given a number of factors, most importantly your current occupation.” 

“My current occupation?” the hero seethed, teeth bared again like a wounded dog, a cornered wolf, snapping at the world. “Are you fucking KIDDING—” 

A hint of fear sparked in the doctor’s eyes, but he suddenly raised a hand, palm out in the universal symbol for stop. “Dynamight, sir, I know this is distressing, but there are other sick patients in these walls, so please refrain from using your quirk.” 

“I’m not usin’ shit,” Bakugo snapped, but then the doctor’s eyes flicked downward, and Bakugo followed them to his hands, wreathed in sparks and flares of flames, lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. 

The breath stuttered in Bakugo’s lungs. 

He hadn’t even felt himself call upon his quirk. 

Even worse… he hadn’t heard it when he did. 

He dropped his hands quickly, shoving them back in his pockets. Bile rose in his throat, but he washed it down with blood as he bit through his tongue. 

“There has to be… something,” he gritted out, curling his hands into fists in their confines. “A healer—” 

“Healers are rarer than you think,” the doctor sighed and shook his head. “And what’s more, they’re usually specific and limited. Their abilities are tied to blood types or restricted to relatives or even limbs. One nurse here can only heal femur bones.” 

“Bullshit they’re rare, I’ve met at least two goddamn healers just this month,” Bakugo spat. “These paramedics—” 

“And how strong where they?” the doctor cut him off again, raising an eyebrow. “You said paramedics, so I’m going to assume their talents mostly lie in the superficial and basic: triage, stopping the bleeding, knitting skin back together, etc.” 

“What’s your fucking point?” He was this close to punching the asshole right in the glasses. 

“My point is the inner workings of your ear are much more delicate than a broken rib or lacerated arm,” the doctor said in a really condescending tone that Bakugo did not appreciate. “But let’s say you do find a healer specific enough and skilled enough to restore the hearing you have already lost without damaging anything else in the process. What then? I don’t imagine Japan’s Number Two Hero retiring less than ten years after his debut and hanging up his quirk.” 

Bakugo scowled, heart kick-starting in his chest, his gut tying itself in a knot. 

No. No, that wasn’t possible. Katsuki Bakugo was a hero, the best of the best. It was all he’d ever wanted, and he would be damned if it was taken from him. 

The doctor must have seen as much on the blond’s face because he sighed and adjusted his glasses again. “Exactly. Which means you’re just going to keep destroying your ears again and again, and even if say Recovery Girl was still alive, the repetitive healing sessions would destroy your own body’s healing factor, and after a while, you would still lose you’re hearing.” 

“Tch.” Bakugo looked away and gritted his teeth so hard they ached. 

The doctor sighed. “You’re already at moderate hearing loss, Dynamight, so while we do still have some options, they are limited. Honestly… I’m surprised you didn’t come in sooner.” 

He should have. He fucking should have. He’d been noticing little things for years, but he just brushed it off, yelled at Deku to speak the fuck up and stop mumbling, told himself his phone must be a piece of shit and that’s why he didn’t hear a call or message. The low persistent ringing he’d been experiencing since UA was harder to write off, but after a while, it was also easier to ignore. 

Then, on his last mission, Bakugo was shoving some weak ass villain at a couple of cops. The battle had lasted less than five minutes, and he was still itching for a fight, his quirk burning just beneath the surface of his skin, like embers waiting to explode back into flame. In the next moment, a hand had suddenly clamped down on his shoulder from behind, and he’d reacted out of reflex, flipping his attacker over his shoulder and nearly blasting them in the gut for good measure. 

“Whoa! Fuck, dude, it’s me!” Kirishima had yelped, his skin rippling and hardening in an instant. Wide, red eyes gaped up at him, and Japan’s Number Three Hero even looked a little worried. “Didn’t you hear me? I called your name like five times.” 

Bakugo had dropped Red Riot like he was on fire. No. No, Dynamight hadn’t heard his patrol partner. In fact, all he could hear in the moment was the muted wailing of sirens, the low murmur of shouting extras, and the blood roaring in his head. 

Now, two days later he was standing in front of a doctor who was telling him there was nothing more they could do. 

But that was fucking unacceptable. He couldn’t lose his hearing. What kind of shitty hero would he be if he couldn’t hear where the villains were in battle or where stupid extras in need of saving were in rescue situations? 

He wouldn’t be a hero at all, just a fucking liability. 

Bakugo tried to imagine having to retire, to hang up his hero costume, to leave Shitty Hair in charge of their joint agency. What would he do? He’d wanted, and planned, to be a hero since he was five years old. He had no other skills, not really. It wasn’t like he could work a damn desk job. Well, UA might throw him a bone, offer him a pity faculty position. 

The thought left a sour taste in his mouth. 

“What… are my options?” he asked haltingly as he snapped his eyes up and locked gazes with the doctor. “You said I still had some.” 

The man in the white coat blinked in surprise, but then he straightened up and tapped at his tablet. “Currently, you have a few options, but you’d receive the best outcome if we did them all together. First, we can get you fitted for some hearing aids for you to wear while you are off duty. They would significantly increase your hearing capacity in your normal day-to-day life.” 

Bakugo felt his face pull into a scowl. “Off duty? I need them while I’m on duty!” 

“If you wear them while using your quirk, you’ll ruin the rest of your hearing in one blow,” the doctor said with a straight face. “Hearing aids amplify sounds. Amplifying your explosions is the last thing we want.” 

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do then?” the hero snapped, heat flaring through his body with a supernova. 

“Since I assume you’re going to continue your hero work, I would recommend contacting a support gear company.” The doctor made a note on his tablet. “We’ll email you the contact information for several companies the hospital has connections with, and once you chose one, we can send them your file. There are numerous noise-cancelling devices out there, but given your situation, you will probably need to collaborate with them for something custom. The goal is to having something to protect your ears-- a helmet, headphones, anything really—while you are using your quirk. Between such a device and the hearing aids, I hope we can preserve what’s left of your hearing and maybe give you a little bit back. But I will warn you… you’re hearing will never be as it was. You should know that now.” 

You’re hearing will never be as it was. 

You’re hearing will never be as it was. 

You’re hearing will never be as it was. 

The words cycloned through Bakugo’s head, round and round and round, destroying every other thought in their path. He felt detached from himself, the doctor’s voice fizzling out into a muffled drone. His vision seemed to narrow and darken, like he was viewing the world at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. One minute, he was standing there in that examine room, and then he blinked and was on the street, people rushing past him like a river unbothered by the boulder in its current. 

He glanced down at his hand, at the paperwork for his follow up appointment and his fitting for the hearing aids. Heat squirmed under his skin, in his veins, like something living, something that wanted to get out. 

Bakugo bared his teeth, crumpled the paper in his fist, and let the heat rush through his body, down through his arm, and into his hand. He didn’t hear the crackle, but he saw the flares of light, trapped between his palm and the paperwork like fireflies. 

Then he opened his hand, and he watched the wind catch the ash and carry if off down the street, out of sight. 

He needed a fucking drink. 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Several hours later, Bakugo stumbled out of his usual dive bar, the taste of whisky still burning a hole through the back of his throat. The night was colder than he anticipated, colder than it should be for the beginning of autumn, and he grumbled and cursed as he hunched against the wind. He squinted at his phone, debating on whether to call a car, but in the end it was too much trouble. He was less than a half an hour’s walk from his apartment, and it was late, so he wouldn’t have to worry about extras coming up to him for photos or goddamn autographs. 

Besides, the whisky hadn’t helped to quench the heat writhing through his veins, in fact the alcohol only made it worse. Bakugo felt restless, all pins and needles and ants, so maybe the brisk walk would burn off some of that energy. 

Decided, Bakugo turned in the direction of home and began the long, stumbling journey through the midnight streets. 

Time passed as sluggishly as his feet, which he made sure to stare down at so he didn’t trip over them. Like he anticipated, he passed no one on the sidewalks, and few cars rumbled past him. It wasn’t surprising, this neighborhood was mostly shops that closed by sundown and a few residences. The dive bar he’d left was a holdover from past decades when this side of town was rougher, but Bakugo suspected the old man who owned the joint would live on for at least another decade, if only to spite the development companies that kept trying to buy him out. The ornery bastard was half the reason Bakugo loved that bar, the other half being their decent whisky and usually empty stools. 

“Shit,” he mumbled as he suddenly slipped, tittering on the edge of the curb. 

He shook his head and managed to regain his balance, but when he took another step, he wobbled again. 

“Come on, you drunk idiot,” he hissed at himself as he stumbled once more. 

Except… he’d been standing still that time. 

“Hah?” Bakugo squinted down at his feet. 

The pebbles around his shoes rattled and jumped. He didn’t think he was that drunk, but he slapped his cheek with a bit of heat to his palm. The snap of warmth and pain woke him up a little, but when he glanced back down at the ground, everything was still moving. 

“What the fu—” 

Then the road undulated under his feet like a living thing, and the shockwave hit him a moment later. 

Bakugo barked a curse as he was bucked several feet into the air, twin explosions blooming from his palms so he could right himself and land on his feet. He snapped his head up as he skidded to a stop, and the breath stilled in his lungs. 

Up ahead, a man stood in the middle of the intersection, staring down the road to Bakugo’s left. Black rubble and goo floated around him like asteroids trapped in a planet’s orbit, and even from a distance, Bakugo could see the crazed smile on the man’s pale, black-streaked face. 

A moment later, several heroes lunged out from around the corner and barreled straight for the villain, only to be blasted backwards as the villain flung out his hands and commanded the black debris and goo to slam into the idiots. 

The villain threw back his head and seemed to laugh maniacally. Bakugo couldn’t hear it, but that didn’t matter. Lava was starting to boil in his veins, burning off the last of the whisky, and Dynamight felt an equally crazed smile stretch across his mouth. 

This idiot had chosen the wrong road to fuck up tonight. 

Heat condensed in his palms like collapsing stars, and then he was exploding forward, the taste of ozone and nitroglycerin on his tongue. 

Within moments, Bakugo was able to determine the villain’s quirk revolved around asphalt. The bastard was able to pull large chunks of it out of the road and then liquify parts of them until they were scalding and sticky. 

The other heroes—whoever they were, Bakugo didn’t even care to check—struggled to evade the villain’s attacks, but evasion wasn’t Dynamight’s style. He came at the bastard head on, exploding every rock and tar puddle in his way. 

Of course, asphalt was flammable, so flames were flaring up all around the street now, but Bakugo wasn’t stupid enough to get burned. If the other heroes were, that was on them. 

Dynamight was here to get the job done. 

“Come here, ya sonvabitch,” Bakugo snarled as he blasted apart a chunk of asphalt aimed for his head. 

The villain shrieked out something high-pitched that Bakugo didn’t catch, and then the fucker was swinging out his arm, a blob of black tar following the arc. 

Bakugo let out a controlled burst toward his feet and backflipped through the air, crunching down on the roof of a parked car. He could see some of the other heroes waving at him from the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the wailing of the car alarm below him. 

The villain’s sneer was a white slash on his black, goo-streaked face, and Bakugo bared his teeth back in an expression halfway between a feral grin and a beast’s snarl. He could feel the heat crackling along his palms as he contemplated his next move, but then the villain shouted something, and all the asphalt floating in the air rocketed back towards him like the fucker was a magnet. 

As Bakugo watched, the debris and goo coalesced into a singular shape, liquifying and hardening in turns until a giant black arm the size of a semi was hovering over the road. The fingers wiggled in a jaunty little wave as the villain shouted something again that was lost to the car’s still wailing alarm, and then the giant hand curled into a fist and dropped down on Bakugo like the hammer of some god. 

He exploded out of the way and up into the air right before the fist smashed into the car he’d been standing on, and the siren cut out with a muffled crunch. 

Bakugo had barely landed before the arm was shooting out again, but this time it wasn’t aimed for him. 

A stupid fucking extra had stumbled out of one of the buildings and stood gaping like a goddamn moron on the sidewalk. Several of the on-scene heroes rushed forward, but the hand swatted them aside like annoying flies. The idiot civilian was still just standing there, though, and Bakugo found himself airborne before he could even process the thought. 

“Run!” he roared as he reached the extra and shoved him out of the way, but an instant later, he felt stony fingers wrap around his torso and squeeze. 

Bakugo wheezed out a curse as the giant hand lifted him into the sky, the pressure around his ribs increasing with every second. The asphalt was hot in some places, too, scalding the skin of his left arm where it was pinned against his hip. He wrenched his right arm around and tried to aim at the wrist of the asphalt appendage, but the angle was off, and the few chunks he was able to blast were quickly replaced by more rubble and boiling tar. 

“Fuck!” Bakugo screamed as the fist clenched down around him. His ribs strained, his lungs unable to expand, pain licking at him like the flames flickering in his peripherals. 

Distantly, he heard the villain’s laughter below him, and as the arm swayed to the side, Bakugo realized he was right above the bastard. His vision swam, his ribs screaming, his arm burning, but Bakugo gritted his teeth as he aimed his right palm down. He concentrated every ounce of his quirk into his hand until it glowed white-hot, and the asphalt around him began to liquefy again. 

The villain’s eyes widened as he realized what the hero was doing, and the fucker wildly swung out his arm in a last-ditch effort. The giant asphalt limb responded in kind, but Bakugo unleashed his quirk right before the arm flung him through the air. 

A massive explosion rocked the street an instant later, and the subsequent shockwave slammed into his back and propelled him through a window. 

He felt the impact and pain as he struck the glass, and then… 

Nothing. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Ouch, fuck!” you cursed as your pricked yourself for the millionth time. 

A red drop of blood beaded up on the pad of your index finger, and you scowled before you sucked the smarting appendage into your mouth. It was more of a reflex than anything, since by the time you pulled your finger out, the pinprick of a wound was already healed. Healing such a small injury would usually barely even register to you, but the clock above your desk was inching closer and closer to midnight, and you’d been up since 6am. You also skipped dinner so you could finish altering the dress you were currently working on, which didn’t help your energy levels, but you were just a few stitches away from completing your task, so you hunched back over and powered through the next five minutes. 

When you were finally done, you sat back in your chair with a sigh and threw down your needle and thread. The sewing table before you swam and doubled as your vision struggled to focus on something, and you rubbed at your tired, burning eyes. You always tried to work reasonable hours, have a healthy work-life balance, but somehow you always found yourself slaving away into the dark hours of the night. You tried to tell yourself it wasn’t your fault. You’d lived here less than a year, so you didn’t know many people beyond your few neighbors and the old ladies who frequented your alterations shop. 

You were also trying very hard to keep your grandparents’ business afloat. 

Your grandfather had been a tailor, your grandmother a seamstress. They’d opened a shop together over fifty years ago, and if your parents hadn’t moved to America before you were born, you were sure you father would have taken over the family business. In the end, though, after your grandparents passed, you were the one to take up the needle and pull up your roots. You’d always loved making your own clothes, and you’d always felt… disconnected in America. Nothing had ever felt… right, no matter how many jobs you hopped around to. The US had been the only home you’d ever known, but when you and your parents spoke Japanese together, it had made something ache deep in the center of you, something you couldn’t name or place. 

So, when your father said he was taking a trip to the homeland to sell his parents’ shop, you’d gone with him and somehow convinced him to sign everything over to you. Which was more than just a little insane. Your prior work history had been in food service and clothing retail, and your degree was in linguistics for fuck’s sake. You had no idea how to run a business, let alone in another country. Thankfully, you spoke Japanese fluently, so that had been one less hurtle to overcome, but everything else had been a dramatic learning curve. Getting to know the new city, figuring out the currency, hell even navigating the vastly different social norms of Japanese culture was daunting, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t have numerous fumbles along the way. 

It, everything, had definitely taken some getting used to. 

Now, a year later, things were just starting to really look up. You had used most of the money your grandparents left you to renovate the shop, get new equipment, and fix the upstairs apartment you lived in. About two dozen loyal customers helped to pay your bills and keep you afloat, and one-to-two new customers walked into your shop each month just on word of mouth. You weren’t rich by any means, but you weren’t struggling like you did in America. You felt… happy here, if a little tired. Fulfilled. 

That might also have had something to do with your little… side business. 

You bit your lip as your eyes shot to your window guiltily, like someone was watching you. You weren’t doing anything wrong—right now, anyways—but for the last six months, it’s been hard to shake off your paranoia. 

And your guilt. Which was ridiculous. You weren’t hurting anyone. In fact, you were doing the exact opposite. 

But it was still against the law. Here in Japan, at least. 

That was another thing that took some getting used to. The Japanese government had strict laws on quirk usage, unlike in America where everything was about individualistic rights. In Japan, only heroes were given almost free reign, but even they had some restrictions on when and how they could use their powers. 

For the rest of the Japanese populace, using quirks in day-to-day life, without official permission, was frowned upon at best and illegal at worst. 

Because of your specific quirk, you leaned more toward the illegal side of things. 

Healing quirks were rare. That’s what you’d been told all your life. Your mother’s quirk was the ability to lower fevers by somehow using her own body to regulate the temperature. Nothing super special or powerful, but she’d gone on to become a pediatric nurse, so she had used her quirk to its fullest and made a long, happy career for herself. 

When you were young and your quirk manifested, you thought you would follow in your mother’s footsteps. 

But as a teenager, you’d come to some hard realizations about yourself. 

One, you weren’t strong enough to be a hero. You’d tried to get into a hero course in the States, several in fact. One course rejected you solely on your application, and then you failed two entrance exams. It had been a devastating blow to your youthful dreams and self-esteem, but your mother encouraged you, said being a hero wasn’t the only way to use your quirk for good. 

So, you turned your focus to medicine… and quickly discovered that wasn’t right for you, either. Your mother hated when you said this but… you just weren’t smart enough. You had tried, really did, but everything was such a struggle, like Sisyphus slogging uphill through the mud. It just didn’t click for you like it did for your mom. You also hated to admit it, but you were a little squeamish. You were fine with small stuff, cuts and bruises, broken fingers, but once you had to dissect a large pig in an anatomy class, and the smell and weight of the pig’s slippery organs in your hands made your lunch rise up into the back of your throat. You somehow managed to make it through the class, but directly after you ran to the bathroom and emptied your own guts into the toilet. 

With your dreams of being a hero and doctor dashed, you’d been a little aimless in college, taking random courses to fill your time and see if anything spoke to you. Then, during an 8am linguistics lecture you signed up for on a whim, something ignited inside you. Languages spoke to you like science and medicine never did. So, you’d changed your major to linguistics, minored in Japanese to feel closer to your parents, and took ever other language credit you could get your hands on. In between classes, you’d taken up sewing again while you listened to your audio assignments. It was just something to keep your hands busy at first, a skill your father taught you as a child until you abandoned it, but then your roommates complimented your work and started asking you to hem their jeans or take in their skirts. They offered to pay you, but you always declined, saying it was no trouble, you liked the work, and you liked being able to help. 

At some point, you realized that was all you had ever wanted to do. Help people. And if you couldn’t save them as a hero, you would find some other way to make yourself useful. 

So, you studied languages in the hopes of being able to help others communicate. You altered your friends’ clothes and made them small things like a monogrammed scarf or mittens. And, occasionally, you healed your roommates’ hangovers or food poisoning, stopped the bleeding when they cut their fingers making dinner, pushing through their pain to make them whole again. It wasn’t a lot, nothing really, but it was something, and it made you feel purposeful. 

When you moved to Japan, you mourned the loss of being able to use your quirk on others, but you shoved the thought aside and focused on your work and the shop and figuring out how to settle down in your first home on your own. 

Then, six months after you took over the shop, Mrs. Kojima, a little old lady in her seventies, had brought in her grandchildren’s uniforms to be patched and altered. She’d known your grandparents for many years, so she was always kind and had a story to share with you about your father in his youth or the gorgeous dresses your grandmother used to make. You always looked forward to Mrs. Kojima’s visits, and she always had a way of making you feel younger than you were, but not in a bad way. She just made you feel… nostalgic and safe, like you were listening to your late grandma talk over the phone. 

This was probably why, when Mrs. Kojima slipped and fell in front of your counter, you reacted without thinking. The old lady barely had time to hit the floor and cry out before you were hovering over her, a green aura illuminating your hands. Her pain hit you a moment later, like a heated slap to the face, a bone-deep ache in your leg, but you gritted your teeth and pushed through the discomfort. Then you moved your fingers over to the hip Mrs. Kojima was clutching, and a moment later you felt the drain as your energy siphoned into the elderly woman’s body. Thankfully, it had only been a fracture, not a full break, so you barely even felt the difference in your strength, but as Mrs. Kojima gaped up at you, realization struck you like a freight train. 

You had used your quirk, without a license, without permission, hell without the consent of Mrs. Kojima. Healing quirks were illegal for a reason, so many things could go wrong, and you weren’t properly trained. Your breathing hitched as panic seized your heart, squeezing like a vise, and your entire world had just begun to crash down around your ears when Mrs. Kojima sat up and threw her arms around you. 

“Thank you,” she’d sniffled into your hair in Japanese. “Thank you so much.” 

After the initial shock wore off, you had helped Mrs. Kojima into a chair, and she’d continued to thank you over and over again, saying how money was tight and she would have hated to be a burden to her children with hospital bills and a long recovery. She talked about how a lot of her elderly friends were in similar positions, dealing with perpetual aches and pains but having no way to pay for treatment or seek relief. 

The sadness in her face had twisted something in your chest, an ache you were all too familiar with. It was the one you felt after you failed the hero course entrance exams. The ache you felt when you realized you could never be a doctor. The ache of being helpless in the face of suffering. 

Your mouth had opened without your permission, and you told Mrs. Kojima that you would help her, and her friends, whenever they needed it. The elderly Japanese woman tried to wave you off, saying she didn’t want to get you in any trouble, but you had just smiled and said, “I’m fine with making a little good trouble.” 

You didn’t know where your courage had come from, but you let it carry you past your fears and doubts. 

So, for the last six months, Mrs. Kojima had brought all of her friends, and sometimes their children and grandchildren, to you when they were in need of healing. They always brought dresses or pants or blouses for you to fix as a cover, and you did do alterations work for them, but you also eased flaring arthritis, cataracts, fevers, and scrapped knees in the backroom. You refused to take payment for these secret services, it just felt wrong, but the little old ladies somehow always snuck large “tips” into your register when you weren’t looking. 

Mrs. Kojima and every one of her friends and family members swore to their ancestors to keep your secret, and you trusted them, but you still couldn’t help proverbially looking over your shoulder, holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the police to barge in and take you away. 

It hadn’t happened yet, but the worry of it kept you up most nights, which was maybe another reason why you threw yourself into your work until you were so tired you just passed out. 

You sighed again as you stretched and felt your back pop, releasing some of the tension in your spine. Glancing at the clock, you saw it was just past midnight, and you winced. You had to be up at five tomorrow—today, now—because Mr. Akane wanted to come in early before you opened the shop. His bad knee was giving him trouble again, an old injury he’d obtained as a boy. You were unable to fully reconstruct the joint—that took more strength and stamina than you currently possessed—but you were able to soothe his pain for weeks at a time, which he was immensely grateful for. He always brought you fresh fish when he came by, “gifts” he’d emphasized when you reminded him you didn’t take payment, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t appreciate the gesture. You weren’t exactly hurting for money, but you also didn’t normally splurge on fish caught just that morning, and you told yourself you deserved the small treat. Besides, the protein helped boost your energy and stamina levels, which meant you could heal more people, so really Mr. Akane was merely investing in his future treatments. 

Your stomach grumbled at the thought of food, and you dragged yourself out of your chair before picking your way across your messy apartment to the kitchen. The apartment wasn’t very large, one large space for kitchen, dining, and living room, with one small bedroom and one bathroom down a hallway to the right when you walked in the front door. But it had been your grandparent’s home for many years before they bought a larger house after having your father, and it sat right above the shop, so you never had to worry about running late for work.

Bolts of fabric, some client pieces, and a few of your own personal sewing projects were strewn over every available surface of the main room, but you had the cleared path through the chaos memorized, so you were tossing leftovers in the microwave barely thirty seconds later. The warmed-up curry and rice—another “gift” from Mrs. Kojima—tasted as good as it had the last several days, and you hummed as the spiced meat slid down your throat and settled in your belly. After the first bite, your hunger seemed to hit you in full force, and you scarfed down every last bite in a matter of minutes. When you were done, the minor headache that had been pulsing behind your eyes abated, and you yawned as you rinsed off the dishes. 

You set the damp plate on the edge of the counter as you reached for a towel, but then a sudden tremor, followed by a loud boom, seemed to shake the building, and the plate tittered on the counter’s edge for a moment before it crashed to the floor. 

“Fuck!” you gasped as you jumped back and away from the ceramic shards, but another tremor-boom combo had you stumbling, and you scrambled to grab the back of the couch so you didn’t fall on your ass. 

Your wide eyes took in the broken plate scattered at your feet before they jumped to the window on the opposite side of the room. The night sky was dark beyond, cut only by the dim street light just beyond the window’s view. You held your breath as your heart hammered in your ears, the hair on the back of your neck prickling, sweat slicking your palms. 

What the fuck was that? Your first thought was earthquake—you hadn’t experienced one yet, but you knew they were common in Japan—but then you remembered the booms. 

Maybe… maybe an electrical box blew? But no, the lights were still working. A car crash? 

Then another boom vibrated you down to your very bones, and you fell to one knee as the breath hitched in your lungs. 

That sounded… closer. 

With your heart in your throat, you half scrambled, half crawled the last few feet to your window, and you peeked your head over the sill just as a flash off white-hot light lit up the night sky. 

“Shit!” You squinted your eyes against the glare as you leaned back from the window, but then you saw a shadow streak through the air before it crashed into a car just at the edge of your peripherals. 

You had the distant thought that Mr. Takeyoshi’s vehicle was very obviously totaled before you realized the thing that had crashed into the car was a person. 

Your jaw gaped open as a hero pulled himself from the wreckage and shook his head groggily. The shadows—only broken by more flares of light as more explosions and fire seemed to erupt along the street—made it difficult to tell how injured the hero was. You didn’t recognize their yellow and teal costume, but you saw patches of blood along the hero’s bulky frame, and bile burned at the back of your teeth. 

Holy shit. This wasn’t an accident. It was a villain attack. 

Just as you had the thought, another explosion rattled your windows, making your ears ring, and you snapped your head to the side to see a man standing in the middle of the road about half a block down. 

The man—villain, you realized quickly—swung his arms around like a conductor of an orchestra, but his instruments seemed to be the black rocks and liquid swirling around him. The debris glistened like an oil slick in the light of the flames, and as you watched, the villain shouted something and slashed his arm through the air. 

Then a figure suddenly exploded onto the scene, lunging out from the shadows in a flare of white-hot light. It moved too fast for you to track, but the villain swung his arm again, and rocks and viscous black goo shot toward the figure still in mid-air. 

A futile scream of warning caught in your throat, but then the figure seemed to explode and backflip through the air, landing on his feet but crushing the roof of a car beneath his boots. The wailing of the car’s alarm split the air, and you clenched your teeth until they ached. 

The flames illuminated this new man’s face, a snarl of white teeth against the flames and smoke, but only the barest hint of recognition flared through you before everything exploded into chaos again. Another shout from the villain had all the rocks and black slime streaking back towards him, and you watched in horror as a stony black arm fifty feet long formed above the ruined street. 

You knew you should be running, trying to find cover, calling the police, but you were glued there, on your knees before the window, you fingers digging grooves into the sill. 

The next fifteen seconds seemed to simultaneously happen in slow motion and at hyper speed. 

The giant rocky hand wiggled its fingers before it curled into a fist and slammed down on the wailing car and the man atop it. 

The man—hero, you distantly thought, although your chaotic thoughts still couldn’t place him—launched up into the air with another explosion that rattled your windows, the car alarm cutting off as the vehicle was crushed an instant later. 

The blond skidded into a landing half a dozen yards away, but then you suddenly saw Mr. Takeyoshi standing on the street, a ghostly apparition framed by smoke and flames. 

You blinked, and the giant hand shot toward Mr. Takeyoshi, batting away several more heroes who tried to intervene. 

Then the explosive hero was just there, pushing Mr. Takeyoshi out of the way, right before the hand wrapped around him. 

You could hear the hero’s anguished scream through your window as he was crushed in the fist’s grip, and the sound hit you right in the solar plexus, knocking the breath out of you, bruising your insides, the pain settling into the familiar ache of being helpless in the face of suffering. 

You watched uselessly as the hero was lifted up into the sky, struggling, setting off explosions left and right. Then the massive arm seemed to pause in the middle of the road, right above the villain, and your eyes locked onto the hero, his pale hair and skin stark against the black, rocky hand that held him trapped. 

In the next instant, a white light, like a star going supernova, bloomed to life around the hero, illuminating the white slash of his snarling teeth before it became too bright for you to take. You slammed your eyes shut against the burning light, and the hair on the back of your neck stood on end, like the moment before lightning struck, as you dropped to the floor below your window. 

Then the world exploded, the building shaking to its foundations, right before the window burst into a million shards of glass.

#bakugo katsuki #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo katuski x reader #bakugo katsuki/reader #bakugo/reader #bakugo katsuki/you #bakugo katsuki x you #my hero academia #mha spoilers #boku no hero academia #bnha #anime #fanfic #my writings #katsuki bakugo

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 109

Happy Spooptober, everyone!

I’ve been planning since about February to do another camping trip this month, for the season.  I was super fortunately back in May to have some stories left over to share, that I didn’t have the opportunity for last time.  So thanks go to @catolicabuena for your submission, and to @dierotenixe for the PERFECT character to add to this chapter.

As always, thanks go to @zazen-rabbit, @baelpenrose, and @charlylimph-blog for being the beta readers and cheering section I need every day, no matter what.

As a reward for the clear, focused argument Charly gave in favor of Shalt-kri’i/Ekomari hostilities being over cultural misunderstandings earned her a reward of her choice.  I don’t know what Arthur expected, but part of me expected her to ask him something like throwing the class a party, showing up to teach class in sparkly footie-pajamas.  Her response, instead, left me convinced there was a conspiracy between her, Conor, and other mysterious parties to keep track of the Terran holidays.

“It’s almost Halloween,” she immediately pointed out. 

How? How did she say that so certainly? I wasn’t even sure it was Friday.

Oblivious to my thoughts, she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Today’s Tuesday - “ See!? “Which means Halloween is just under two weeks away? I think?”

“Your guess is probably better than mine,” I admitted. “Between the extra long days, artificial light, and consistent temperatures, I have no idea anymore.”

“She’s spot on,” Tyche confirmed, without even looking up.  We were sitting in my living room, digging into ice cream while all the guys were at work.

“How - “ I sputtered. “How are y’all keeping track of this?”

Tyche rolled her eyes, while Charly snagged my wrist and shook it. When my datapad popped up, she gave me the deadest stare I had ever seen on her face. “There is a calendar on this thing. You do know that, right?”

My face and neck burned so hot, I was surprised my hair didn’t catch on fire. “I keep it on the daily view, so I can see all my appointments.”

“Which is why she has me and Alistair,” my sister pointed out lazily before scooping up another spoonful of dessert. “By the way, this pumpkin ice cream is pretty good.”

I nodded, having had a scoop earlier.  We had been trying every flavor we could think of.  

True to form, Charly’s was a screaming purple that honestly scared me, sprinkled with gummy bears and some kind of acid-green syrup. Every time she leaned my direction, I couldn’t repress the flinch. “Pumpkin is a good point. We should go camping again, and carve pumpkins.”

I could almost feel my ears pick up. “You mean like jack-o-lanterns?”

“Duhhhhh,” she scooped up a large enough bite to convince me it probably wasn’t toxic. “I know we can’t have open flames in the lab, but we can still put emitters in them.”

“Where are we even going to get pumpkins in time?” Neither woman would look at me. “What did y’all do?”  I sighed.

“We did nothing,” Tyche insisted, chin jutting out stubbornly. “Now Sam….”

An audible smack sounded when I dropped my forehead to my palm. “How big?”

Charly gave me the widest puppy-dog eyes she could. “How big are what?”

“The pumpkins…”

“Pretty big,” Tyche smirked. “I don’t think I’ve seen even you carve any this big, honestly.”

I wasn’t a professional carver by any means, or even competitive, but I had done some pretty big ones in the past, so I was a little excited to see these.

 A couple nights later, sure enough, several of us were carrying our camping gear to the now-less-eerie clearing where our previous camping trip had taken place.  Even though Sam had decided not to join us, we were greeted by the sight of six enormous pumpkins around the edges of the space.  In awe, I approached one and ran my hand over it - I actually had to lift my hand, seeing as the thing came nearly up to my hips. “How long has he been growing these?” I asked.

“Just over three months?” Conor huffed, setting down our gear. “The things love our best guess of Von’s environment, turns out.”

“No shit,” I whispered before clearing my throat. “I don’t think we have large enough containers for the guts and everything in these.”  The deal with camping in the Lab was that we had to take out everything brought in with or for us.  While Grey agreed to allow the jack-o-lanterns to decorate the area for the next two weeks - ostensibly as a study of decomposition - if we couldn’t remove the waste from the pumpkins, we couldn’t carve them.

Something that felt like plastic beaned me in the face. While I rubbed my face, I glanced down at my feet where whatever-it-was fell. 

Maverick started apologizing before I could figure out what I was looking at. “Oh god, Sophia, I’m sorry! I meant to toss that on top of the pumpkin!”

With a joking scowl, I glanced at the vegetable between us. “How bad does your aim have to be to miss that thing?”

“Are you okay?”

“Only if you tell me what just hit me in the forehead?”  I tried leaning over to pick them up again, but Conor beat me to it.

“They’re composting bags,” Maverick admitted. “I brought them just in case. They were the only thing large enough and portable enough to at least get in here.”

“It looks like a roll of garbage bags,” Simon pointed out skeptically, poking the roll of pseudo-plastic Conor was holding.

Conor smiled and shrugged. “Pretty similar.”

Soon, we were spreading out and setting up our gear in  a familiar pattern. Just as the last bit of gear was stuffed into the tents or spread on the ground, Antoine’s head snapped up and over his shoulder. “Does anyone else hear that?”

Silence fell as we strained our ears to listen.  The others started looking around, searching for something, before I was able to actually catch what they were hearing.  Finally, I was able to hear what sounded like music, but it was in a minor key that sent shivers up my spine.  It was another minute or so before I could make out words drifting through the trees. 

“ -  a year, and then

A few weeks, doubled, and tripled again,

A fire was struck by a warrior’s band

Meant for food, warmth, and a place to stand”

“What the - “ Tyche started wandering toward the music, clearly expecting us to follow. “It’s beautiful, but so sad.”

Reluctantly, I followed, reminding myself that this was a lab, that the faerie ring we were standing in was manufactured as a prank.

 “Yet one bough too many was placed inside

The flames roared to life as they screamed and cried

Tore down the trees as the warriors fled

And only ceased by the river’s bed

 The warriors slain, charred skulls and bone

Have remained in the forest for years, alone

Yet a magic imbued in their ashen remains

That entered a child who hid in great pain”

 I glanced over my shoulder, and saw about half our group behind me, including - “Arthur, why do you have your sword?”

“Because it’s steel,” he shrugged, like that actually answered my question. “Which means it has iron in it, and we’re in space, so any fucked up space-fae might not know the difference.”

 “In order to warn those who may stay

In the trees embrace, and walk away

The girl reads the thoughts of those who stand

On the ashes of noses, bowels, and hands

 She sends them away with a haunted scream

That tears into souls with a power unseen

No one has entered who has not fled

Only to drown in the river’s bed”

 Because that line was reassuring as I realized we were getting toward the artificial lake. Totally want to hear about drowning in a river bed, on a Halloween camping trip, sang by a creepy voice I didn’t recognize.  A voice that we were steadily getting closer to, no less.

 “For what place is safer from fire and flame

Than the rushing of water, a power untamed

The danger evaded, the human is saved

As their lungs are filled with a liquid depraved

 To step foot in the forest is to invite death

For though the child has drawn their last breath…”

 Tyche came to a sudden stop, both hands abruptly on her hips.  She glanced back at me, one eyebrow arched, and twitched her head toward the lake.  The voice was incredibly close to us at this point, so I peeked past her as carefully as I could.

Even in the low light of the BioLab during simulated-night, I saw a bright gleam of silver trailing through the water, interrupted only by a thick, red-gold cable draped halfway down.

“Their soul remains as though chained to the ground,” Nixe smiled with her eyes as she wound the song to a close. “And they’ll tear you apart until you are drowned.”

“Very funny,” Tyche half-scolded. “You did that on purpose.”

A lazy flick of her tail accompanied a cool glance over the surface of the water. “Perhaps,” she replied calmly. “And perhaps not. I often swim at night. And I like to sing, it’s in my nature.”

“But a song about ghosts, and vengeance, and drowning?”

“I’m a siren, Administrator Reid.” A bright flash of teeth that my brain told me were sharper than I knew they were. “All of my songs are about love, and revenge, and how else do sirens take revenge?” Another lazy splash. “I can’t exactly burn people at a pyre.”

“I loved it!” Charly spoke up from behind me. “We’re camping for Halloween, so it was perfect!” I had to admit, at least to myself, that she had a point.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one. From over my shoulder, I heard Arthur murmur “Siren or not, you’re insane.” A brief pause. “But I love the spooky music…”

I couldn’t be certain that she heard the comment, but Nixe’s eyes suddenly snapped over my shoulder to the side where it sounded like Arthur was standing. “Iron has no effect on me, Educator,” she stated firmly, flicking her tail to make a point. “But I mean none of you any harm, so please put the blade away. One near-death experience is plenty, thank you.”

A metallic rasp told me Arthur had acquiesced. “Apologies, I didn’t know it was you.”

“Were it anyone else, you still wouldn’t need that sword.” She tilted her head. “I would be there first.”

“Okay!” I interrupted, trying to break the tension. “Nixe, we’re camping and carving pumpkins.  Did you want to join us?”

Another smile, this one less terrifying. “I appreciate the invitation, but I have plans tonight.  I do apologize for interrupting your evening.”

“We were just surprised,” Charly explained. “But it was beautiful and perfect and thank you!”

With a nod, Nixe turned her body toward the artificial lake. “I am glad the song was appreciated.  Good night.”

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#the miys #found family #aliens #science fiction #original science fiction #humans are weird #hfy #earth is space australia #apocalypse #fiction #humans are space orcs #spoopy #october #siren #mermaid #my writing

[tabletoptrinketsbyjj]

Trinkets, 35: Interesting baubles, semi magical objects and items touched by mystery.

A mostly full bottle of whisky on which the label has been crossed out with ink and under it is scrawled “Potion of Emotional Healing”.

A silver pocket watch as thick and round as a pomegranate that makes a sound like a bag of coins when moved. The delicate crystal face is shattered, and tiny gears and wheels skitter and jumble randomly within the interior.  

A masterfully executed painting depicting the aftermath of a horrific battle; pain and fear radiates from every living face. In the lower left corner is a familiar signature.

A strange, tiny inkwell, barely large enough to contain more than a few drops of ink, with a pointed, small-diameter needle protruding from its bottom. The needle, if embedded in one's flesh, causes the pot to well with waiting red.

A steel collar set with a coin sized medallion of rare, red flecked obsidian at the front of it. The stone is inscribe with a Necromantic rebuke.

A set of bongos made of elephant hide stretched over alder.

A scrap of paper that says, “Thank you for dealing with this ‘person.’ For a reward, please visit the Dancing Diva Festhall.” Under those words is a smudged, bright red lip imprint.

A marvelous lute of light, tastefully inlaid wood with a slender, engraved neck. The instrument's wood seems to sing on its own, its strings almost alive with wonderful tonality.

A pair of earrings, with red garnet cabochons, rounded on one side, flat on the other, shining prettily.

A hawthorn walking stick. The end stained with mud, and worn from use from walking through cities, deserts, moors, up mountains, and from being used to pry open many windows, and doors.

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A mostly full bottle of whisky on which the label has been crossed out with ink and under it is scrawled “Potion of Emotional Healing”.

A silver pocket watch as thick and round as a pomegranate that makes a sound like a bag of coins when moved. The delicate crystal face is shattered, and tiny gears and wheels skitter and jumble randomly within the interior.  

A masterfully executed painting depicting the aftermath of a horrific battle; pain and fear radiates from every living face. In the lower left corner is a familiar signature.

A strange, tiny inkpot, barely large enough to contain more than a few drops of ink, with a pointed, small-diameter needle protruding from its bottom. The needle, if embedded in one's flesh, causes the pot to well with waiting red.

A steel collar set with a coin sized medallion of rare, red flecked obsidian at the front of it. The stone is inscribe with a Necromantic rebuke.

A set of bongos made of elephant hide stretched over alder.

A scrap of paper that says, “Thank you for dealing with this ‘person.’ For a reward, please visit the Dancing Diva Festhall.” Under those words is a smudged, bright red lip imprint.

A marvellous lute of light, tastefully inlaid wood with a slender, engraved neck. The instrument's wood seems to sing on its own, its strings almost alive with wonderful tonality.

A pair of earrings, with red garnet cabochons, rounded on one side, flat on the other, shining prettily.

A hawthorn walking stick. The end stained with mud, and worn from use from walking through cities, deserts, moors, up mountains, and from being used to pry open many windows, and doors.

A beautifully polished obsidian carving shaped into a jaguar skull. Those that touch it feel a deep connection to the animal world and the earth itself.

A palm-sized gem wrapped in rune-embroidered cloth that glows with an inner radiance.

A small sliver of crystal that is completely translucent, although it flickers with a weak glow when held by a living creature.

Reveler's mug: A large horn mug that cannot be turned upside down while containing liquid. If one attempts to do so, the mug changes shape in their hands so that it does not spill.

A razor sharp hunting knife with a gut hook.

Beauticians clippers: Once per day the bearer can use the clippers to cause finger or toenails grow as if a month had gone by allowing damaged nails to be trimmed and cleaned much easier.

A pair of padded greaves, back-stitched in a diamond pattern that provides maximum flexibility without diminishing the effectiveness of the leg protection. A pair of buckled straps on the back side fasten the padded greaves while allowing some adjustment of the fit.

A broken lump of dark gray rock that shimmers like a rainbow along its jagged surfaces. Knowledgeable PC's can identify the mineral as titanium quartz.

A palm-sized stone, flat and ellipsoidal, made from roughly hewn marble. In the centre is a slight indentation, polished mirror smooth from countless thumbs rubbing circles over the years. Some creatures who uses the worry stone claim that catching their own reflection in this divot brings a sense of serenity and peace of mind.

A fist sized glass orb filled with scintillating colours and pinpoints of light swirling in a nebula.

A well-made backpack that appears to be well used, and quite ordinary. It is constructed of finely tanned leather, and the straps have brass hardware and buckles. It has two side pouches, each of which appears large enough to hold about a quart of material.

A vibrantly coloured mask, made from the feathers of a variety of rare and beautiful songbirds.

A scroll case containing a scroll scribed with an unfinished spell.

A broken sword hilt with strange runes on the remains of the blade.

A small piece of fabric that holds the scent of a lost love.

A rock with a patch of curious purple moss that occasionally puffs out hallucinogenic spores.

A rough bone carving of a golden dragon and a kobold, etched into the bottom is a name in Draconic: ''Vimrul''.

A curved warhorn bearing engravings of armed men on horseback, charging into battle.

An elaborately braided bicorne made of rich blue felt, embroidered with golden thread. It has a showy badge called a cockade, proclaiming nationality, faith, family crest, and the like.

A small, elaborately carved silver tube is designed to hold a single piece of chalk.

A translucent and oddly shaped prism that seems to fade in and out of existence when seen in daylight.

A black silk robe embroidered with adamantine thread in an elegant waterfall pattern.

A fancy choker made of barbs and black webbing, with nine gray spheres depending from it. Knowledgeable PC's are aware that the decoration is considered high fashion for drow priestesses.

A small wooden case containing a gaming set known as Mazes & Manticores. Inside is a wide variety of items. Maps of made-up continents and cities, sets of polyhedral dice in a variety of colours, quill pens, "Character Sheets", and a set of large books talking about "XP" and "Levels".

A glassy charm in the shape of a moon, with many claw and tooth marks.

An intricately made harp, inlaid with several glassy gray gemstones of various types.

An ivory disk engraved with an image of a grinning skull and inlaid with black enamel to form a shield-shaped background.

A scarlet sash woven of fine red thread and delicate gold wire.

An elaborate, high-necked bustier laced and lined with black silk and adorned with sapphires and beljurils.

A mask, made of a beaten copper-mithril alloy and set with a constellation of seven variegated semi-previous stones, is made to cover the right half on an individual's face. A set of three chains circle round the back of the head and fasten the mask by resting over the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and the chin. Any creature wearing the mask feels a sleight tingling sensation in the skin it touches, and has the sensation that he sees sharper, more precise details with the eye looking through the eye hole.

A finger-sized shard of blue crystal that's constantly shedding flakes and chips of crystal without ever getting smaller.

A curved staff made of coiled brass and glass wire.

A cluster of translucent green roughly hexagonal crystals covering the surface of a dark green speckled stone. Knowledgeable PC's can identify the mineral as emerald.

A joyfully coloured terracotta rattle with a skull motif subtly woven into the pattern of hues.

A rattle shaped like the skull of a horned creature. Dried blood adds a macabre touch to the horns.

A small and lightweight wooden whistle. Lazily carved, the instrument features a single finger hole to alter its pitch. A childlike carving of a bird has been hewn heavy-handedly into the whistle’s foot. When putting the reed to your lips and forcing a small puff of air through it, a tuneless squawk sets everyone on edge.

A silken veil that glistens in strange colours, like oil on water.

A transparent glass polyhedron about the size of a human fist. Light passing through it tends to blend into white, and to magnify, so that when in the open it glows with pure white bubbles of light.

A three foot tall chalice carved in the shape of an open mawed dragon resting on its curled tail. It is made from petrified dragon bone of mottled purple and blood red hues. It is worked with sharp, horny and scaly looking protrusions that one can quite easily cut themselves on.

A half-mask like one worn to a masquerade party, but the bottom edge has numerous sharp-looking catlike teeth.

A wax paper packet filled with dried rose petals.

A glass hookah with a cap made of gold, its hose of tightly woven silk, and its mouth piece is cunningly carved from a piece of amber that contains an entire tiny scorpion. Even when the hookah is not lit, the interior of its glass body is hazy, as if with smoke.

A flask made of a metal that resembles a light gold with a curious dark iridescence tinting its lustre. The container is cast with a face on four sides, each bearing a different expression. Their eyes glow with a bloody purple light.

A swirling purple gem that if pressed against the forehead and held there for a few seconds, will then float in front of the bearer’s forehead until he is slain or removes it. While the gems floats around the head, the bearer feels a sense of clarity and foresight.

A forgery kit that contains a variety of papers, parchments, pens and inks, seals, sealing wax, gold and silver leaf, and other supplies necessary to create convincing forgeries of physical documents.

A forest of tiny bright red crystals emerging from an uneven brown stone that resembles soil. Knowledgeable PC's can identify the mineral as crocoite.

A crude wicker doll whose bead eyes glitter in any available light.

A polished marble model of a human heart, nearly the size of a human heart. Although it looks like a single solid piece, it weighs next to nothing.

A convoluted system of brass tubes and dials containing several lenses and polished mirrors. Peering into one end reveals that the entire system does nothing to change what you see through the tube.

A small, inverted L-shaped machine with a hand crank on one end. The crank seems to power a rather intricate system on the other end consisting of several delicate metal plates and a tiny needle.

A shimmering, clean yellow robe made of the lightest silk. Runes skitter across it and vanish. It smells of musk and roses.

A simple razor blade, used for shaving, resting on a pile of ash. A single drop of fresh blood marrs the perfect sheen of the blade.

A damaged ebony case containing a masterful set of pearl and onyx engraving tools in extreme disrepair.

An intricately articulated wooden figure of a multi-headed dog covered in a mouldy gray fur.

An extraordinarily fine miniature saddle, as though for a small dog, worked in supple leather and decorated with gold and silver thread.

A once-beautiful golden clasp, as for a ladies’ travelling cloak. The shape has been bent and distorted and now resembles a sneering face.

A pale gray, formless sculpture. While nothing about the piece gives the impression of movement, you get the vague impression that it has shifted every time you look away.

A small blue glass butterfly attached to a barrette. When the clip is opened, the butterfly stirs and gently flaps its wings.

A plain iron goblet with a cracked rim. It is filled to the brim with a frothy, clear amber substance that resembles a freshly poured lager frozen in place.

A set of fancifully etched translucent yellow wineglasses that flash brilliant fluorescent green when they catch the sun.

A truly ancient clay jug, stoppered with cork and wax. The lower half is caked with dried mud and the upper half is covered in salt and barnacles.

A glass globe that has a winged being dancing on the head of a pin within it.

A padded metal case filled with a hundred tiny figurines depicting warriors of various races, all obviously hand assembled and painted with great care. A half-painted kobold figure on top is especially well-sculpted.

A tortoise shell table snuff-box set with six crow feet.

A funeral urn made of fine porcelain some two feet high.

A slim, blown-glass bottle filled with a shimmering golden liquid. The bottle is sealed with a cork and wax, and the label is hand-written in a language you do not recognize. The fraction 1/500 is neatly penned in the bottom right corner.

A teak camphor chest with grinning, demented angelic handles.

A large stone needle carved with figures running from a pyramid with a single eye floating above it; the eye is made from obsidian and set with a ruby centre.

A funeral urn sealed with a stopper depicting a golden-haired jackal.

An ebony statuette of a sphinx with three faces.

A matte black sphere studded with a thousand tiny gemstones, many of them in the shape of recognizable constellations in reverse. The entire thing twinkles as though it contains a small flame.

A sun token made of pure gold with dried leather headdress fittings still hanging from it.  

An ankh made of carved human bone.

A bronze incense burner with an ibex figure with a human female body.

A single gold earring fashioned to represent a man being eaten by a crocodile.

A travel pouch made of an elephant’s ear.

A shoulder bag of great age with ornate decorations made from human finger bones.

A collection of human lower jaws made into bracelets.

A deeply flawed, translucent blood red cube buried deep within a black stone covered in white calcification that vaguely resemble snowflakes. Knowledgeable PC's can identify the mineral as garnet.

A set of juggling balls made from dried lamb heads.

A pair of fancy earrings in the shape of swarming hornets.

A tin case containing a dozen small purple sugar balls that taste like the hottest and sweetest bit of delight you’ve ever had.

A hand fan made of stretched aquatic elf skin decorated in horn and painted with animal scenes of hunger.

A bone and silver corkscrew on a leather thong hung with rabbit’s feet.

Automatic Whetstone: A small  unremarkable whetstone that never wears out and when touched to a dull edge and let go, starts sharpening it automatically. The whetstone stops and falls to the ground when the edge has been sharpened to perfection.

A piece of cloth written with a short prophecy.

A ludicrously flamboyant, oversized hat with a dull metal disk affixed to the front. The hat reads the wearer's emotional state and displays images on the disk to match; an exclamation mark when surprised, a smiling face when happy, a frowning face when angry, and so forth. When the wearer is really angry or frustrated, in addition to displaying an appropriate face on the disk, the hat causes jets of steam to issue from the wearer's ears, accompanied by a whistling noise.

A battered old longcoat that reeks of alcohol and ash.

A clear glass hemisphere containing an arrangement of perfectly preserved rose petals in the shape of a heart.

A leather wallet containing a full set of certified identification papers denoting that the bearer is a monk of a local monastery who has taken a vow of silence. The papers also include a list of questions people typically ask along with the answers for them so the bearer does not have to speak while still remaining polite. The section containing the monk's physical description (Height, weight, sex, race, eye, skin and hair colour) is completely blank and could be filled in by anyone with half decent handwriting.

#d&d #dnd #d&d 3.5 #d&d 4e #d&d 5e #d&d homebrew #d&d 5e homebrew #loot #custom loot #loot generator #random loot table #pathfinder #trinkets #roleplaying #rpg #dungeons and dragons #dungeon master #dm #d&d ideas #treasure #treasure table #d&d resources #tabletop homebrew

[monstersandmaw]

Scarred male fae (Winter) x female character (sfw)

- Part One of ?

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Another 'free' story on Patreon this month? Call it a bonus and a thank you for being great patrons. Here it is on Tumblr now after being on early release on Patreon.

Winter is a Fae from gnoll boy Brenn's story, and he has his own reader insert with Violet, Brenn's adopted daughter.

@fangedscribe here on Tumblr suggested this and I just couldn't get over it, so here's Chapter One. It's a bit different from my usual style (in that it's a kind of 'murder mystery/detective thing'), and it's third person. His 'love interest' will still be Violet, but I've given her a new incarnation this time. She's not the daughter of a wealthy noblewoman this time :).

Content: murder/mild gore (briefly mentioned/not described in too much detail), self-imposed social isolation (Winter), and a meet-cute involving whisky... Word count: 2936

___

“Oi, Winter!” Ghorbak yelled across the station. “Get your pretty ass in gear! Let’s move!”

Scowling - though the expression was hardly different from his usual one - the fae looked up. “What?” he asked softly. “Another one?”

The massive orc’s brows knitted briefly in confusion but he shook his head. “No, you big dingus!” he laughed. “It’s not work. It’s Garrett’s birthday - drinks at Three-Legged Chair and we’re all invited, remember?” He even gestured at the fact that he’d already changed into civvies and was ready to go out.

Looking back down at the stack of case notes and papers on the desk, Winter tucked a wayward strand of his long, silver blond hair behind his tapered ear and shook his head. “I want to finish this up.”

Well used to his colleague’s unhealthy working habits, the orc was having none of it this time. Striding back over to the sergeant’s desk, he planted his big green palms on the surface and leaned down. “You’re going to work yourself to the bone,” he growled. “Come out with us. Let loose a bit. It’ll be good for you.”

“If I agree to come,” he said quietly but firmly, staring unflinchingly up at his colleague, “You must agree not to harass me about socialising for at least a month.”

“What is it with you fae and making deals, huh?” he laughed. “Two weeks.”

“Three.”

“Done,” the orc laughed, swatting his hand affectionately in Winter’s direction and backing off. “Come on.”

Sighing, Winter stood and pulled on his jacket. He tidied and locked away the files on his desk and then strode over to the others gathered at the doorway. Garrett was there and the werewolf grinned broadly at him, though he hardly knew why; Winter wasn’t exactly the most gregarious member of their team. Garrett was still in his human form, but there was something notably lupin about his features. Winter only nodded mutely in greeting and the three of them headed out into the autumnal night, hurrying along to the pub with hands stuffed in pockets against the chill.

The bar was lively when they got there, and as Garrett moved inside a cheer went up from the back of the room, and he started laughing when he saw the group of gathered friends waiting for him. A gnoll barrelled over and hugged him, already three sheets to the wind, and then flung herself at Ghorbak, and even risked the Fae’s displeasure by hugging him as well. Winter went rigid at the touch, but endured it until she removed herself without apology and dragged Garrett over to down a disgusting concoction in a pint glass.

Winter looked away in disgust as the werewolf downed it and then howled. With a sigh, he walked to the bar on his right and ordered a neat whisky. The elf behind the bar smiled at him but he didn’t reciprocate, even as he handed over the cash to pay for his drink. He didn’t see the point.

It was as he stood at the polished copper surface of the bar that he noticed a woman sitting alone, staring into the depths of an apparently untouched drink. She was beautiful, in a very human way, he supposed. Wavy dark hair, sensuous body, dark eyes… Quite deliberately quelling his initial flare of curiosity, he waited for the bartender to slide his whisky tumbler towards him, but the emotions she was exuding were so tangible that he could taste the misery that hung around her shoulders in a deep cloud.

She glanced up at him when she felt him staring, and although his heart juddered to a halt for a moment at the striking beauty of her face, he turned away before her sad eyes could take in the extensive scarring across his once-flawless face. The pain of the fae-hounds’ attack as they had finally caught him flared anew, their phantom teeth sinking into his arms and hands all over again as he recalled fruitlessly trying to defend his face from their lashing claws, as if the old scar tissue pulsed at the recollection. Grinding his teeth, he stalked away from the bar and rejoined his co-workers.

Ghorbak and a few others were dancing and clowning around, Garrett had pulled one of his human friends into his lap and the two were laughing, finally sharing a kiss that was met with whoops and cheers and catcalls. Something intangible - magic, Winter realised - spiked through the room and he glanced behind to see the beautiful woman leaving. The other patrons unconsciously cleared a path for her, stepping aside as if repelled on a primal level by the sadness in her features.

He watched her go and frowned. No one should be that lonely. But what could he do? A fae with almost no magic of his own, with access only to the collective magic of the fae through bargains; he was better off not interfering. He was always better off not interfering - with human affairs, certainly.

One of Garrett’s friends, and someone Winter only half recognised, perhaps from another social occasion, sidled up to him a little while later and grinned at him. “You look like you couldn’t be having any less fun…” she commented.

“Apologies,” he said. “I have that effect on a lot of social gatherings.”

Instead of being put off by his frosty manner, she laughed. Something twisted inside him at the sound of it, but his expression remained unmoved.

“You want another whisky?” she asked, eyeing his glass which held only fumes now. She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder and said, “I’m heading up for another one myself…”

His eyebrows twitched in mild surprise.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who think women can’t appreciate a decent single malt?”

“Absolutely not,” he replied flatly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

She softened slightly at the honesty of his response and laughed. “What can I get you?”

“This was a Glenlivet,” he said, “And not very good. I’m open to something else.”

She nodded. “Right, duly noted.” And with that, she strode away.

His pale blue eyes clinically took in her lean, almost hard figure as she left. Five foot four or five, with straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a dark, close-fitting, scruffy t-shirt with a logo he hadn’t recognised, and skinny jeans that showed she had wiry, muscular legs; she seemed tough but otherwise relatively nondescript. The lonely woman at the bar had been more classically beautiful by far, but he found himself admiring the way this woman leaned on the bar and shared a joke with the elf as if they’d known each other for decades.

When a man who was also waiting for his drink grabbed her backside, Winter was two strides across the room before he realised she’d put the guy in an arm-lock and slammed his wrist down on the copper top of the bar. “Keep your filthy paws to yourself,” she snarled at the man who’s eyes watered and pride smarted, picking up the two whiskies from the bar and stalking away with a face like thunder.

Her sharp expression softened when she saw that Winter had not only made a move to help her out, but had stopped when he’d seen that she had it all under control. “You alright?” he still asked as she rejoined him.

“Jackass,” she growled, proffering one of the glasses and chinking it against her own once he’d taken it. The fiery liquid sloshed, glinting in the low light of the bar.

It went against the grain for almost all Fae to utter the words ‘thank you’, since it indicated some obligation to the giver, so he just bowed his head and sniffed the glass. A sharp rush of the whisky’s heady nose filled his senses and made his eyes water a little.

He quirked an eyebrow quizzically at her but she shook her head. “Guess.”

“Am I allowed to sample it before I guess?” he asked and she nodded.

“Sure you are. Unless you’re really confident you can identify it…”

Winter had become very familiar with a lot of whiskies over the years, and he was fairly certain he knew what this was. “It’s fruity,” he said. “Sweet, but… sharp still…” Resisting the urge to check the bottles on display behind the bar, he went with his gut and said, “Scapa.”

Her grin was lopsided and surprisingly attractive. “You do know your shit,” she laughed. “I thought you were just pretending.”

“Fae…” he said. “I cannot lie.”

Her face darkened visibly at his admission, and she took a mouthful of whisky that was more of a gulp than a sip. “Yeah, but you lot can bend the truth til the cows come home.” Then she made a sound of surprise and chuckled. “Talking of Fae-related things, what should I call you?”

Winter had to admit to himself that he was intrigued, perplexed, and amused by her in equal parts. Something of that must have shown on his scarred face because she softened a bit more and raised her eyebrows expectantly. “You can call me Winter,” he said. “Everyone does.”

She flicked her gaze to his long, icy blond hair and her grin widened. “I can see why. Well, you can call me Violet. Or V,” she added with a shrug.

“You would just give your true name to me like that?” he asked, surprised. Most people gave him their true names, but that was because they assumed he was an elf at first sight. Her mood had darkened considerably - however briefly - when she had learned that he was Fae, and yet the power of her name had struck him like an iron bell the moment she’d uttered it. “Knowing what I am?”

Her dark eyes glittered playfully. “Sure,” and she plucked playfully at a pocket on his uniform, “Officer…”

He felt his thickly-corded scars stretch as he smiled again, a true smile this time. “You’re one of Garrett’s friends, aren’t you?” he asked.

She nodded, but before he could follow up with another question, someone outside the bar screamed. The sound went on and on and didn’t stop.  

The three police officers - two in plain clothes and one in uniform - reacted instantly. “Stay here,” Winter barked at her, shoving his half-empty glass at her and bolting for the door.

Garrett was a bit drunk so he stayed back on the main street once they were outside, but it took more than a couple of pints for the orc to feel anything at all, and Winter’s alcohol tolerance was pretty good. A human woman was standing on the pavement outside the pub, screaming and pointing down the service alley that ran alongside the bar. Garrett went to her and ushered her away from the mouth of the alley while the other two hurried into the shadows.

“Ghor,” Winter barked as he rounded the building and saw a slumped and bloodied figure in the alleyway, her back resting against the brickwork of the pub. It was the melancholy woman from the bar and his chest twisted violently at the sight of her. “Lock this area down. Call it in.”

Winter approached the body cautiously, not wanting to contaminate or disturb the scene for the on-duty officers who would arrive shortly, along with the coroner. He stared at the face of the woman who sat half-slumped against the dumpster, her bare legs twisted at an awkward angle beneath her. Her expression was passive, melancholy, and betrayed nothing of the horror that must have befallen her in her final moments. Her throat had been slit, staining her chest and burgundy dress with dark liquid that he could smell and taste, even from that distance. There was also the lingering trace of magic in the air.

Ghorbak stalked down the alley towards him a moment later. “Fuck,” he said. “Just like the last two.” He paused, watching Winter’s face carefully, and added, “Magic?”

Winter nodded grimly, his long ponytail sliding over his shoulder as he stared unblinkingly down at her. “It’s fading, but there were…” he paused, tilting his head to one side and closing his eyes to concentrate on the remnants of magic in the air, “Two Fae here,” he said. “The traces will vanish soon. They’ve not long ago left.”

“It’s only just happened?” Ghorbak snarled, looking around the rooftops that overlooked alley as if the killers would be peeking over the guttering above like children who’d played a gruesome prank.

Winter nodded again. “It sickens me that Fae are involved in this. And I want to know what’s going on.”

“You and half the city, mate,” Ghor rumbled. “Three bodies makes this a serial killer, no doubt…”

At the flashing of blue lights, the two off-duty officers turned to greet their colleagues. It was grim, but once they’d handed over Winter and Ghorbak headed inside to reassure the remaining customers, and the owner of the pub.

Someone appeared at Winter’s right elbow and he jumped slightly, still lost in his dark thoughts. “Here,” and a full whisky glass was offered to him.

He looked around and found V standing there, her eyes full of concern. He took it from her with only a little less of his usual grace, pale fingers trembling slightly, but this time he murmured, “Thank you.”

V had clearly had some dealing with Fae before, because surprise showed in her expression.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head, her ponytail swishing. “Is… Is it the Throatcutter?” she asked in a small voice, sipping her own whisky.

Winter swallowed, bile threatening to rise in his gullet at the mention of the name the press had given the murderer after the last two. “I can’t discuss police matters with a civilian,” he said, but when she cocked an eyebrow at him, he added, “But… it seems that way at first glance.”

“There’s a rumour that it’s ritualistic,” she went on. “Some kind of… uh… Fae magic… thing…”

Winter’s grip on the tumbler bordered on shatteringly tight, and with an effort he forced himself to ease up a little. “I can’t…” he hissed.

“It’s ok,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to prod you for answers; I’m just… talking…” She puffed out her cheeks as she blew out a sigh and said, “Garrett’s birthday kinda got rained on…”

Winter looked across the room at where the werewolf was sitting on a battered old couch, a third pint in hand and talking quietly with the human whom he’d been kissing so passionately earlier.

“I should go,” Winter remarked.

Her head whipped round to look at him again. “Really?”

Grinding his teeth, he nodded. “There’s work to be done.”

“I thought you were off-duty?”

Very deliberately not looking her in the eyes, he sighed. “Yes,” he said, staring at his ever-diminishing whisky. “But… I… I can’t just…”

“What time do you officially start tomorrow?” she asked, turning more to face him.

As she stood there, staring up at him with that earnest, intense expression on her face, the urge to flinch away from her suddenly surged in him in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He was used to his scars now, though he would frequently shield others from the raw impact of them; he rarely felt truly self-conscious about them anymore, except when people blurted things like ‘what the hell happened to you?’ out of the blue.

“I’m usually in by eight,” he said, finishing the remainder of his drink in one. “Excuse me. You enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Wait,” she almost yipped as he turned away and headed to return his glass to the bar on his way out.

Against all instincts, he paused and looked over his shoulder at her.

“I work just around the corner from the station - it’s how I know Garrett. You… You want to get breakfast or something? I’m teaching a five-thirty class, so I’ll be there already…”

“Five-thirty?” he asked, turning back to look at her properly again.

She smiled prettily and he felt his lungs tighten a little. “Fitness instructor,” she added bashfully. “I’m on the early shifts this week while Charlotte’s away. Sucks, but…” she shrugged. “So… how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Breakfast,” V said with a slight giggle.

“Oh. I…” Everything screamed at him to say no. Relationships with humans ended in pain, and as if to remind him of that, his scars throbbed again. “I…” But instead of turning her down, he found himself saying, “I would like that. What time shall I come to the gym? We can go from there.”

“Seven too early for you?” she said.

Winter was not an early morning creature by nature, but he nodded once.

“It’s Falcon Fitness,” she said. “There’s another one just across the road, so I wouldn’t want you to go to the wrong one.”

“Worried I’d take someone else to breakfast instead?” he asked with just the tiniest hint of flirtatiousness in his voice.

She grinned. “I’ll see you at seven.”

Astonished by his own lifting spirits, despite the grisly happenings that night, Winter strode away without looking back and felt oddly as if his feet weren’t touching the ground for the entire journey back to his humble apartment in the elven quarter of the city. He didn’t even realise that he hadn’t gone back to the police station until he was unlocking his apartment door.

—

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#fae #winter #male fae #character with scars #fae x female character #fae romance story #exophilia #fantasy #modern fantasy #modern fantasy setting #au of my own story #haha #look at me posting at 9am UK time instead of peak times but I don't care I'm too sick to give a shit

[troger]

TLDR: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

At a laboratory in Manhattan, researchers have discovered how SARS-CoV-2 uses our defenses against us.

By James Somers

November 2, 2020

Some four billion years ago, in the shallow waters where life began, our earliest ancestors led lives of constant emergency. In a barren world, each single-celled amoeba was an inconceivably rich concentration of resources, and to live was to be beset by parasites. One of these, the giant Mimivirus, masqueraded as food; within four hours of being eaten, it could turn an amoeba into a virus factory. And yet, as the nineteenth-century mathematician Augustus de Morgan said, “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.” The Mimivirus had its own parasites, which sometimes followed it as it entered an amoeba. Once inside, they crippled the Mimivirus factory. This trick was so useful that, eventually, amoebas integrated the parasites’ genes into their own genomes, creating one of the earliest weapons in the immune system.

We tend to associate “survival of the fittest” with lions hunting antelope. But disease—the predation of parasites upon hosts—is actually the most potent force in evolution. “Every single phase of life has been selected to try to avoid parasitism,” Stephen Hedrick, an immunologist at the University of California, San Diego, told me. “It’s driven evolution as hard as it could be driven. Because it’s life or death all the time. And it’s a co-evolution.” Whenever a host develops an immune defense, it perversely rewards the survival of the very parasites that can defeat it. Hosts, meanwhile, tend to be at an evolutionary disadvantage. “Bacterial or viral populations are truly vast in size,” Robert Jack and Louis Du Pasquier write, in “Evolutionary Concepts in Immunology,” and the wide variation among them gives natural selection many candidate organisms upon which to work. Viruses and bacteria also reproduce half a million times faster than we do. Given this “generation gap,” Jack and Du Pasquier write, “one might well ask how on earth we could possibly have survived.”

A clue comes from the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. It spends much of its life marauding alone, eating things. But, when food is scarce, it releases molecules that serve as a flocking signal to others of its kind; the amoebas merge, forming a superorganism of as many as a hundred thousand members. For this multicellular “slime mold” to be effective, almost all the amoebas must give up their ability to eat, lest they prey on one another. The few that retain it don’t eat for themselves; rather, they swallow up debris and dispose of it to protect the organism. The other amoebas, freed from the burdens of offense and defense, form a “fruiting body” that releases spores for reproduction. Although none of the individuals would survive on their own, the collective thrives.

A human being is likewise a society of cells, with a coördinated defense. Our circulatory system doubles as a communications network; our blood vessels have an “endothelial” lining—a surface that is charged with the intelligent routing of immune cells. When ordinary cells are infected by a pathogen, they send signals to their neighbors, who pass them on until they reach the endothelial cells. In response, the blood vessels swell, creating off-ramps through which white blood cells, which are part of the immune system’s circulating defense force, can flow toward the site of infection. This is merely the beginning of our immune response.

Our bodies, like the United States government, make a startlingly large investment in defense. Our bone marrow produces billions of immune cells each day, and then discards most of them. Almost every one of our cells is perpetually scanning itself for evidence of invasion. The system is complex—ask a microbiologist about immunology and she’ll whistle, wishing you luck. Those who describe it often resort to metaphor. Contemplating the enormous amounts of information that it collects and synthesizes throughout the body, Jack and Du Pasquier suggest that “the immune system can be regarded, above all else, as a computational device.”

This device is so finely tuned that we seldom notice it at work. Our guts burble with foreign microbes outnumbering human cells roughly ten to one, but the good are seamlessly sorted from the bad; every day, some of our cells grow into cancers, but the immune system dispatches them before they become dangerous. On a recent camping trip, I was bitten three times by some kind of insect while putting my arm into a jacket sleeve. Who knows what entered my bloodstream. Almost immediately, three welts formed; a few minutes later, the welts came down. In moments like that, it is easy to assume that we hold the advantage over the parasites.

On Friday, March 6th, a purified sample of the novel coronavirus arrived at the laboratory of a virologist named Benjamin tenOever, at the Icahn School of Medicine, in East Harlem. Many virology labs focus on a single pathogen, but tenOever’s studies dozens of viruses and how they change the cells they infect. During the winter, tenOever and his team were focussed on the flu. But, as the coronavirus pandemic began to escalate in the U.S., they initiated a side project, infecting lung cells in a dish with sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, and studying the results. TenOever posted their preliminary analysis to Twitter on March 14th. Within a week, a program manager at the Defense Department e-mailed to ask about the research. Two weeks later, Defense gave tenOever a $6.3-million grant to find out what the new virus was doing to our immune systems.

Born to Dutch parents, tenOever grew up in rural Ontario. Now forty-three, he approaches his work with an amused, easy confidence. On March 26th, he gathered his team and they discussed their plan. They would take half a dozen viruses—including sars, mers, and the new coronavirus—and induce infections in hosts, starting with cells in a petri dish and graduating to ferrets. They’d study the results to understand what made the new coronavirus unique. Their goal was to have results in three weeks.

The infections took place inside the lab’s Biosafety Level-3 facility, a series of nested rooms in which each is kept at a lower pressure than the one surrounding it, so that air flows inward and up an exhaust chute containing sensitive filters. In the “warm zone,” where there is always the danger of being exposed to a live virus, you must wear a gown, two sets of gloves, two sets of shoe covers, a respirator mask, a face shield, and a bouffant cap. You work with your arms under a hood, protected by an extra set of disposable sleeves. When you’re finished with your experiment, you disinfect this gear and throw it into an autoclave—a kind of kiln—where it cooks for twenty minutes. To return to the “cold zone,” you remove your shoe covers before stepping over a red line. In New York, at the end of March, these precautions had a whiff of the absurd: in a city where around three thousand new coronavirus cases were being diagnosed each day, you were more likely to be exposed to a highly pathogenic virus in your neighborhood.

A Ph.D. student named Daisy Hoagland, who had herself just recovered from a mild case of covid-19, prepared the samples for analysis. Using a shaker machine and test tubes loaded with sand and ceramic pellets, she turned a suspension of ferret lung cells—some from infected animals, and others from members of the control group—into a homogeneous juice, then separated the solution in a centrifuge that generated fifteen thousand g’s. It is painstaking work. (“I listen to a lot of podcasts,” Hoagland said.) Using a pipette, she carefully transferred the topmost layer, a pink liquid, into another tube, which she centrifuged again, until she had a purified sample of RNA. This she handed off to her colleagues Rasmus Møller and Maryline Panis for sequencing. The process takes sixteen hours to complete, and Møller, who during the height of the pandemic lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, often biked home at dawn over the Pulaski Bridge.

Whereas the sequencing of DNA defined molecular biology in the early two-thousands, the sequencing of RNA defines it today. If you imagine a cell as a kind of computer, then your DNA contains all the software that it could possibly run. It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular machines that do most of a cell’s work. If DNA is your phone’s home screen, then transcription is like tapping an icon. By sampling the RNA present in a group of cells, researchers can see which programs those cells are running at that moment; by sampling it after the cells have been infected with a virus, they can see how that virus substitutes its own software.

TenOever’s team quickly discovered that sars-CoV-2 was uncannily good at disrupting cellular programming. A typical virus replaces less than one per cent of the software in the cells it infects. With sars-CoV-2, tenOever said, about sixty per cent of the RNA in an infected cell is of viral origin—“which is the highest I’ve ever seen. Polio comes close.” Among other things, the virus rewires the alarm system that cells use to warn others about infection. Normally, as part of what is known as the “innate” immune response—so called because it is genetically hardwired, and not tailored to a specific pathogen—a cell sends out two kinds of signals. One signal, carried by molecules called interferons, travels to neighboring cells, telling them to build defenses that slow viral spread. Another signal, transmitted through molecules called cytokines, gets a message to the circulatory system’s epithelial lining. The white blood cells summoned by this second signal don’t just eat invaders and infected cells; they also gather up their dismembered protein parts. Elsewhere in the immune system, these fragments are used to create virus-specific antibodies, as part of a sophisticated “adaptive” response that can take six or seven days to develop.

Usually, the viruses that humans care about are successful because they shut down both of these signalling programs. The coronavirus is different. “It seems to block only one of those two arms,” tenOever told me. It inhibits the interferon response but does nothing about the cytokines; it evades the local defenses but allows the cells it infects to call for reinforcements. White blood cells are powerful weapons: they arrive on an inflammatory tide, destroying cells on every side, clogging up passages with the wreckage. They are meant to be used selectively, on invaders that have been contained in a small area. With the coronavirus, they are deployed too widely—a carpet bombing, rather than a surgical strike. As they do their work, inflammation distends the lungs, and debris fills them like a fog.

In late May, tenOever’s team shared its findings in the biweekly journal Cell. In their article, they argued that it’s this imbalanced immune response that gives severe covid-19—which can sometimes cause blood clots, strange swelling in children, and ultra-inflammatory “cytokine storms”—the character of an autoimmune disorder. As the virus spreads unchecked through the body, it drags a destructive immune reaction behind it. Individuals with covid-19 face the same challenge as nations during the pandemic: if they can’t contain small sites of infection early—so that a targeted response can root them out—they end up mounting interventions so large that the shock inflicts its own damage.

The gears of the immune response that come apart in covid-19 were discovered slowly, in a blundering way, as though science itself were recapitulating evolution. In a sense, there are several immune systems. In health, they coördinate with and balance each other. But a machine with so many moving parts is, inevitably, vulnerable.

Immunology as we know it began in earnest in 1882, at the Italian seaside. Ilya Metchnikoff, a Russian zoologist who would later help popularize yogurt in Western Europe, had developed an obsession with digestion, and with the process by which one cell eats another. In his memoir, Metchnikoff described the insight that would define his career. His family had gone to the circus, but he’d stayed home, “observing the life in the mobile cells of a transparent starfish larva” through his microscope. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him:

It struck me that similar cells might serve in the defense of the organism against intruders. Feeling that there was in this something of surpassing interest, I felt so excited that I began striding up and down the room and even went to the seashore in order to collect my thoughts. I said to myself that, if my supposition was true, a splinter introduced into the body of a starfish larva . . . should soon be surrounded by mobile cells.

Metchnikoff immediately performed the experiment, using a thorn from a rosebush in his garden. Sure enough, he saw cells surrounding the foreign body.

At the time, leading biologists, including Louis Pasteur, didn’t think of hosts as actively defending themselves against pathogens. If it was often impossible to get diseases twice, then that was because we became inured to them, like alcoholics to liquor, or because some unknown quantity of illness within us was “used up” as each disease ran its course. Immunology had advanced only haltingly since 1730, when the clergyman Thomas Fuller speculated that each person was born with “Ovula, of various distinct Kinds, productive of all the contagious, venomous Fevers we can possibly have.” According to this theory, an infection was actually an impregnation; each “egg” could be fertilized only once.

Using dyes to distinguish cells under a microscope, Metchnikoff helped show that the body actively defended itself. In fact, specialized cells responded to intruders in a process he described as “phagocytosis,” or cell-eating. One kind of cell-eater, called a “neutrophil”—because it can be stained only by pH-neutral dyes—swarmed to the site of the infection first. Larger cells called “macrophages” followed, absorbing both the invaders and the neutrophils into their “amoeboid protoplasm.” Neutrophils and macrophages, Metchnikoff found, lived in tissues throughout the body—a standing army.

Metchnikoff’s findings were promising: he had uncovered what would become known as “cellular” immunity. At the same time, other researchers seemed to be making progress in an entirely different direction. Emil von Behring and Shibasaburō Kitasato, two biologists working in Berlin, injected guinea pigs, goats, and horses with diphtheria and tetanus toxins. They found that, from the victims’ blood, they could derive “antitoxins” capable of conferring protective immunity on other animals. (Von Behring won the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this work, in 1901.) It wasn’t clear what these antitoxins, later called “antibodies,” were made of. Still, von Behring and Kitasato had discovered what came to be known as “humoral” immunity, and it had nothing to do with cells eating other cells.

There came to be two camps: the cellularists, aligned with Metchnikoff, and the humoralists, aligned with von Behring. The feud over the origins of immunity was political and cultural as well as scientific. Metchnikoff was working at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris, and his followers, who believed that cell-eating was the basis of immunity, were mostly French. Von Behring’s supporters, who focussed on antibodies, were German. The humoralists won the mainstream in 1897, when a biochemist named Paul Ehrlich published a theory explaining how antibodies might work. In his paper, Ehrlich drew a toxin as an amoeboid blob with small nubs jutting out of it, each differently shaped; the antibodies were like little tadpoles whose mouths sometimes fit exactly onto the nubs. It was these variations in shape, Ehrlich argued, that allowed the antibody system to adapt to new pathogens and cripple them. For the first time, the elusive concept of immunity to specific diseases, so important and yet so poorly understood, felt tangible. “Helped in no small measure by the pictures which Ehrlich published,” Arthur M. Silverstein writes, in “A History of Immunology,” antibodies became “the principal object of interest to almost all immunologists.” Although Ehrlich and Metchnikoff shared a Nobel Prize for their contributions to our understanding of immunity, Ehrlich’s account eclipsed interest in Metchnikoff’s cell-eaters for nearly fifty years.

As biologists grew expert in the distillation of “curative serums,” the great quest in immunology became figuring out how antibodies were made, and how there could be so many kinds. It seemed that a person’s antibody repertoire was limitless: biologists found that the immune system could quickly create antibodies to fit synthetic chemicals never before seen in nature.

For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for birds what bone marrow does for humans—can produce only one kind each. Its structure is random, and nearly every B cell is discarded unused. If, however, an antibody created by a B cell happens to match some part of an antigen, that B cell will not just survive but clone itself. The clone incorporates many mutations, which offer the possibility of an even better match. After a few generations, an antibody with the best fit is “constructed” through a process of mini-evolution that occurs continuously in our lymph nodes and spleen. (Our ancestors the bony fish adapted the machinery of the B-cell system from an even more ancient parasite.)

The vividness of this picture—a weapons factory deep in our bodies, working on the principles of Darwinian selection—further etched the formula “immunity equals antibodies” into the biological imagination. And yet problems remained that only the cellularists could solve. During the Second World War, severe burns treated with donor skin grafts became more common. But the donor skin was often rejected by the body. When scientists examined the site of a rejected graft, they didn’t find antibodies. Instead, they saw swarms of a previously unknown kind of immune cell. Later, the attacking cells were shown to come from the thymus, a small, spongy organ, then thought to be vestigial, that straddled the esophagus. They were named T cells as a result, and became an object of fascination. T cells were incredibly destructive but somehow selective. They knew the difference between self and other.

The balance between protection and self-destruction had always been a theme in immunology. Since Ehrlich’s time, allergies had been seen as a misdirected immune response; in the nineteen-forties, scientists learned that certain precious parts of the body—the eyes, the reproductive organs, the brain—are actually walled off from much of the immune system. (Ehrlich himself discovered the “blood-brain barrier,” a mesh too fine for phagocytes and even tiny antibodies to penetrate.) Now the question of how the body distinguished between foreign and domestic tissue focussed itself on skin grafts and T cells.

Earlier, in mice, researchers had identified genes that affected the success of organ transplants: they called this collection of genes the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, from the Greek histos, for “tissue.” In the sixties, a human version of the MHC was found. The genes turned out to be a blueprint for a remarkable system designed to distinguish self from non-self. Fragments of proteins built inside our cells are loaded onto tiny molecular rafts, which ferry them to the cell surface for inspection by T cells. Meanwhile, in the thymus, T cells are trained as inspectors: they are presented with rafts containing protein fragments, some of which are natural to the body. Any T cell that ignores its raft, or that goes on the attack in response to self-generated fragments, is destroyed. Competent inspectors are set loose to search for foreign material. They look for cells that display unfamiliar protein parts in their rafts and kill them.

This is how skin grafts are detected and rejected; how incipient cancers are disposed of; how cells that have been co-opted by viruses are rooted out. Together, B cells and T cells allow the human immune system to update itself as fast as our cells can replicate. But their power comes with risks. The immune system’s adaptive weapons aren’t always precise. Allergies affect somewhere between ten and forty per cent of the global population; as many as four per cent of people suffer from debilitating autoimmune diseases. And parasites could find ways to hack the system. “The invention of acquired immunity was like escalating a war with an omnipotent opponent,” Hedrick, who is a T-cell expert, writes. Our new weapons could be turned against us.

By the late eighties, it no longer made sense to contrast cellularists and humoralists. They had both been right; it was just that they saw different parts of the immune system depending on where and when they looked. Phagocytes were often present at the moment of infection. Antibodies in the blood, which could take days to emerge, pursued invaders outside the body’s cells, while T cells used MHC to peer inside those cells, destroying the ones that had been infected by viruses or corrupted by cancer.

Still, mysteries remained. At a 1989 symposium, the immunologist Charles Janeway described what he called the field’s “dirty little secret”: a vaccine containing an antigen designed to elicit antibodies wouldn’t work unless an extra irritant, or “adjuvant”—usually a harmless chemical or bacterium—had been added. Why wasn’t the antigen enough to jump-start the creation of antibodies? “To be quite honest, the answer is not known,” Janeway said. His suspicion, though, was that the process couldn’t begin unless the innate immune system—with its interferons, cytokines, and epithelial cells—had sounded its alarms first. Without marching orders, the standing army remained on call.

An innate system has to anticipate its enemies—a seemingly impossible task, given their stupendous variety. It wasn’t until around 1997 that Janeway began to understand how such anticipation might be accomplished. About a decade earlier, a pair of biologists named Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric F. Wieschaus had found a gene that affected development in fruit flies. Nüsslein-Volhard had called it Toll, using the German word for “great.” (“Das ist ja toll! ” she exclaimed, upon making the discovery.) Another scientist, Jules A. Hoffmann, learned that the same gene was involved in the fruit-fly immune response; Janeway, with the help of Ruslan Medzhitov, showed that a version of it was also present in humans, and employed in some of the white blood cells that are the innate immune system’s first responders. Through experiments with human cells, they showed that the gene coded for what came to be called a “Toll-like receptor,” which could recognize a particular molecular motif—a building block of bacterial membranes. It was as if evolution had noticed that, while many cells built their houses out of oak or brick, dangerous bacteria always seemed to use pinewood. Why not make a pine detector?

Immunologists soon discovered a second Toll-like receptor, then a third; they started giving them names like TLR4 and TLR5. Whole new families of “pattern-recognition receptors” were found. Each receptor, ingenious in its design, recognized some characteristic microbial or viral signature—a kink in a virus’s RNA, a crenellation in a microbial cell wall.

At long last, a picture of the whole system was coming into focus. It was all interconnected. Innate immunity kicks off the immune response, as cells at the site of infection use their receptors to recognize and combat invaders, and release interferons and cytokines to raise the alarm. Various types of white blood cells respond, having been routed to the infection via the bloodstream. They identify and eat foreign cells, returning the digested bits, via the lymph nodes, to the thymus and the bone marrow, as intel. In the days that follow, antibodies and killer T cells—the weapons of adaptive immunity—are built to spec. Everything plays a double or triple role. Antibodies, for instance, don’t just attach to invaders to block their entry into cells; they also tag them so that they’ll be easier for white blood cells to find and eat. The innate and adaptive arms ramp up each other’s destructive abilities.

Here, again, Hedrick sounds a cautious note. “Such a scheme should worry any systems analyst,” he writes. “A potentially lethal mechanism controlled by positive feedback is a recipe for runaway destruction.”

In late March, a thirty-two-year-old man of Dutch ancestry was admitted to a hospital in the Netherlands. He had difficulty breathing, and a CT scan showed an opaque haze spreading in his lungs. He was given a diagnosis of covid-19, and spent sixteen days in intensive care; four days after he was moved out of the I.C.U., one of his lungs collapsed. He recovered enough to be sent home nine days later. His twenty-nine-year-old brother, who lived in a different house, got sick at roughly the same time, and died. Their parents had moderate symptoms.

When scientists learned that a second pair of young brothers—twenty-one and twenty-three years old, of African ancestry—had also had severe cases of covid-19, they sought to study all four men. By sequencing the genomes of the men and their parents, the researchers hoped to find an anomaly that might explain why some young people, particularly men, had such bad outcomes.

The Dutch team found something that echoed tenOever’s theory about the way in which sars-CoV-2 rewires the cellular alarm system. The four men all had an ineffective variant of TLR7, a Toll-like receptor that recognizes viral RNA. When it works, TLR7 helps produce interferons, which tell nearby cells to increase their antiviral efforts. When it doesn’t, the alarm is silent, and the infection spreads. This genetic abnormality had made the virus’s work dramatically easier. The raiders had come to an unlocked house.

This spring, a clinical trial in the U.K. gave interferon-beta, a synthetic version of the molecule, to a random selection of a hundred and one patients hospitalized with covid-19. The trial found that those who received interferon early in their infection were seventy-nine per cent less likely to become seriously ill. Researchers agree that timing is crucial. In the early days of a coronavirus infection, an interferon boost might help your innate immune system contain the virus. Later, though, it might be harmful; at that point, your adaptive immune system could already be out of control, and you might need an immunosuppressant, such as the steroid dexamethasone. (Last month, President Trump received dexamethasone as part of his treatment for covid-19; he was also given a drug that contained lab-engineered antibodies capable of fighting the virus alongside, or ahead of, his body’s own adaptive response.)

The genes for TLR7 are on the sex-linked X chromosome. That could be a partial explanation for why men suffer from severe covid-19 more often than women. But a TLR7 deficiency is likely to be rare—far rarer than the incidence of severe covid-19 among young people. There are almost certainly other genetic or environmental factors that weaken the interferon response. In mid-September, research published in Science showed that some covid-19 patients with bad outcomes had “autoantibodies” that were attacking their own interferon; another article published in the same issue outlined a genetic flaw related to TLR3, which is also involved in the interferon response. (As many as fourteen per cent of severe covid-19 cases may be attributable to one of these two conditions.) The more researchers study our immune response to the virus, the more complexity they find. According to some theories, how things go for you could depend on how many viral particles you’ve inhaled, and on whether they reach your lungs when you breathe them in. If you’ve had a cold recently, it’s possible that the T cells you developed to fight it could partially fit the coronavirus. Vitamin D levels might matter, because Vitamin D can help control inflammation. Harmful autoantibodies could be responsible for the persistent symptoms suffered by covid-19 “long-haulers.” All of this is still being explored.

The immune system uses feedback to stay balanced, like a gymnast on a beam. If a light breeze blows, the gymnast might sway a bit; sensing this, she’ll shift her weight to return to center. But, given a strong enough push, she’s prone to overshoot with her reaction and, from the other side, overshoot again until she falls. Many factors contribute to the slip—a tight hip flexor, a strained calf, moisture in the air—each magnifying the force of the shove.

Older gymnasts tend to be less agile. The same goes for the immune system, which is why covid-19 disproportionately affects the elderly. The already high case fatality rate for sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-olds more than triples in people seventy-five and older. This age distribution is unique to the coronavirus. Kids are more susceptible to the seasonal flu; children and young adults who had the swine flu in 2009 were hospitalized the most, while the pandemic flu of 1918 hit adults in their twenties and thirties the hardest. (Perhaps their immune systems overreacted, or older people had acquired immunity to similar strains.) “The difference of risk and profile, young versus old—I don’t think anyone has seen an infectious agent behave quite like this before,” Richard Hodes, the director of the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, said, of the coronavirus.

The lopsidedness of the virus means that vaccines might not be as effective in older patients, even with double the dose, or after repeated inoculations. The beauty of a vaccine is that it relieves us of the task of completely understanding the virus; its package of antigens simply presses the On button of the great machine. Helping older people may require a more fine-tuned approach, tailored to the particular way this virus destabilizes the immune system. What we have learned so far suggests that it isn’t just that being older makes you weak, and that covid-19 preys on this weakness; the disease’s mechanism of action is actually amplified in the aging body.

For this reason, about a month after beginning their coronavirus investigations, the researchers in tenOever’s lab switched from ferrets to hamsters. Ferret immune systems are highly responsive, and the animals were getting better too quickly. “They look a lot more like kids,” tenOever said. By contrast, some hamsters, when infected with the virus, “actually develop respiratory distress. We see a lot more infiltration in their lungs.” In older hamsters, as in older people, innate immunity is less likely to contain the virus and adaptive immunity is slower to turn on and off. The hamster ends up wildly dysregulated. “The difference between these two outcomes really comes down to, as you get older—” TenOever paused. “Getting older sucks. Everything breaks down, even at the simplest of levels.”

As we age, our immune systems stiffen up. “If I had to respond to an insult—bacteria, a virus, a trauma, a lesion—the response is slower and is less strong,” Luigi Ferrucci, who studies the aging process and the immune system at the National Institute on Aging, told me. But, at the same time, the system becomes chronically activated. Cytokines circulate at a constant, high level in the blood, as though the body were at all times responding to some attack. This is true no matter one’s health. “Even in individuals that are extremely healthy, extremely well nourished, have no disease, and they’re taking no drugs, there are some inflammatory markers whose concentration increases with aging,” Ferrucci said. Think of the welt that rises with a bite, then imagine the same process—swelling, redness, stiffness, the accumulation of pus—slowly pervading the body. Your level of inflammation contributes to your “biological” age—which is not always in perfect lockstep with your chronological age—and increases your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia; it contributes to what geriatricians call “frailty.”

A phenomenon known as cellular senescence is partly responsible for the body’s increasing inflammation through time. As cells age and divide, small errors accrete in their DNA. These errors could lead to cancer, among other maladies. And so cells police themselves. When they detect decay in their DNA, they stop replicating and begin emitting cytokines, as though asking the immune system to inspect and destroy them. The accumulation of senescent cells may contribute to severe covid-19: according to the current theory, Ferrucci said, they could “expand tremendously the cytokine storm,” in which a runaway feedback loop leads to a sudden spike in inflammation throughout the body.

Adaptive immunity suffers with age, too, but for different reasons. The thymus itself atrophies. (On a restaurant menu, thymuses are called sweetbreads. “Sweetbreads come from young calves,” Hedrick told me. “If you were to try to harvest the thymus from an old bull, you’d get . . . nothing.”) When you’re young, with a short history of exposure to pathogens, your thymus produces new T cells at an extravagant rate. But as you age production slows, and the cells differentiate. Some live indefinitely as “memory T cells,” carrying with them a record of their defeated foes.

Certain viruses use up more T-cell memory than others. Around twenty per cent of an older adult’s T-cell repertoire is devoted to fighting a single virus: human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a strain of herpes that usually has no symptoms. It would be ironic if, in some small way, HCMV makes it harder to survive covid-19. Unlike sars-CoV-2, which spreads without hiding and so causes extensive damage, HCMV is a master of disguise. When infecting a cell, the virus turns off that cell’s MHC system. No cellular raft delivers evidence of the infection to the surface. Still, this isn’t enough to avoid detection. Our immune system has invented a weapon, the “natural killer” cell, that looks specifically for cells without functioning MHC systems. And so HCMV evolved to create a decoy MHC raft, designed to fool the natural killers.

As a parasite, HCMV is almost perfectly adapted to its host; able to spread without attracting attention, it does nothing but consume resources. The thymus is one place where such cleverness leaves its trace. The practice of science is another. Many of the workhorse tools employed by molecular biologists—including the enzymes used by tenOever’s team to sequence RNA, and the crispr gene-editing system, perhaps the most important scientific discovery of our time—were once either weapons or defenses in the microbial arms race. It’s there, at the crucible of life and death, that biological innovation happens fastest, leaving us with technology for mounting a new kind of defense.

The last time I spoke to tenOever, in late July, his team had begun a search for treatments. In the BSL-3 lab, Møller was infecting hamsters; the plan was to give the animals candidate drugs, sequencing their RNA through the entire process of infection and treatment. By examining patterns in the data, the team could find out which drugs were better at undoing the coronavirus’s reprogramming. TenOever made use of a handy way of visualizing what was happening in the cells. He could turn the genetic analysis into an inkblot-like map, showing which parts of its genome each cell was activating. “You can build a landscape, if you will,” tenOever said. If the coronavirus shifted the landscape to the northeast, they would look for drugs that pulled it southwest. They were testing four good candidates a week like this.

It was an impressionistic way to look at an immune system. But the system was not designed to be legible; it was, of course, not designed at all. For years, Robert Jack, one of the authors of “Evolutionary Concepts in Immunology,” taught a class on immunology to students just beginning their Ph.D.s. Bright and enthusiastic, the students struggled to untangle the immune system’s feedback loops. Jack told me, “We tend to look at these systems and say, ‘Wow, who would have thought of that? That’s incredible. That’s so fantastic. It does this incredibly complicated job, and it does it really well!’ ” He took a breath, then continued. “Whereas, in reality, the immune system has simply, in the face of pathogen attack, staggered from one emergency to the next. It just uses whatever is lying around. It is hoping against all possibilities to try to survive a little bit longer. Whatever crazy solution it comes up with—so long as it works, it will be accepted.” The result is a system of great flexibility and power, which, pushed the right way, can be made to collapse upon itself. ♦

#covid19 #newyorker #tldr #health

[queeniewriteshockey]

“i can’t sleep, can i stay here?” with nolan? thank you!

Stay the Night Part 1

Word Count: 1480

I was doing okay with this keeping things short thing and then this asshole comes along and derails that. I really like writing this guy. 

Part 2 Here Part 3 here Part 4 here

The hours ticked by as your tossed and turned in your bed. The noise of the city was too much for you. The neighbor had decided that 1 in the morning was an appropriate time to start vacuuming their entire house and your mind screamed. You felt like a cartoon character; eyes wide, bloodshot and scratchy. Nothing was helping anymore. You couldn’t sleep. There was no godly way to make it work for you. 

The only option was to get up, but your roommate was asleep. How? You had no idea. She could sleep through an apocalypse, though. It wasn’t fair and it made you grumpy. You didn’t much care for her anyway, though you kept that to yourself because you didn’t want to be rude. You especially didn’t like the way she looked at your best friend. Jealousy was a green-eyed monster and she lived nestles deep in your bones. 

The fact that the roommate was asleep left you with very few options. You could plug into your computer, maybe watch something on Netflix until your alarm went off and drag your dead ass out of bed to start your day, or… you could actually leave the little townhouse you rented with her and see what you could find in the dark of the Philadelphia night. 

You’d only been in town for a few months, having moved out there after finding a job. You didn’t tell anyone that the reason you had picked Philidelphia of all places in the world was that of Nolan, but those that knew you knew he was your dream. It wasn’t the job you were chasing. It was stupid and you felt silly, but you couldn’t help it. Especially because Nolan himself was encouraging of you moving out there. He missed you, too. Just not the same way. 

You traded out pj’s for a pair of work out pants and a flyers sweatshirt. You’d lived in it practically every day since you’d gotten it. You had to support your best friend regardless of other feelings that simmered under the surface for him. It was too cold for slides by themselves, but like most athletes, a pair of socks paired with the slides was as good as any closed toed shoes. 

Once you were outside, you were greeted with blissful silence. You had known it was loud within the confines of your townhouse, but you hadn’t realized how onesided the noise was. The cold air cleared your mind and woke you up a little more. It was a nice night, but the feel of the city was off. It wasn’t the nicest of areas, that you lived in, but there were considerably worse areas. You’d picked Fishtown for the hipster artsy vibe, but artists kept shit hours, as you were noticing. 

There was a little coffee shop down the way, right next to Art Machine Productions, but you knew it was closed by now. Really, you had nowhere to go and nothing to do. It didn’t stop you from getting into your car and turning the engine over. If you were being honest with yourself (you weren’t) you already knew where you were going before you put the car in gear and headed down the road. 

It was as if autopilot had engaged the second you hit the main roads out of your neighborhood. You found yourself pulling into a parking sport at Nolan’s within minutes. The engine idled softly as you contemplated your entire existence and more importantly, your reason for being where you were. There was a light on in the upstairs bedroom, which told you he was likely still awake, but you had no way of knowing if you’d be bothering him by just showing up. 

Not that he would ever tell you if you were bothering him. You’d known him for years. The two of you had been through a lot together, there wasn’t a moment in your friendship that you didn’t think you could go to him when it really mattered, but it was different now. You’d finally admitted your feelings for him, at least to yourself. It was starting to stress you out, but, you couldn’t sit in your car all night and didn’t want to go back to your noisy house. 

You were at a crossroads, your head bowed on the steering wheel, listening to the little demons who’d cropped up in your mind. Each one fed you a reason to go knock on Nolan’s door. Followed quickly by one that explained away why you shouldn’t. You nearly jumped out of your skin when something hit your window. You did scream when you realized it was a man but a second later, a peel of laughter, told you it was your asshole of a best friend. 

“What the hell, Nolan!” you asked once you’d rolled the window down in your car. 

“You should have seen your face,” he laughed, “I wish I’d thought to grab my phone. That would have been the best picture.” 

“You’re an asshole.” You were mad at him, your words held heat to them. Your heartbeat far too fast and your cheeks warmed with embarrassment. 

“Yeah, but you love me,” he countered. 

He wasn’t wrong, of course, but you still rolled your eyes at him. “I might be rethinking that.” 

He pulled a face, one you didn’t really understand before he let an easy smile fall on his lips. His hand slid over his heart and he groaned. “You wound me, Y/N.”

The action made you laugh. All you could do was shake your head. “You’ll heel, you’re good at that. Or maybe… what’s her face can nurse you back to health.” Your words, while smooth and easy, felt bitter on your tongue. Luckily, Nolan appeared to be oblivious. 

“Tssh,” he said softly, “we broke up.” 

You hadn’t expected that response, nor had you really expected the way your body had reacted. It was almost like a spike of anxiety burning its way through you. A knot twisting in your gut. 

“But seriously,” he said, not bothering to give you time to respond to the bomb he’d dropped on you. “Why are you here?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” you told him, deciding on the subject change for a moment. “Can I stay with you, tonight?” 

“Of course you can,” he said as though the question was a ridiculous one. 

The fact that he was willing to entertain your request made you both more tired and more wired. You had known he would say yes, but it didn’t make asking any easy. Not anymore. Rolling up the window and shutting the car off gave you the time to at least put yourself back together. You were just tired. That was all. 

Climbing out of the car, it was obvious that you hadn’t planned ahead. You had your phone and purse and literally nothing but the clothing you were wearing. “Thanks, Nolan,” you said as your car chirped with the alarm. 

“What kind of guy would I be if I just left you out here to die? You can always stay with me.” His arm slid around your shoulder and pulled you into him as the both of you headed inside. 

You didn’t answer his questions, instead decided to go back to a topic that he’d tried to drop earlier. “Why did you and that chick break up?” You asked, just as you got inside. It was nice and warm inside his home. Inviting and cozy, albeit a bit messy. 

He shrugged off the question as he let you go. “Turns out I like someone else. It wasn’t really fair to her.” 

That was decent of him, but you weren’t really focused on the niceness of his actions, your mind had gotten hung up on the first part of the statement and it wouldn’t let it go. You hoped against everything, that he wasn’t going to tell you it was your roommate he liked. 

“What do you say we go to bed? I’m tired and you look exhausted.” 

“Nice. Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

“You’re not going to tell me who you like?” 

“Nope.” 

“It’s TK, isn’t it?” You joked as both of you headed down the hall to the bedroom. 

There was only one in the tiny apartment, but the two of you were close enough that you’d grown up sleeping in the same bed. It was some sort of pathetic cliche Dawson’s Creek bullshit, but it worked for the two of you. 

“Absolutely,” he said with a laugh before he snagged you around the waist and pulled you against him. His nose brushed the back of your neck causing goose flesh to erupt on your skin and send a shiver down your spine. An involuntary gasp slipped from your lips as he did so. “It’s totally TK. I think I’ll tell him tomorrow over breakfast.” 

-Fin-

#nolan patrick imagine #n.patrick: requited love #n.patrick: angst #n.patrick: fluff #nolan patrick #Anonymous #nhl imagine #nhl imagines

[lizzieraindrops]

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 2)

a river that still runs (8803 words)

Beth Childs has come to Helsinki to meet her best friend Veera for the first time in the Herbs on the windowsill universe, an alternate timeline where the original Helsinki massacre was prevented and DYAD routed by Clone Club Alpha’s successful publicity stunt back in 2001. Veera Suominen and Niki Lintula survived and decided to live in a little apartment together as qpp’s. Numerous Leda clones worldwide are now in contact via a secure online network that Veera maintains. 

Note: This chapter is a bit heavier than the rest of the AU. Beth is still struggling with a lot of the same challenges in this universe, even if the events causing them are somewhat different because of such early canon divergence. But the whole point of this story is that things can end up okay no matter how rough it's been. She's getting the help she needs and she's gonna be alright. That said, warning for soft discussion of past abuse, the effects of trauma, depression and anxiety, and some suicidal ideation. And of course, lots of love and learning how to heal, with support from her best friend.

Fun fact: Veera's username is 3mika, and she always sets her font to the precise warm turquoise of hex color #2299aa. She thinks she's hilarious, and she's right. 

Also on AO3  |  Playlist  |  Aesthetic sideblog

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice  |  Chapter 1  |  Chapter 2  |  Chapter 3

***

Beth wakes on a squashy couch that isn't hers. Morning-soft sunlight pours through the window above her, bouncing back off the walls to fill even the shady corners with a warm secondhand glow. Her limbs are soft, splayed under unfamiliar blankets and sinking into the cushions. She doesn't move yet.

The apartment. Helsinki. Beth's really here. She holds herself still, letting the truth sink into her. She half expects the usual anxious tension to clench her into a ball the instant she moves a muscle, but it isn't there. Neither is the invisible weight that so often pins her immobile. She still wakes frequently with both of them holding her body hostage, keeping her muscles unmoving but restless, even in sleep. Right now though, they're gone. She just lies there, soft beneath the window.

It's quiet but not silent. The occasional car on the little road outside chuckles as it passes. A soft rush of water echoes through pipes in the walls, running toward an early riser in another unit. These sounds fall strangely on Beth's Toronto-bred ears, isolated in the stillness of this of this little apartment on the outskirts of the city. Still, the early-morning atmosphere settles comfortably into her jet-lagged bones, murmuring a rhythm for her to sink into. The temporal upheaval of a transcontinental red-eye and a series of exhausted naps yesterday have left her a little unbalanced. And yet, here she is waking up with the day, and the ground under her feels so much more stable than she’s used to.

Beth breaks her stillness with a deep, deep breath that she can feel expanding all the way down to her feet. She stretches, too, but soon pulls the toes that get exposed back underneath the warm, scratchy blanket. The cushions of the old couch creak a little in complaint as she shifts, but her limbs remain supple. For a time, she just observes the sensations. Then, her awareness spreads beyond the couch and the window to the rest of the room.

All around her, an oddly blocky pattern covers the walls. It's one of the first things she noticed when she walked into the apartment yesterday afternoon. The pattern isn't wallpaper like it appears at first glance, but actually a multitude of small photographs. Most of them are unframed, but taped up in crisply aligned rows. In them, she sees the same face infused with a hundred different lives. Just above her, a sleeping, slack-jawed redhead with bulky headphones around her neck sprawls on the very same couch Beth's laying on now. A few rows down, a brunette and a blonde with their long hair in matching wild waves are leaning all over each other and grinning like devils. One of the few framed photos shows a girl with a hospital-short buzz cut and a delighted expression, sitting in front of what looks like a mouthwatering strawberry shortcake. Beth can see at least six others in the background behind strawberry girl. Among them are Mika with her unmistakable scars and Niki with her bright blonde hair, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Morning light glances off the glossy surfaces of the photos on the west wall. The particularly bright reflection off one of the framed photos draws Beth's eye. With a tiny jolt, Beth recognizes one of her own selfies beneath the glass. In it, she's wearing the same old turquoise blue sweatshirt that's spilling out of her suitcase next to the couch right now. Underneath it, she's wearing her track gear, so the photo is at least two years old. She'd had to quit cross-country so she could try to get the shitshow her life had become under control. She vaguely recalls sending it to Mika a long time ago. It's strange to think that her presence has been in this apartment for so long.

She's here. In Finland. Staying with Mika – Mika - and Niki. Far, far away from everything.

Sprawling on the couch she slept on with a sigh as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Beth can't believe she's really gone and done it. She's run so far away that there's an ocean between her and her problems. It’s so much better than she's dreamed, even if it's only for a little while. It’s worth it, even though she'll be going back far too soon. For the first time in years, it feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be right now.

It had all started out as foolish idea she'd floated one Saturday morning, months ago. She hadn't been serious at all. She'd woken up so relieved at not having to get up and go to work, until she remembered her weekly therapy appointment with a hopeless groan.

Putting off the genuinely daunting prospect of hauling herself out of bed, she reached out to snag her phone from on top of her dresser, checking to see if she'd heard from Mika overnight. After all, Helsinki was nine hours ahead, so Mika had already seen most of the day that was just beginning for Beth. They talked so often these days, since they'd first made contact over two years ago. Rarely a day passed without touching base. But there wasn’t anything since Beth had checked last night. She took it upon herself to send the first message of the day.

runwaterblue: god, i dont wanna get up and deal with any of thsi shit today

After her world fell apart, after finding out about Project Leda, after realizing that all her nightmares and more were real, after her father...

runwaterblue: wish i could come visit u and get away form everything for awhile

Mika replied almost immediately.

3mika: you can

It was evening in her time zone, but to be honest, Beth had no idea if she had anything resembling a regular sleep schedule. The girl was always online.

3mika: though you really should go to your appointment. you always feel better afterward

runwaterblue: howd you know i have therapy today

3mika: you always have an appointment saturday afternoons

runwaterblue: yes but how do you remember that? i cant evne remember my own appts lmao

3mika: you mentioned it months ago when you switched from sundays to saturdays

Beth shook her head with a smile. Mika was so good with details.

3mika: anyway. you’re welcome here, if you can get here

3mika:  it would be great to see you

3mika: Niki wouldn't mind. we've had a bunch of Ledas visit us here, it's always fun

3mika: except that one time Dani and Ary got into a fight over football. some French-Italian team rivalry thing. that was not fun.

Beth laughed. It was funny how Mika was so good at making her do that, even on days like these. She leaned back against her pillow and held her phone over her head without sitting up, being careful not to drop it on her own face. She'd done that before. More times than she'd admit.

runwaterblue: i was kidding. id love to visit, but idk how id get there

runwaterblue: u should see the americans go off abt their football lmao. they're nerly as bad as the hockey freaks here

3mika: pls no

3mika: no more sports. it was a year ago and I’m still exhausted

3mika: sports are banned in this apartment.

Beth snorted. Mika wanted nothing to do with sports of any kind, and with Beth's athletic record, the topic had become a point of mutual teasing between them.

In so many ways, they were such different people, DNA be damned. Mika was reticent where Beth was outgoing. (Or at least, Beth had been. She was never quite sure how to think of herself these days.) Clone drama aside, Beth had been a pretty average Canadian high schooler. She got reasonable grades, played a few sports, and kept mostly out of trouble because there would be hell to pay if she didn’t. Mika was a brilliant homeschooled autistic orphan who had been raised in near isolation by her guardian after surviving the hospital fire that marked her skin for life. Beth mostly listened to pop music, and where no one else could hear, the occasional classical symphony. Mika held fast to Finland's weird obsession with death metal and dabbled in literally everything else.

And yet, Mika understands Beth like no one else does. And it's not just because they've both been through all this Project Leda bullshit. Though Beth doesn't know what she would have done without Mika to help her through that, too.

Beth won't ever be able to forget the moment that everything changed. Recognizing a her own face from the mirror on the evening news stopped her in her tracks, as something in her gut caved in with the hollow certainty that it wasn't her. Then face after face flickered before her, a flipbook barrage of déja vu. Blonde and smiling. Scarred and pensive. Braids and piercings and a rakish grin. Beth was rooted in place as people she had never been wearing things she had never worn said things she was never supposed to know.

That utter strangeness on the screen immediately seeped into her life like an oil slick into a river, tainting every thing she thought she knew with clinging uncertainty. Her father was inexplicably even more upset about it than Beth was, yet adamant that they shouldn't look into the matter. But it was already too late to stop herself from thinking. With slow horror, the truth of what exactly his behavior must mean dawned on her. And yet, even with the desperate growing certainty about who her Leda monitor must be, it was hard to believe that he could be anything other than her plain stern father.

He was always a bit strict and overprotective - probably well more than a bit, she realizes these days. But she’d thought that's just what it was like to be a cop's daughter. He'd never done anything really extreme, nothing beyond the firm discipline any kid could expect. He was just not a man to be trifled with, that was all. So until everything she thought she knew shifted that day and threatened to topple every assumption she’d built her life on, she had never truly dared to cross him.

Outright daring him to say to her face that he wasn't her monitor was probably considered a step beyond trifling. He did not take it kindly.

Two months later, Beth and her mother were living in an apartment on the opposite side of the city. It took two months for the two of them to lay plans to leave together, for good. For two months, her every move was watched. She spent two months knowing there would be hell to pay if she didn't give the performance of a lifetime pretending everything was fine, even while sirens blared inside her day and night. Two months was more than enough to teach her things she never wanted to know about the hidden marks fear leaves on the body.

Even after she finally escaped, her life was in tatters and nothing made sense. It wasn’t just the sudden jarring discovery of Project Leda, or the crisis it had forced her to confront. It was learning that, deep down, she had known that she’d never once felt free. She’d unconsciously kept herself from knowing to avoid exactly that conflict of wills that she’d known she would lose.

Trying to come to terms with what had happened and how it changed everything, Beth was continuously losing her balance. Questioning which parts of her life had been screwed over by her father and which by being part of some ridiculous supervillain science experiment was like trying to stand on two kickboards in a pool. She couldn't find her footing, and all she could do was try and stay afloat. She had to repeat her whole junior year of high school that she lost to this shitshow, while starting over at a new school, and only barely scraped her way into senior year. Now that she knew how honestly terrible she'd been at judging who in her life she could trust, it was as hard to talk to old friends as it was to make new ones.

Therapy helped her start sorting out what she was feeling, and how the environment she’d grown up in was really not the healthiest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d learned to doubt her own perceptions. That made constructing any kind of new understanding of her situation an uphill struggle. And of course, her therapist couldn’t help her confirm anything about a human experiment that was so illegal it had been an international secret. As she continued to stumble forward, Beth even started doubting her former certainty of the identity of her Leda monitor. She questioned herself and everything she knew until she wanted to scream with frustration or weep with confusion. The floor of the counselor’s office could have been mopped with her tears. It was, quite literally, driving her mad.

So, finally, Beth had taken up the invitation on the banner of every Leda news feature to "Contact the secure, clone-run Clone Youth Group Network (CYGNet) for answers by emailing [email protected]."

She wanted something concrete that would help convince her brain to stop reenacting these head games that warped her reality. It still insisted on playing through the patterns it had been taught, even in its teacher’s absence. She needed something that could brace her against the ideas that she was really just paranoid, overreacting, accusing, that this was all her fault for making a big deal out of nothing. Even with his other faults (cruelties, her mind whispered) aside, at least his involvement with Project Leda was unforgivable, and she wanted proof of it. Maybe if she had that, she could stop being mad at herself for not wanting to forgive. And if anyone had that proof, CYGNet would.

Maybe it was just because of the sheer blunt honesty about her motives, or the inescapable vulnerability of the message Beth sent, but Mika had replied to her within a day. And she'd been so gentle about it, too, enough to make Beth later question where the stereotype of autistic brashness came from. Then again, over email, Mika had all the time she needed to compose her thoughts and lay them out as softly as she wanted. She didn't have to spit them out as fast as she could to keep pace with a quick and painfully overwhelming world.

Hi Beth Childs,

I'm so sorry for what you had to go through. I still don't know how they got away with doing things like this for so long. I suppose people will always find ways to be cruel. But we've survived this long, and the whole point of CYGNet is to help us all heal. The experimental network has been dismantled, and we are assembling resources to help us. We've brought mental health professionals on to the project to develop custom programs for our needs. We can make them available to you, if you are interested.

I attached scans of some of your files that we recovered from DYAD. There are a few case reports with the signature of the person you asked about, spaced throughout your lifetime. There are also financial records with his name in the list of paid employees. He was without a doubt part of the Leda monitor program. I can provide all of the documentation that we have related to you, if you like, but I thought that would be too much all at once. I know these are hard to look at, but I hope they help let your mind rest. They are very real, and every awful thing we have experienced was also real, no matter how they tried to convince everyone that we were making it all up.

Please take your time with these, and stay in contact if you want to. You can join our mailing list, if you want to know when we have new information or new resources available. We're here for you.

And hey, if you just want to talk to someone who knows what it's like to deal with all of this, I'm here, too. You can reach my personal inbox or IM me at [email protected]. It'll be okay.

-Veera

Beth had started crying before she even finished reading the letter, much less opened the attachments. She cried so often these days. She only knew why half the time. But this time, it felt like the tears were extracting some of her pain as they left her, instead of just overflowing from the unending wellspring of her directionless distress. All of this was real, and someone else knew it.

Though she was grateful beyond measure for her mother’s untiring support, they were each other’s too-close, ever-present reminders of what they’d survived, trying to act like they weren’t, trying to convince each other and themselves that they were okay. Beth had needed something else, too, something until now unnamed.

This was a handhold, a backstop Beth didn't know she'd been desperate to find. It wasn't just the confirmation of what she’d concluded about her father. The ability speak plainly to someone she didn't feel the need to pretend around was an exhale of a breath held too long. At least one person in the world not only understood, but really and truly didn't want or expect her to act like any of this was normal or okay, or that she would ever be the same again.

Veera – or Mika, as she often went by online – made good on her offer of a sympathetic ear. Their correspondence started off with awkward, grammatically correct messages about the less painful details of their lives. Mika told her about the farmer’s market three blocks away where she went walking early in the morning before it got busy, and the plant stand there that her best friend and roommate Niki (also a Leda) had to ask her to stop buying so many succulents from.

At first, Beth tried to chatter like she used to, but there were no safe subjects. What had happened had touched all of her life. Normally, she’d talk about school, or sports, or her friends. But she was trying to start all over again at a new school with all the struggles that came with it. She didn’t have the time or energy for sports anymore, and talking about them hurt, now. Running used to make her heart sing. But no matter how she tried, there was no joy in the motion anymore. To top it all off, it was as hard to connect with old friends from her old life as it was to try and make new ones. She spent most interactions either doubting her own character judgement or dreading the moment people recognized her Leda face from the news.

She didn’t know how to talk about any of it to anyone. Maybe she could have if it had been just the clone thing or just the dad thing. But the two were inextricably entangled, and she still couldn’t even explain it to herself. It was all unbelievably horrifying, and any time she tried to be honest about it, people ended up disbelieving or horrified. Shocker.

Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be weird to talk about it with Mika. Mika already knew the worst. Beth didn’t have to hide that hurt from her to keep from shaking her world, or to keep her dismissal from hurting Beth. Maybe that’s what was hurting the most: the feeling that even after escaping, she still had to pretend to be okay. That compulsive stifling feeling choked her whenever it bubbled back up. On her bad days, a simple “how are you?” could reduce her to a blank face plastered over a raw tangle of emotions held motionless her own iron grip.

But Mika mentioned having bad days, too. Days came where she was too scared and nightmare-weary to do anything but make herself some tea and soak up some sunlight in the safety of home. Beth could casually say things like after those two months, i still twitch every time i hear a door open, and i wish my body would quit feeling like it doesn’t exist, my legs feel numb. It barely broke the surface of what it was like in her head, but was discomfiting enough for people that she held her tongue at school.

Sometimes, Beth got tired of constantly thinking about all this shit and tried to lighten things up. On one comically disastrous occasion of cultural exchange, she liveblogged Mika her attempt at eating the infamous Scandinavian lutefisk, along with an audio recording of the incoherent horrified noises she made after tasting it. In return, she received a recording of someone, presumably Mika, laughing harder than she’d ever heard anyone laugh before. It made Beth smile. Not many things did, back then.

Slowly, as the formality fell away from their transcontinental conversations, their heavier stories seething below the surface seeped in. Beth had been in therapy long enough now to know that she couldn't just recklessly unload on people the way she did in counseling sessions. But a counselor couldn't always provide the same kind of unspoken solidarity that someone in the same boat could.

Bit by bit, slipped into the chats that were becoming a daily occurrence, they talked about monitors, about what the experiment had really all been for, why that both was and wasn’t important, and how they'd discovered they were a part of Project Leda. Putting words to the pain hurt, a lot. But the ability to lay out long-unspoken truths in front of each other, knowing they were believed in the way that only people who have shared something can, was a healing kind of pain instead of the festering one Beth had been living with.

The two of them had more in common than they'd thought, growing up a world apart. Beth's experience raised under the subconscious wariness of her father's hovering thumb felt a lot like what Mika described growing up largely isolated with her former guardian. But sometimes, whenever they realized that something they'd both thought was normal was pretty not, they got a good laugh out of it despite the weight of their pasts. Mika seemed somewhat accustomed to her normal being considered pretty weird, so she usually took the revelations in stride better than Beth did. Beth wouldn't find out for at least a year after meeting her that it was because of her Asperger's, since it was a topic Mika seemed quite sensitive about.

Mika explained it once, in a conversation full of long pauses on her part and watching the typing icon disappear and reappear on Beth’s. The way she put it, it just meant that her brain worked a bit differently than most people's, processing sounds and sights and all the information it took in at different speeds and with different emphases. The difference could turn everyday things like the sound of a refrigerator running into a splitting headache, or something as simple as the soft texture of her favorite jacket into a kind of bliss. That alternative way of processing also extended to things like words and emotions as well. Sometimes, it took her longer than the world was willing to wait to process them into something that made sense. It often made communication tricky, trying to compensate for the gap in mutual understanding with most people. The world and the people in it could be so overwhelming sometimes, so fast and bright and full of noise and uncertainty and bewilderingly arbitrary social conventions. But the biggest challenge was other people expecting her to do everything the same way they did, ignorant of the fact there were any ways to exist other than their own, and completely oblivious to the fact that she was already putting in at least twice as much effort to communicate with them as they were with her.

And yet, even coming from such a different perspective, Mika gets it. Beth says sometimes i dream of drowning and its not a nightmare and i wake up not knowing how to feel, and Mika says I still dream of burning and wake up not knowing which fires are real, and they both say yeah. And they sit there across the world from each other knowing these things, knowing that it doesn't fix anything. And yet, it does change something. Nothing's any better, really. But somehow, the knowledge that someone else understands makes it a little easier to bear.

And that's just it. Somehow, without ever even having seen her face, Mika sees Beth clearer than anyone. All of her, all the ugly parts she hides so that they can't hurt anyone, and all the good parts that she also hides so that nobody can hurt them or take them away from her. Mika sees all of that and then just tells Beth another story about the Northern Lights she sees on the regular. Apparently, in Finnish, they’re called "fox fires." Beth hardly ever sees the aurora, living relatively far south in a bright city. But her stories about life in the metropolis by the lake intrigue Mika as much as the tales of the twisting green lights do her. And Beth can talk about something lighter again while not having to pretend that the heaviness isn’t there, too, even while she’s just once more trying and failing to explain poutine. For her, the weight never really goes away. But the effort of pretending she’s not carrying it takes more out of her than the weight itself. Mika understands that.

Maybe that’s why Beth had talked it over with Mika first, even before her mom, when she was considering taking a gap year after she hopefully managed to finish her senior year of high school. (God, it was so hard to think about English or math or whatever when just that morning she’d woken from a nightmare about being back in a not-home house that she never escaped.) Beth's mom had been so unbelievably supportive of Beth's recovery, even while she herself was adjusting to the wrenching change in both of their lives. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. If her mom managed to run a household and raise a daughter all on her own, even while trying to heal from her own trauma, how could Beth not do her utmost, too? She was grateful to be able to talk to Mika about it, to get a reality check from someone who both understood her situation intimately and didn't make Beth feel that pressure of expectation. In the end, Beth did decide to take a year or two off before considering college, and her mom was again nothing if not supportive. Beth figured, after this entire mess, she deserved some time to herself to work on sorting her shit out, and her mom agreed.

After graduating with reasonable if not flying colors, Beth worked a series of part-time and odd jobs that didn't stress her out too much, letting herself focus on her own healing. In between her mom's support, seeing a counselor regularly, and the security of having a friend she could really trust, Beth felt like she was making progress. Slow progress, sure, but progress, nonetheless. Considering that she had seventeen years' worth of lies to unbelieve and emotional trauma to finally acknowledge, Beth figured that there was only so much she could do in the three years she'd had.

Her days were still hard. Getting sleep and waking up and eating and even just existing were still so fucking hard sometimes, and it was horrible. Some days, the thinnest sheet trapped her in bed like it was a car pinning her down. It felt so stupid for such simple things to be so hard. But then her therapist would remind her that that’s what mental illness and trauma was, that this was what the wounds in her mind and heart made her feel like. And once in awhile, sun broke through the shadows, and she had a day that reminded her what an okay day felt like – that okay days existed. That more might.

Now, she’s here, lying in a bright living room so far from home, with her dearest friend in the next room. She’s comfortable, except for the knot in her neck from sleeping oddly on the couch. The soreness pales in comparison to the usual tensions that are so strangely absent. Beth can’t remember the last time she felt this okay. She’s not steeling herself to go to work. She’s not dreading the next conversation with her mother that goes quiet as they both remember awful things they don’t mention. She’s not bracing herself for the next time her brain runs rampant worrying about whether she’ll run into the subject of her restraining order somewhere in the city and have to wonder if he'll honor it.

None of that reaches her here. There’s something about this quiet little pocket of space. It’s overrun with a proliferation of potted plants, from the sprawling lacy-leafed monster in the corner, to the fern peeping out of the kitchen, to the vine cuttings spilling out of an oddly familiar leaf-shaped glass bottle on the sill. Sunlight streaks through leaves and windowpanes and across the colorful patchwork of rugs on the floor. In the midst of it all, Beth is held by a palpable aura of gentleness. It holds her so softly that she doesn't need to hold herself in. It's like the layer of caution that she always keeps wrapped between herself and the rest of the world has simply dissolved away. In this moment suspended in morning light, she is okay.

She feels safe.

The realization undoes something in her. She feels the tears starting, and she expects the taut tension of involuntary stifling that always comes with them to return. But it doesn’t. She lies still and soft on the couch with the water creeping over her cheeks, breath occasionally catching but flowing freely. She savors it in the quiet.

The soft thunk of an ill-fitted door opening breaks into her odd reverie. Mika’s up. Beth sniffs and scrubs at her eyes halfheartedly, but she can’t hide them right now and she doesn’t want to. Mika notices immediately, and comes trotting over with quiet steps, leaning forward all concern.

"Beth," she says softly. She shifts from foot to foot like a nervous cat, watching Beth with enormous eyes. Beth has never met anyone else with such an intense stare. Or maybe it's just the fact that Beth knows beyond all doubt that she's being looked at by somebody who really sees her in her entirety. It's like she's staring right into Beth's soul. But Mika was able to do that long before they saw each others' faces. They've shared so many thousands of words over screens and seas, so many emotions that have gone otherwise unspoken, so many too-early mornings and too-late nights on the fringes of each other's dawns and dusks.

“What’s wrong?”

Finally, a flash of that sick tension runs through Beth’s body. It’s been okay when Mika has asked that before, when it was just silent letters on a screen. But out loud, the question falls on her ears like every well-meaning inquiry she’s ever had to scramble to find an acceptable answer for. The strain begins to cinch tight around her again like coarse ropes across barely-healed skin, ready to compel her to replace the truth with something safer. Her arms and legs tied, she begins to freeze, railing against herself for tainting the softness, the safety of this place.

"Beth." Mika says again, softer but more urgent.

In the gap between thoughts created by hearing her name, Beth seizes the chance to redirect them to the present. She clings to the welling in the corners of her eyes, the warmth of the sun caressing her back. The leaves of trees whisper outside the third-floor window in a mild breeze. The brightness spills over the sill and across Mika’s asymmetrical, half-craggy face and lights up tufts of her short hair as she steps closer. The couch dips as Mika sits down next to her, tilting Beth toward her.

Without meeting her eyes, Mika lifts a hesitant hand that hovers in the air between them, uncertain yet reaching. Her gentle palm falls onto Beth's forearm as softly as a floating leaf. The fingers curl around Beth’s arm just below the wrist, firm but not tight. Comforting.

The softness surrounding Beth seeps back into her, saturating her. As the memory fades like a ripple into water, the tension slackens. But it leaves her shaky, with traces of a familiar ache in her neck muscles, one that goes deeper than the simple stiffness from the couch. She sucks in a few unsteady breaths while Mika gives her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” Beth says in a small, awkward voice.

Mika tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, I didn’t mean to bring all – this mess, in here.” Beth rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “It’s so... soft, and okay, and – I don’t wanna ruin it,” she says, trailing off into a mumble.

“Hey.” Mika moves her hand from Beth’s arm to her shoulder. When Beth looks at her, she’s looking right back. Mika's eyes dart down to the floor for a moment, but then return to hold Beth’s with deliberate steadiness. “It’s alright. It’s like this here because we wanted it to be safe to be messy. You’re not ruining anything.”

“... Oh.” She’s steadied by Mika’s fingers curling around her shoulder, by the tendrils of sunlight spreading across her head and back and arms. Mika’s voice is small but steady, and somehow it comes from the same throat that makes that huge pealing laugh. It’s so strange how they sound nothing alike. Until yesterday, Beth hadn’t heard her voice since the lutefisk incident. They’d mostly kept to text and pictures. It had seemed easier, the way it gave them both plenty time to think before they spoke through their different uncertainties. Beth was already planning her trip before they realized that they’d never actually called each other. By that point, it sounded like more fun to meet in person the old-fashioned way.

"I'll make you some tea." Mika abruptly stands and lets go of her. Beth is sad to lose the contact. She flits across the room toward the kitchen in her soft cotton pajama pants, complemented by yet another black graphic tee for yet another Scandinavian metal band Beth's never heard of. Or at least, she'd never heard of them before Mika, who has something to say about all of them, and now Beth knows more than she'll ever need to.

Mika moves in and out of view behind the half-wall that separates the little living room from the kitchen. The fronds of the fern on the counter make a green rustling as she brushes by them. It sends soft feathered shadows waving across the wall opposite the window. Beth hears the rush of water boiling out of sight, and soon sees steam rising from the mug that's being handed to her.

"It's hot," Mika says unnecessarily. She sits down next to her again, this time leaning into Beth with her arm. Beth’s glad for it.

"Have you ditched the bags and gone loose leaf?" Beth says, eyeing the fragments of bright green leaf free floating in her mug.

"It didn't come in a bag. It came from the window."

"The window?"

"It's basil tea. For the fear and pain. Five large fresh leaves in two hundred and fifty milliliters water. We grew it here."

Beth takes a cautious sip. It's surprisingly sweet, and the savory smell of the steam rising from it curls into her sinuses. The aching in her head and neck begin to relax. It's unfamiliar, but it feels like home should, just like everything else here.

"Thanks," Beth says. On an impulse of craving closeness, she leans her head onto Mika's shoulder with a sigh. The sensation of contact deepens as Mika leans against her, too.

Beth holds the cup close, fingers wrapping around its warmth. She takes another sip and gets a bit of leaf stuck in her teeth. The way she scrunches up her face trying to dislodge it pulls a tiny laugh out of Mika.

“You don’t have to be okay here,” Mika whispers. “You can just be. That’s what we do.”

Beth finds her eyes wet again, but she smiles while she sets her mug down and wipes them away. “Kinda already wish I could stay here,” she says with a chuckle.

“... That’s probably not impossible.”

“Really?” Beth asks wryly. “Not even twenty-four hours, and you’d already be willing to put up with me?”

“Twenty-four hours and twenty-seven months.”

Beth melts a little even while waving the idea aside. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, but... weren’t you looking at the school here?”

“I mean, yeah, but... really, my mom just thought I deserved a break to get away for a little while. She’d saved up a bit, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal or anything, but she really wanted me to. She knew I wanted to come see you. Checking out the school was mostly an excuse. I know it’s a great place, but... I don’t really think it’ll help with what I wanna do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Beth sighs and leans back, looking at the ceiling. Mika follows her so that they’re still shoulder to shoulder, and pulls her feet up to tuck them in cross-legged.

She flounders for a moment, trying to find where to begin. She hasn’t told anyone this yet.

“This Leda crap has been kind of awful, right? It’s screwed so many of us up. But there’s only, what, a few hundred of us? And that’s not the only reason things get messed up.” She swallows. Her eyes trace irregularities in the ceiling: a knot in an exposed wooden beam here, a sealed and repainted crack there. “Kids like me are a dime a dozen. There’s so many people out there going through hell, just because they got stuck with people who are hurting so much that they hurt other people. And then they go on and hurt more people. It’s a cycle that’s really fucking hard to break.”

Breaths that have become harsh force her to pause and let them lengthen again. A touch on her knee draws her eyes down to a hand resting on it palm up, offering. Beth takes it. Mika squeezes her fingers in reassurance.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a cop like my dad, did you know that?” Mika, eyes wide, shakes her head. “Yeah. That was always my plan. I used to think he was so brave. Wanted to be just like him.” She shudders. Mika grips her hand, steady. “Even if I could do it better than he did, the system is still full of people like him. It’s broken. I couldn’t – I can’t end up like that. I can’t keep being a part of this shit. I want to actually help people.

“I never thought about it before I met you, but the people you brought in to do therapy programs and all for CYGNet? They’re amazing. The stuff I’ve gotten from them has helped me so much. And I don’t know what I’d do without my regular therapist. These people really help people like me. Like all of us. Those are the kind of people I wanna be like.”

Beth’s voice drops and becomes small and secretive, but firm. “I’ve been looking at the social work programs at home. There’s some really good ones at the uni near where mom and I live now. And that’s the city where I grew up. I know how things work there. I know it won’t be easy, but. I could really... do stuff.”

Silence stretches. Beth looks at Mika, only to be completely thrown off by an expression she can’t make heads or tails of. “What?”

Mika’s face is blank yet soft, only barely hinting at her thoughts in the faintest crinkling of her eyes. It’s funny, how quiet her face is most of the time. Beth never would have guessed, going off her online impressions of her. Mika’s so expressive and eloquent with her written words. In person, she is much more subtle. But even after only a day spent around her, Beth is already starting to see how her movements speak volumes in a language of their own. The flickering of her hands flares to life with excitement. The casual shake of her head tosses her hair out of her eyes even when it’s not in the way, like she’s clearing the slate of her mind. And much like Beth these days, she goes very still and tense when she’s getting uncomfortable or overwhelmed, the way she did after a particularly loud whistle at the train station. It shows in her shoulders. They’re soft now though, and she just watches Beth and squeezes her hand once more.

“You’re really amazing, you know,” Mika says.

“Wh- huh?”

“Well.” She looks away and turns their hands over, but doesn’t let go. “After the awful things you’ve been through – nnnh! Don’t pretend,” she says, looking back sharply as Beth begins to protest that she didn’t have it that bad. Mika knows her so well. Beth can’t help but laugh a little. “After all that, you just want to help people. All I ever want to do is get away from them, most of the time.”

Beth quirks a brow at her with a bemused grin. “Really? Because setting up and running an organization that provides mental health resources and extremely important information to a few hundred people is a really shit way to not help people.”

“I never talk to most of them! And CYGNet only has one hundred and thirteen members, not hundreds.”

Beth rolls her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Yeah, so, you’ve somehow convinced, what, a whole freaking third of a huge group of scared strangers to trust you?”

“A lot of that was Niki and the press team, she’s way better at talking to people th–”

“And you’ve been careful enough and clever enough to keep them and all the information you got from DYAD safe and secure? I can’t even imagine the organization and, and cyber-security and whatever the hell else you put into all this. That you still put in. And look what you’ve done. You’re helping so many people. You found something only you could do, and do it really damn well.”

Mika looks down into her lap, half her face flushed. The raised ridges and swirls of the scarred side are pink, but not as dark. Her shoulders curl in a little, but she doesn’t pull her hand away from Beth’s. If anything, she holds on a little tighter.

“You don’t have to like talking to people to help them. You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” Beth says gently, then pauses as a new thought occurs to her. “Why did you talk to me?”

Mika gives a tiny shrug, eyes still downcast. “You reached out to me. Most people are scared, or suspicious, or hard to talk to, but you were just... honest. You told me exactly what you needed, even if that meant sharing your painful secrets with a stranger. I...” She trails off, looking toward the closed door of Niki’s bedroom. She blinks slowly.

“It reminded me of something Niki said a long time ago. When we first met. We didn’t trust each other at first. But when things got bad, we needed to, and she just... We’d only known each other for a day. She told me a true story that people had called her crazy for, and trusted me to believe her. And when I told her about... my Asperger’s, about being autistic, she just told me something about herself, too, another thing that a lot of people get cruel about when they know. This was back before she came out, too. She was hardly out to herself, then, really. But she told me anyway. ‘Secret for a secret,’ she said.”

“She’s really special to you.” It’s not a question. How could it be, with the sheer softness of love rounding out every syllable and making Mika melt into the couch and into Beth’s shoulder.

“She’s... yes. She’s my family.” Mika looks out the window, and the bright light dances over her nose. “I don’t remember ever having one.”

Beth slings an arm around Mika’s shoulders and smiles as she curls closer into Beth’s side. “Looks like you’re part of a pretty big one, now,” she says, waving a hand at the dozens of photos on the walls circling them.

“I guess so.”

“No need to guess. The evidence is right there. And I’m right here.”

Mika turns those huge eyes on her again. She’s done that multiple times now, even though Beth knows she rarely looks people in the eye. Eye contact is too much, most of the time. She describes it as too intense, too distracting, too intimate. Meeting those eyes – so like Beth’s own, but filled with such a different kind of light – Beth thinks she understands a glimmer of it. If every eye she met were as overwhelmingly expressive as Mika’s, Beth probably wouldn’t meet them all either. It keeps taking her by surprise, coming across their eloquence in an otherwise quiet face. Caught by that gaze, every emotion that lives in it touches Beth. Right now, it’s soft with adoration but shaded with a gradient of doubt. The width and depth of Mika’s eyes reveal a clear view of a vulnerable, aching, healing heart that spent eleven years starving for the love it needs and still hasn’t forgotten the famine.

It might be breaking Beth’s heart. No wonder Niki is always showering her with hugs and kind words and gentle hands on rounded shoulders. Maybe one of these days, Mika will have spent long enough finally getting to soak up all that affection that she won’t look at Beth like this when she says the simple truth.

“Hey. Here I am. Really.” Beth’s voice is a little choked up. She pulls Mika into a proper hug with both arms. Mika squeaks in surprise at being squeezed so emphatically, but returns it all the same. God, but she gives the best hugs of anyone Beth’s ever met. All contact and even, firm pressure and steadiness. “It’s so damn good to see you. I can’t believe you’re...” real, Beth thinks but doesn’t say. I can’t believe I didn’t imagine you. I can’t believe you’re just as kind as your words. I can’t believe how good it feels to be around you. “I can’t believe I’m really here.”

Mika doesn’t say anything. For a moment, one of her hands leaves Beth’s back to fiddle with something, then comes back to give her a little squeeze that Beth returns.

Beth’s phone buzzes a notification behind her on the little glass-top table next to the couch. The table’s wooden base is a round blob carved into the shape of a very fluffy and very ugly sheep with curly horns. Beth’s arms loosen from their embrace as she turns to look at it, bemused. No one but Mika really messages her except for her mom. But if it’s morning here, it’s about time for bed at home. She checks it, just to be sure she’s okay.

But it’s not from her mom.

Mika reaches out to gently grasp her forearm again as Beth shoots her a quizzical look and opens the message.

3mika: I'm glad you're here.

Beth's heart quails.

To think, that her darker days might have kept her from ever being in this moment. Beth might never have gotten to this point, hurt but healing and here. Here, she's seven time zones and an ocean away from the cycle of pain she grew up in, barely aware she needed to escape. She might well feel safer right here in this crossroads of time and place than she has at any other in her entire life. It's a realization that's as humbling as it is nourishing.

Already, the distance this journey has taken her has given her so much perspective. She wasn’t sure, before, whether the work she’s been considering was just a response to what she’s been through – or just a way for the cycle to keep her within its spiral. But she’s seen what Mika can do, what Beth could do one day, if she keeps on.

It won’t be easy. She’ll go back, and deep-seated memories will try to drag her back into small dark places. But being here, even for only a few hours, has already changed her. She can change, and she can grow, and she is already tapping into new strengths that her past has yet to reckon with. She is here, right now, in spite of all of it. And today is not a dark day.

“Me too, Mika. I’m glad to be here, too.” Beth’s tongue stumbles over the name, because she’s never said it out loud before, only read it on a screen.

Surprise sends Mika’s eyebrows up and her eyes wide again, like she’s never heard it before, either. Maybe she hasn’t. She tilts her head again like a question, touching her ear and looking at Beth.

Beth grins. “Mika.” A smile blooms on that curious face, lighting it up. She’s the one who pulls Beth into a hug this time, and it’s both fierce and soft. When she lets go, she leans into Beth’s side again and they stay like that, arms over shoulders and comfortably curled up together, soaking in the warmth of each other’s presence like leaves drink in light. The simple sweetness and companionship of it soothes Beth’s heart, seeking its way into the aching crevices. It’s an odd feeling, both seeping inward and flowing outward, trickling all the way through her until it warms her cold toes in a way that feels both new and strangely familiar.

A long, sleepy yawn announces that Niki’s awake now, too. Soon, she comes out of her room stretching her arms over her head. Mika reaches a hand out toward her to wave in greeting, though she leaves the other arm draped over Beth’s shoulders. Niki smiles at them. That kind smile, too, adds to the warmth washing through Beth. Her feet practically itch with it, and with a growing sensation of déja vu. She fidgets her toes against the floor as Niki walks over to brush Mika’s outstretched hand like a touchstone.

“How'd you sleep? Isn’t that couch the comfiest?” she says to Beth.

“Well, I’ve got a crick in my neck, but I still slept better than I have in years.”

Niki turns her sunny smile on Beth. “Good to hear it. Weird, though, I nap there all the time and my neck’s always fine. Huh. Anyway, I think I might make waffles. You two want some breakfast?”

Mika nods, but doesn’t let go of Beth yet. Beth is lost in thought, trying to remember what that light, floating feeling in her feet reminds her of.

“Sweet.” Niki ambles toward the kitchen and bends down with pursed lips to peer at the fern perched on the counter. “Hmm. You still look a little pale. Let’s get you some more sun.” She brings the plant over to the living room and is fussing over settling it on the sheep table when it clicks for Beth. A physical memory washes over her, for once welcome. She lets it fill her, refreshing like a deep breath of cold morning air her lungs are suddenly hungry for. She flexes her calves and ankles, her legs remembering the joy and freedom of stride and strike. Her bones are finally recalling how they once carried her with ease, even while they're adjusting to the new weight of who she's become. Fully alive again for at least this moment, her soles are practically prickling with the desire to eat up ground.

“How about you, Beth? Do you like waffles?” Niki asks, fluffing the fern’s crinkly green leaves. Mika squeezes her shoulder.

Beth grins and plants steady feet on the blue rug in front of the couch. “Save a few for me? I think I might actually go for a run first.”

#orphan black #clone club #veera suominen #beth childs #niki lintula #mk ob #mika ob #herbs on the windowsill au #lizzie taking up space #lizzie's adventures in writing #welcome back yall #long post #fic #ob fic #that a garden will grow

[meetthetank]

Maled[I]ctum pt. 2

Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationship: 4S/A2 (NieR: Automata) Characters: A2 (NieR: Automata), 4S (NieR: Automata), Anemone (NieR: Automata), Original Machine Additional Tags: bloodborne references, Blood and Gore, Robogore, little bit of eldritch nonsense, Hallucinations, Nightmares, A2 has big guilt, Post-Ending E (NieR: Automata), the smut is in chapter 2 for those who are impatient, i understand horny priorities, Hurt/Comfort

Dismantling the machine wreckage proves to be a more complicated affair than previously thought. In addition to its immense size, a large portion of the scrap is contaminated by the strange organic matter, rendering it unusable. Most of the Resistance swarms the area shortly after recovering an unconscious 4S from the wreck, along with the bizarre machine creature’s body.

He’s lucky his injuries aren’t as bad as they feel. Without the Bunker and a steady supply of new bodies and parts, the repair process takes two days. The Resistance medics and 9S work together to open up 4S and set some of his displaced components. Nothing major needs to be replaced, much to his relief, but calibrating his fine motor functions comes with a few hiccups. Something must have been knocked loose during that fight.

The moment repairs are done, 4S tears around camp asking if anyone has seen A2. He expects the repeated negative answers, but that doesn’t quell the tension building in his gut. 9S offers to help him look, but he declines. Knowing A2, she’d only be more frightened if anyone else aside from a select few went looking for her.

It isn’t unusual for A2 to disappear for a day or two, and normally 4S is happy to let her be, but this time...the way she looked at him...It doesn’t sit right. She went through something far worse than being held captive by that monster. Once he asks practically everyone at the main Resistance camp he sets out on his own.

4S searches the area near the forest castle and A2’s usual haunts. The secluded places she frequents when she needs a quiet moment to herself show no trace of her being there for a long time. No tracks, no machine corpses. Nothing. Pod 035 picks up a faint sign of activity, but it’s old and far past the forest. He’s in no condition to be tearing through the denser woods looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.

Two more days pass before 4S returns, despondent, to the Resistance camp. Just as he suspects A2 hadn’t stopped by at all, but the improbability of it all doesn’t stop the foolish hope he had as he entered the camp. He sits on a bench in the small rest area near the jukebox, listening to the twanging of some ancient human ballad.

He doesn’t notice 9S until he sits in the spot next to him. 4S jumps a little at 9S’ sudden presence but gives him a little nod shortly after.

“Still no sign of A2?” 9S asks.

4S shakes his head, “Nothing. No trail, no signals...I’m really worried about her.”

“What she lacks in everything else she makes up for in strength,” says 9S followed by a sigh and a shudder, “She’ll be okay.”

He manages to smile a bit, “I know but...she was really shaken up by...something. I want to help her but I don’t want her to feel smothered…”

“Yeah, I know the feeling…” 9S mutters, his gaze wandering to 2B as she lifts an absurdly heavy box with ease.

4S slumps in his seat and buries his head in his hands, “I get the feeling she’d never come back if I confronted her now, but…”

“You don’t want her to end up hurting herself.”

“Yeah...She’s,” 4S sighs again, then goes quiet for a long time, “...I don’t know if she’ll come back after this one…”

A lump forms in his throat as he says that, as if the words had a physical weight to them. He didn’t want to admit to himself the possibility, but it’s time for him to be honest with himself. In his head, he believed that she would be attached to him enough for that alone to bring her back his way, but...Their relationship is a bit complicated, or ambiguous to say the least.

9S puts his arm around 4S shoulders, “Of course she’ll come back. She was on the run for...Six years, was it? That can’t be a life she wants to return to.”

“I hope you’re right, Nines.”

“Here,” 9S says as he stands up, “Why don’t you help me out today? Anemone wants me to start looking at that machine creature today. Could help you take your mind off things for a while?”

4S hesitates for a moment. The memory of that...thing he and A2 fought sends chills down his spine. He has no great desire to come face to face with its malformed corpse any time soon, but 9S does have a point.

“Sure, I can lend a hand.”

It isn’t often that the medical equipment is repurposed, even temporarily, for a task away from the main Resistance camp. With materials being as limited as they are, and without the support of another group like YorHa, they need to use whatever they can. Considering this is a major discovery when it comes to machine evolution theories, Anemone allowed for a considerable amount of tools and personnel to be devoted to this.

Unfortunately, all those tools and personnel are under the command of Jackass, so 4S and 9S wait until she throws out everyone for being incompetent and then gets distracted by one of her insane personal projects.

The setup is reminiscent of a mad scientist’s lair in an old human story. Fitting, considering who was overseeing this. Various tools and recording equipment lie scattered without any care or reason, all surrounding a large table holding the machine’s corpse covered with a tarp.

4S and 9S spend a few minutes cleaning up and organizing their equipment while idly chatting about old times. They had rarely worked together in the field while YorHa was active, but the scanners were all fairly close friends in one way or another. Though, 4S had always been on the edge of that group, nowhere near the social butterfly that 9S was. He can’t help the twinge of sadness that creeps into his voice when he mentions his time in relative isolation while he was doing deep field reconnaissance.

“Right,” 9S begins, eager to switch gears for both their sakes, “Let’s get started.”

It takes their combined efforts to pull the tarp off of the body, sending the stench of rotting flesh billowing through the whole tent.

“Ugh!” 4S gags and covers his face, “Gods, it smells worse than it was alive.”

“I’ve never seen this kind of growth on a machine before,” 9S says as he covers his face with a clean towel and begins a preliminary scan of the corpse, “Aside from those two command units, Adam and Eve.”

“I thought those were one of a kind?”

9S shrugs, “It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the machines left on Earth to try and replicate past evolutionary paths. But this one is a lot different.”

As 4S begins to separate the growth on the creature’s arm from its body, he replays the encounter and the state he found A2 in his head, “I’ve never seen a machine do things like this one could. Have you seen the Pod records?”

9S shakes his head, “I haven’t had the time. Here, why don’t you start working on that piece while I go over your footage?”

With a quick wave of his hand, 4S commands Pod 035 to display a video feed for 9S.

At first, the growth appears to be just a simple mass of metal and tissue with the occasional piece of bone. Each piece of anything that isn’t soft tissue or connected to the central metal bone is carefully cut away and placed onto a tray nearby. It seems to be only random bits and pieces of machine scrap until 4S come across a strange shape underneath layers of warped muscular tissue.

Unlike the fractured and rough textures of its counterparts, this object is smooth and rounded. A few hairline splits zigzag across its surface, yet it stays together as 4S shifts it around to cut away the connective tissue surrounding it. Once most of the flesh is cut away, 4S pries the object out with a firm tug.

A smooth, diminutive skull sits in his hands, gazing at him with hauntingly vacant sockets. It bears some resemblance to a machine head. The bolts next to the optical sockets, serial numbers and machine script carved into its surface, and unique alloy betray its true nature. However, it’s eerily android in its appearance. Or rather, eerily human. A row of half formed teeth, some pointed and some blunt, deep nasal and optical cavities, and an oblong shape show more similarities to androids than any other machine.

But as 9S pointed out before, there were two machines that were vastly different from the rest not too long ago.

4S sets the skull down on the tray, next to the other tiny, misshapen bones he had extracted from the growth. A clavicle, two humeruses, six ribs, pelvis, and an assortment of vertebrae form a sickly small skeleton.

“Hey, 4S?”

A jolt runs down his spine as he snaps back to reality, “Yeah...yeah what’s up?”

9S glances at the grim display on the tray before continuing, “I finished going over your footage.”

“Oh. Well did you see anything odd? I mean, besides everything.”

9S pulls up a stool and takes a seat near the creature’s stomach, “At first,” he begins as he starts a scan of the machine’s body, “I thought that it was an attempted copy of the Adam and Eve units, and looking at the…what you’ve extracted so far, that theory is partially right.”

4S raises an eyebrow, “...But?”

“But…” he looks down and takes a deep breath, “But there’s more in line with another machine I’ve encountered.”

“What?”

“When I handed over that enemy data back when...back a while ago, there was one bit of data that I didn’t give you because it was just…” he takes a deep breath and shudders, “I didn’t want to think it was real.”

As much as 4S’ curiosity burns in his head, he doesn’t press 9S further. The discomfort is visible in the way his eyes dart around to anything, how his eyebrows knit together, and how he grips the edge of the table.

“Listen, 4S…” he begins after a bout of tense silence, “If-...When A2 comes back, if she seems...off, be careful. When 2B and I fought that thing in the sewers, something...happened to her, and when we got back to the Resistance camp she…” Again, 9S shudders and blushes, though that might have been 4S’ imagination, “Just be careful, okay?”

4S nods, “Of course. Don’t worry about me.”

“Good.” he sighs again, “...Let’s take apart the rest of this thing. I’ll give you the enemy data when we’re done.”

A2 knows she shouldn’t feel this deep shame as she lingers in the shadows of the forest zone. Just a year ago, the thought of returning somewhere she ran from was insane; now, she’s slinking back to the castle as if she’s done something wrong.

She hasn’t done anything wrong...right?

No, of course not. She just needed some time away from...everything.

…

Gods, she was such a coward.

It wasn’t just that, in the days since the fight on the beach, it’s felt like something was itching just inside her skull or under her skin. She’s lapsed into old self destructive habits as well, like picking at the dermal seams 4S spent so much time on.

4S…

Thinking about how worried he must be about her, what he might have gone through when looking for her, or what might happen when she comes back...It makes her stomach coil like a spring so tightly she starts shivering. A2 is no stranger to guilt, but it has been some time since the feeling caused a physical reaction in her.

As the crumbling facade of the castle comes into view A2 plays with the thought of turning back. Could she really face him after all this? Would things just...go back to normal? Did she even want that? She doesn’t know what she wants. Hell, she doesn’t even know if she wants to take another step forward. Her legs lock in place, and aside from a light shiver that runs through her body, she stands so still that a little boar comes up to her and sniffs at her foot. She shoos the boar away with a gentle kick, sending the little animal squealing back to the safety of the woods.

A2 takes a deep breath. No use delaying the inevitable any longer. She forces herself to walk. Just, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. There isn’t any reason to be afraid. That doesn’t stop her from being terrified, though. She shuts her eyes and focuses on the sound of her footsteps on the crumbling stone pathway.

She expects 4S to come rushing down to her the moment she reaches the castle steps, but she only hears the soft songs of the birds that make their homes in the trees and tiny crevices in the walls. There isn’t even the echoes of him running errands, the groans of his jerry rigged terminals, or Pod 035’s made up language.

“Must be resting…” A2 mutters to herself.

Sure enough, there’s signs of activity through her home but 4S is nowhere to be found. The stray piles of supplies that she usually leaves lying around the entry hallway are all cleaned up and organized into bins and shelves nearby.

She meanders through the castle like a spectre, floating from room to room with no real goal in mind. Not looking for anything, not searching for a goal, just wandering. She flips through books in the library, accidentally knocks over some dusty suits of armor, and fiddles with anything she can to find to keep her mind from running a mile a minute.

It isn’t long, however, for those distractions to run out and eventually A2 finds herself at the threshold of her small bedroom. Like the rest of the castle, all of her stuff is rearranged and cleaned. Even her bed is made, but it isn’t the bed itself that disturbs her. Perhaps disturbed isn’t the right word, but the neatly folded set of clothes similar to the torn rags she wears now makes her feel...strange.

She rolls the cotton of the shirt in her fingers. Exactly the same as the one she wears now, albeit not torn and bloodied. It smells a bit musty, like it’s been sitting out for a few days. Her chest tightens a little, but she changes into the new clothes regardless. They stick to her grimy skin and torn seams. She mentally kicks herself for not washing first thing once she got home.

...Home…

The realization hits her like a punch from a goliath. She has a home. Something to come back to, a safe place to let her guard down and relax.  

Someone to…

She curls her hand into a fist, bunching up the fabric of her shirt. A weird tightness forms in her throat and chest it dawns on her that she’s being watched.

With wide, wary eyes, she turns back to the doorway to see 4S just...standing there. Watching her. He looks surprisingly calm, despite everything, but there’s a tension in his face that even someone as unobservant as A2 can pick up on.

A2 looks at the floor, suddenly far more interested in the brickwork than him.

“...Hey,” she says, the word catching in her throat.

His green eyes dart about, studying every detail about her that he could as quickly as possible. He lingers on the fresh wounds that begin to stain her new shirt, the way her shoulders slump with exhaustion, and the weariness in her own expression.

With great gentleness, he speaks, “...Are you hurting?”

“I’m fine-...” A2 stops herself short as a sharp pain shoots through her arm, “...I’ve been better.”

4S approaches her slowly, his dark eyebrows knitting together, “Here, let me help.”

The moment his hands touch her she flinches away, causing 4S to do the same. There’s hesitation in his grip as he lightly pulls her towards the bed and sits her down on it. A2 could swear she feels his hands shaking.

His fingers ghost over her injuries and torn skin seam as he takes stock of what ails her physically. He mutters his findings to himself while A2 stares at their feet, her head hanging low. She lets him move her arms and body as he cleans the dried blood that’s caked around her skin seams.

“Does…” 4S says, his touch lingering on her arms, “Does anything hurt internally? Any pain when you move?”

A2 shakes her head, “Just a bit sore.”

4S nods once, then allows a tense silence to fall between them. Neither one looks at the other, and neither one wants to think about why.

After moments where nothing but the stale breeze passes between them, A2 speaks up.

“I think...I’m just gonna lie down for a bit.”

“Alright. Call for me if you need anything...Okay?”

“Yeah...Of course.”

As she gets settled into bed, 4S allows himself a quick glance backwards before leaving her to her thoughts.

For a week they do this dance. With the exception of grafting new skin onto her wounds, 4S and A2 avoid each other. Sometimes, she sees him in the corner of her eye only for him to brush past with only a mumbled apology or for him to duck back out of her view. When she asks him about it during the hour or so they see each other, he waves if off as a coincidence or just making sure she’s okay. The cadence and waver in his voice tips her off to his real motive. He is checking on her, but he’s making sure she hasn’t run off again.

She can’t shake the guilt, something that seems like a constant for her. It starts eating away at her nerves and her resolve. How long would things continue like this? Would they stay this way until they both drift apart? How much longer would it be until she’s alone again. The visions and the fear from that machine creep back into her chest and constrict her lungs. It’s such a similar feeling to...before. When she watched Number 4 smile at her one last time.

Only this time she can control the outcome.

It’s much less dire, of course. 4S is in no danger of dying in a fiery explosion, but A2 feels as if she’s going to explode if things don’t go back to the comfortable and mundane. She knows 4S won’t come to her, he’s too cautious. He knows she’s skittish when it comes to...feelings, and for that she’s grateful. He’ll let her come to him when she’s ready to talk, and it might be the point of no return very soon. Whether she’s ready or not, she has to do this.

Around this time of day 4S is tinkering with one project or another in his room. Normally A2 leaves him to his work, but this is something akin to an emergency. Besides, he’s probably not working on something important or dangerous. He has a more level head on his shoulders than 9S.

A2 hesitates at the wooden door to his room, grinding her teeth as she fights with herself. It’s absurd, she already has her hand on the door and now she thinks about backing down? She’s fought with worse things than her own feelings and memories. This would be nothing. 4S is reasonable, he won’t freak out at her about any of this.

Her knock on the door echoes through the stone halls, and the few seconds before she hears 4S’ footsteps on the other side feel like an eternity. The door swings inward, revealing a grease-stained 4S staring at her with bewildered green eyes.

“A2? What’s wrong, is everything okay?” he asks, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

“I’m fine. I just…” she sighs and shuffles her way into his room, “Do you have a second to talk?”

His eyebrows shoot up, then return to normal a moment later, “Of course.”

4S gestures for her to sit on his bed (more of a cot in truth) while he pulls the chair from his workbench over and wipes his hands and face off with a rag. She pulls her knees close to her chest and curls up as tight as she can. Something to quell the shivers that emanate from her gut.

“I wanted to talk about the shit that happened with that weird machine…” she mumbles, avoiding eye contact, “I just...don’t know where to start.”

He watches her expressions shift from anger, to sadness, and back within the span of a split second, “Maybe...When I found you, you looked like you were in some kind of trance. What was that? What was happening to you?”

A2 winces at the memory, “The damn thing hijacked me. Made me see things...feel things that weren’t there. It made me…,” she shudders, “It must have messed with every sensor that still works.”

4S shuffles closer to her, “What did it make you see?”

“Its…,” she groans and buries her face in her hands, “It...It made me see Number 4. The whole squad. They…,”

He takes one of her hands in his, “It’s okay…” he mutters gently and rubs her hand.

“They tore me apart.” she says in a lifeless voice, her eyes glassy and unfocused, “The visions tore me apart piece by piece. They drowned me, beat me, blamed…” she can’t stop the tears from welling up, “They blamed their deaths on me...and they’re right.”

“A2…”

“They were right. If I wasn’t a coward, if I fought with them-”

“You’d be dead too, A2.” 4S says sternly, holding her hand just a bit tighter, “You’d be dead along with them.”

“But-”

“No. I won’t sit by and let you blame yourself anymore for what happened in the past. I don’t care what that machine made you see or made you think you saw, but none of that was your fault and none of them blame you for what happened!”

A2 opens her mouth and shuts it just as quickly as she tries to formulate some sort of counter. She tries to draw her hands close to her body but 4S’ grip remains strong and holds them in place. His green eyes hold her gaze even as she tries to look at anything but him. Anything to avoid showing weakness, anything to not break down.

She fails spectacularly.

Tears pool in her eyes and spill over within seconds. Her synthetic muscles give out all at once as she collapses in a heap in 4S’ arms. Brutal, silent sobs rip through her body with such intensity that she begins to shake and shudder. 4S holds onto her as tight as he can without hurting her. He rubs her shoulders and back with a soothing yet heavy hand, while his other hand combs through her short hair. Gentle refermations of her safety and soft whispers seem to calm her quaking body after a moment. She grips onto his shirt as if it’s the only thing keeping her afloat.

A2’s breathing starts to even out and at first 4S thinks that she’s beginning to wind down, but then her quiet sniffling turns to growls. Her nails dig into the skin of 4S’ chest, and 9S’ warning starts to play over and over in his head. Despite himself, fear begins to worm its way through his gut. A2 is strong. Far stronger than he is. If something went wrong, if something possessed her to, she could kill him by barely lifting a finger.

Yet he takes hold of her trembling hands and the low snarls in the back of her throat stop. Her hands tremble in his, and her wide, fearful eyes let him know that none of that was intentional. 4S leans forward and rests his forehead on hers with her hands still clasped tightly in his.

“Hey, look at me,” he whispers, “A2 look at me.”

She tries to look at anything but him to no avail. Everything in her body tells her to run away. Get away from these bad feelings and shitty memories and hide in the wilderness until she breaks down for good. But she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to leave him, she doesn’t want to be alone again. She can’t be alone again.

Slowly, her eyes meet his. In her head she prepares for the inevitable flashbacks those deep green eyes of his give her, but instead of seeing the eyes of Number 4, his face remains his own.

“You’re okay, A2,” he mutters to her, “I promise I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”

She snorts and rubs at her puffy red eyes, “Idiot, I should be protecting you.”

“There she is,” 4S breaks out in a smile, “There’s that brash moron.”

“Shut up.”

4S gets caught in their moment kisses A2 on the cheek, just beneath her eye. This isn’t the first time they’ve kissed, not by a long shot, but it is the first time that it’s felt so...natural? He supposes that’s the word for it. In the past it had been bouts of passion that broke free of restraints on both their sides, but it never went further than that. This time the simple gesture caused a comforting warmth to bloom in his chest. Judging by A2’s tired smile, she felt something similar.

“A2…” he begins, their closeness loosening his desire to hold back what’s on his mind, “I know that...I know I’m not Number 4 but-”

She pulls back from him, her brows knitting together, “Stop.”

“What?”

“Stop comparing yourself to her,” an icy determined glare warps her expression. For the first time in weeks, strength returns to her, “Number 4 is gone. You’re not her, you’re never going to be, and....I don’t want you to be. I want you to be you.”

4S tries to blink away the tears, “It only took a near death experience, huh?”

“Oh, shut up!” she shouts. She slugs him in the shoulder playfully and puffs out her cheeks after he catches her face in his hands again. “You’re an ass.”

“Hey, you’re not doing anything to stop me,” teases 4S. He kisses her cheek once again.

He immediately regrets saying that. In a show of speed and strength, A2 pulls him into a tight hug and flings them both onto the bed. 4S struggles, but he’s no match for the combat model’s strength. She holds him down as they laugh at themselves and the absurd turn their heavy conversation took. A2 digs her knuckles into his scalp to the sounds of his protesting as he flails his arms and legs in a wild attempt to break free.

Eventually she lets him go, the fatigue of an outburst of emotion catching up with her body. She fails to suppress a yawn and 4S chuckles at her sudden exhaustion. He rolls off of her and curls up against her side as she settles into bed.

“Tired?” he asks.

A2 nods, “Mhm...Haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Okay.” 4S starts to sit up, “I’ll let you rest.”

He’s about to stand up from the bed, when A2’s hand grabs onto his wrist and tugs him back down.

“Huh?”

“S…,” she seems to choke on her own words and looks uncharacteristically vulnerable, “Can you...stay?”

“...Of course,” he says with a warm smile.

Sleeping with A2 is...a full body experience. 4S had his expectations, sweetly snuggled up against her and curled in her arms. Or her in his, either way would work for him. Instead, he’s treated to erratic movements, constant tossing and turning, and nearly being shoved off of the bed multiple times. Yet despite this, they end up in a semi-comfortable position for both of them, although 4S believes it was entirely by accident. Sharing a bed was, in truth, something they would have to learn how to do.

4S is unsure how much time has actually passed by the time he starts to wake up, though it couldn’t have been more than a few hours judging by the fact that his Pod’s alarm hadn’t gone off yet. A2 remains asleep, wrapped around him with her chest pressing against his back. Her breathing is light and steady, and tickles at the back of his neck.

She’s so...warm. The way her hands mold to the shape of his chest and stomach…

A deep, tightening pain in his gut makes him flinch, and brings him to agonizing consciousness. Glancing down at the odd bulge in the sheets, just between his legs, reveals source of his discomfort.

What a useless feature… 4S muses to himself.

Carefully, 4S shuffles out of A2’s arms, doing all he can to avoid waking her and to avoid letting her hands drift further down. He winces with each movement, even the fabric of his shorts rubbing against his erection sends jolts up his spine.

The moment he’s free of A2’s hold, he rises from the bed centimeter by centimeter so as not to shift the ratty mattress too much. All he has to do is make it out of the room without waking her and make his way to somewhere secluded to take care of this issue. Of course he could always attempt to sleep it off, but with how awake he is at the moment he doesn’t think it’ll be possible.

It’s only when success is nearly in his grasp that it is snatched away from him.

“Hey...Where’r you going?” A2’s grumbles in a raspy voice heavy with sleep.

Synthetic blood rushes up to his face one moment and then back down the next, “Uh...J-just going to stretch my legs a bit.”

“...What’s wrong. You sound nervous.”

Oh , of all the times, why did it have to be now that she learns to be observant?

“I’m fine,” 4S tries to maintain an even level to his voice.

“Why are you standing all hunched over like that?”

Her questions are just as pointed and cutting as her swords. 4S sighs. He always underestimates her intelligence, seeing as she’s not only a prototype model but a combat model as well. They’re not exactly known for being as capable as scanners when it comes to...really anything that isn’t killing. Yet she’s pinpointed exactly what he’s trying to hide. The heavy, almost icy tone to her voice convinces him that she doesn’t need him to explain his current state, but instead beckons him to come forward about it.

“Come here.”

Her sudden confidence makes him shiver.

4S turns back to her and returns to the bed with slow, plodding steps. The way her icy blue eyes roam over his body make him feel exposed, naked, despite being fully clothed. There’s a shift in her expression as he approaches though. At first she looks at him like an old world predator eyes a slab of meat, but as he sits on the edge of the bed the confidence falls away piece by piece.

“A2…”

His breath is heavy in his throat as he reaches out to cup her face in one of his hands. Her warmth is infectious, her breath just as heavy as his. Despite the way her eyes hold his with an intensity he’s rarely seen outside of battle, he can feel the subtle way she shivers with each breath.

“Are you...sure?” he asks, hoping that he’s understanding what all of this means. In the past she’s been reluctant to even touch at moments, why is she suddenly doing this?

Was this what 9S meant by strange behavior?

A2 nods, “Yeah...But I um...How does...this...start?”

A wave of relief hits him. She’s not under some strange control or in a damaged frame of mind. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he took advantage of her like this.

4S smiles, “Just follow my lead, okay?”

Their kiss starts out tender, soft even. A2 recoils back, but leans into it only moments later. Her hands start to wander around their bodies as if she’s not sure what to do with them. Without breaking their admittedly awkward kiss, 4S takes her hands in his and places one on his neck, and the other in his hair. Her fingers immediately hook into his curly hair and pull him closer than he thought possible. Heat rises in his gut once more, spurring him to push things further faster.

4S leans back against the bed’s headboard and pulls A2 onto his lap. For a minute or so, things continue much in the same way as they had before. Position aside, their kissing is rather tame. Chaste even. Simply savoring each other’s warmth and the way their mouths move in tandem. But there’s a desperate edge to A2, in the way she moves and her labored breathing. She wants more, she needs more. She just doesn’t know how to take it.

So, 4S parts his lips and in turn hers. With his tongue he tests her bit by bit, prodding at her lips, her teeth, her tongue, whatever he can reach. Her hand tightens in his hair to the point of discomfort, yet it doesn’t bother 4S in the slightest. In fact it seems to intensify just how good everything feels right now. A tiny whimper escapes from the back of his throat as she tugs on his hair a second time.

A2 suppresses a grunt, or a moan, or something in her throat. She grinds against him so slowly that 4S isn’t sure if she realizes what she’s doing. Carefully, he returns her motions, raising his hips to meet hers beat for beat in a clumsy rhythm. Fingernails dig into the skin of his neck when his teeth scrape against her lips, so he breaks their kiss to gently bite her lower lip.

She gasps, her breath ghosting over his face for a moment before he leans in and nibbles at the underside of her jaw. Another gasp as he slides one hand beneath her thin shirt and traces the outline of her muscles and lines of carbon plates barely concealed by synthetic flesh. A2 doesn’t normally shake in situations outside of life threatening combat, but her body trembles beneath his touch.

There’s a strange shift in A2’s movements when 4S begins to leave small bite marks down her neck and to her shoulder. He can feel the thundering of her pulse quicken as he clumsily grabs at her breasts. Between the blood roaring in his ears and the amplified sound of their bodies, he doesn’t hear the low rumbling from A2’s chest until it’s too late.

Her mouth traps his suddenly, pushing him back until his head smacks against the headboard. His shirt and shorts are all but torn from his body by A2’s desperate hands. The cool air of the castle makes him shiver all over. A groan catches in his throat but is quickly silenced by A2 climbing on top of him further. She practically towers over him now, ravaging his mouth and hungrily grinding down on his now exposed cock.

Like the flip of a switch, A2 goes from unsure to ravenous. Both her hands tangle themselves in his hair, holding him down and kissing up and down his neck. He feels the scrape of her teeth against one of the taught tendons in his neck once, twice, and then they clamp down around it. An intense jolt runs through his whole body. His back arches, hips thrust up, and a sharp whimper escapes him. She bites him again, worrying the skin of his neck between her teeth and eliciting more moans and cries from him.

4S isn’t sure when the tears start to form in his eyes, but his body becomes so overwhelmed with the pain and pleasure that it's the only reflex he can manage. He gulps down lungfuls of air the moment A2 pulls back off of him just a bit, removing the pressure from his chest. There’s something in A2’s eyes, something that 4S can’t place. Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide and lids half closed. He’s never seen this look from her before and it makes him feel...strange. There’s fear, that one is easy to identify, but there’s also...excitement. His gut coils as A2 shuffles out of her tank top and shorts.

This was really happening, wasn’t it…

4S always pictured this being more planned and careful, and without the fear for his life that nags in the back of mind. Of course he wants this, and he knows A2 wants this.

But did he want this to go so fast?

A2 tugs him up to her lips by his hair.

Oh god yes he wants this.

He moans against her mouth and ruts his hips into hers. There’s a brief but powerful sensation that shoots up his spine when his cock presses against the space between her legs. A2 must have felt something similar as she groans against his mouth. One of her hands rakes down his stomach and grips onto his cock far too tightly.

“Ah!!”

A2 recoils back, that dark look in her eyes fading instantly, “Shit! Are you okay?!”

“Yeah-...Yeah I’m okay…” he pants, “Just...gentle. Be gentle with...that.”

When that half-lidded look doesn’t come back immediately, 4S pulls her down for a quick kiss and takes her hand in his. He guides her hand back down to his cock and starts to move it up and down as slowly as possible at first. Once she gains her confidence back his hand falls away only to rise back up again to tangle in her hair.

Most scanners do this sort of thing by themselves, but oh god does it feel so much better when someone else does it to him. Especially someone he cares about. He does his best not to jerk his hips into her hand too fast, and the exertion of self control makes him pant and sweat. In response A2 strokes him longer, harsher, pushing him to the point of pain again. He throws his head back against the pillows and lets out a long, loud moan that he’s sure he heard A2 laugh quietly at.

There’s a spot that A2 ghosts her thumb over that makes him almost scream, and the tight coils in his stomach threaten to unwind right then and there. It’s only through gritting his teeth and focusing on anything but how fucking good it all feels that he’s able to not come.

“A2…,” he says in between heavy pants, “A2, please…”

“What.”

He shoots her a scowl, though it isn’t as intimidating as he’d like since he’s blushing and sweaty, “What do you mean what,” he growls.

She smirks at him, that heavy, dark-eyed look returns, and she sinks down onto his cock without warning.

“F-Fuck!” he shouts, “A2!”

She hisses through her teeth as she adjusts to having him inside her. 4S is about to ask her if she’s okay but the words catch in his throat when she shifts her hips. He isn’t sure if his visual processors are failing or if A2 managed to hack him somehow, but he swears that stars and sparks fly across his eyes. He throws his head back into the pillows again and lets out a moan that’s much louder than he intends it to be.

“Where-...” 4S tries to say as she raises herself off of him and slides back down, “Where did you- Haa….Learn-...”

“What,” responds A2 in between pants, “You think your-...ngh...Your stash of h-...human mating behaviors are...Haaa...Secret?”

“Well...I did until now.”

A2 laughs a breathy laugh that sends waves of strange pleasure through both of their bodies, “Next time, label that file as something boring.”

“Ugh, just shut up and fuck me.”

They find their rhythm, clumsily and slowly, but eventually they fall in sync with each other. Every time A2 raises herself off of his cock, he pulls himself back so that all but the very tip remains in, only to slam their hips back together. Each time, A2 crushes her body against his harder and harder until he’s afraid that she might break his pelvic chassis. Well, not for long anyway. Once the wet and the hot overtake his mind again, the soreness fades into the background.

4S meets her beat for beat, thrust for thrust. He tries new angles and methods to try and force her to cry out in pleasure, much like he does. It’s...strangely awkward to him, to be the only one making noise. A rigid spot on the front of her walls makes her groan and gasp so he aims for that again and again and again, but it all falls to the wayside once his pace reaches a feaverish, desperate peak.

His hands latch onto her hips, fingernails digging into the curve of her waist and giving him the leverage he needs to thrust his cock deeper and deeper into her. Her hands grip his wrists, her chest heaves with each labored breath. The way her walls constrict around his dick lets him know that they’re both within sight of the end. For now.

4S’ mind devolves into simple lines of code. Single words, simple actions, and blinding speed. Anything higher than repeating the actions that bring him and A2 this intense pleasure are tossed aside.

Hunger. Need.

More.

More

M o r e

M  o re moremoremoremoremoremoreMORe.

Suddenly, A2 gasps and grabs his shoulders so hard that he’s shaken from his stupor. Her whole body heaves with each breath she takes. 4S swears he can hear her teeth grinding against each other and the wanton moans she desperately tries to suppress. If he wasn’t consumed with primal repetition he might have tried to edge those sounds out of her, but it’s all he can do to keep himself from coming each time he thrusts into her.

4S slows to a crawl, letting himself linger inside of her. It takes all of his willpower to pull out once, twice, and on the third he can hold back no longer. All of the tension in his gut releases as A2 lets out this long breathy sound. She’s still holding the moans back, but he can’t contain the moan that echoes through their room. Something in the back of his mind tells him he should be embarrassed, but he could care less right now. He revels in the circuit-melting euphoria for as long as he can before he has to breathe and bring himself back to reality.

A2 looks down at him with dark, half-lidded eyes. Her face, flushed red, covered in sweat, is hidden by the white hair that clings to her skin.

He’s never seen anything more fascinating.

As she gracelessly flops onto the bed beside him, he can’t help but feel a twinge of disgust at the white, sticky mess that covers the bed and parts of their bodies. Maybe it’s a quirk with scanner models, but he hates being dirty.

He nudges A2 in the ribs with an elbow, and she cracks one eye open at him in a tired, half-hearted glare.

“We should clean up,” he says.

A2 just scoffs, and rolls over on her side, taking as many blankets as she can with her, “If you can carry me, go for it.”

4S sighs, and lays back against the sweat stained pillows.

He’s never been more infatuated with her.

#nier atuomata #nier automata fanfiction #A2 #4S #A24S

[arthurwilde]

a bad combination in the dark

(Part 7 of a series, wherein Alex tortures Alistair in “On the Head of a Pin” instead of Dean. I watched that fucking episode twice in like 3 days)

(This one gets dark. Death and torture and shit.)

@saferincages thanks for listening to me and I won’t blame you if you don’t read this one

“I’ll do it.”

It’s those three words that set off a jolt in everyone in the room.

Dean’s incredulous “are you insane” and Castiel’s resolute refusal and Uriel’s amusement and Alex’s face, resolute, unflinching.

“You can’t.” Castiel’s got his Big Time Angel voice on, obviously meant to shut her down, but she isn’t flinching away.

“Let me do it.” She strides up into his space. “I can do this.”

Dean’s still sputtering, “have you lost your mind - “

Uriel’s chuckling, shaking his head. “Little girl,” he says, “your bravery is admirable, but your arrogance - “

Alex doesn’t move her eyes from Castiel’s face. “You really don’t want Dean doing this? Then let me do it.”

“It would be useless. There’s no way you can possibly get what we need from him - “

“You really want to catch him off balance? Throw him off, show him some rage from a source he doesn’t expect? Use me.”

“Alex,” Dean says, fear buried under anger, “you can’t do this. I can’t let you do this.”

“No, Dean, I can’t let you do this.” Her gaze hasn’t wavered from Castiel’s face. She takes another step closer. “You think I don’t have it in me? You have no idea what you haven’t tapped into yet.”

“Cas,” Dean says, pleading now, worrying at Castiel’s silence. “Come on. I’ll do it, I’ll go in there, I’ll do whatever you want me to, just - “

“Use him as a last resort, if you have to,” Alex says. “But until then, if you want him to be good for whatever the hell kinds of plans you have in store for him, you keep him in here and you throw me in there with him. You don’t want him going down this road? You don’t want him turning into a monster? So be it, but I can go down it just fine.” She grins at him, humorless, baring her teeth. “Come on. You know you don’t give a shit about me, Cas.”

“You can’t be serious,” Uriel scoffs, and he doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Castiel, you can’t possibly think that this ridiculous little human could successfully torture a demon where angels have failed - “

“We use her first,” Castiel says, and the room goes shudderingly still.

“You can’t let her in a room with that monster!” Dean shouts. “Cas!”

“Our trap cannot be broken, Dean. No harm will come to her.”

“He doesn’t have to touch her to hurt her!” Dean howls. “She’s not a part of this, Cas, come on - “

“You have an hour,” Castiel says in an undertone, for Alex alone. “Then we’re sending him in.”

He opens the door and throws her in.

It doesn’t give her much time to prepare, but she’s as ready as she’s ever going to be. Alistair is there, pinned to the wall, and she squashes down the fear, the doubt, and focuses on the monster that hurt Dean.

Revenge is as good a motivator as any.

“So, this is the angels’ backup plan.” She hasn’t forgotten the terrible hiss of Alistair’s voice, but she’s never been this close to it before, and she has to hold back the urge to shiver. “To say this smacks of desperation would be putting it mildly.”

Alex doesn’t say anything. She looks at the tools that have been laid out before her, and takes a deep, slow breath.

“The little girl who tags along with the Winchesters,” he continues, conversational, sounding for all the world like he isn’t strung up and bleeding. “I suppose they couldn’t find any orphaned schoolchildren and had to settle for the next best thing.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” he purrs. “You want revenge on me for what I did to your boyfriend? Nothing you do to me can possibly compare to what I watched him do to those souls in Hell.”

Alex is still quiet. Runs her hands over the blades. Measures them, sizes them up. Wonders which one would make him scream the loudest.

“I suppose they wanted to send him, and you took his place instead? Noble of you.” She doesn’t look at him, but she can hear the way his grin curves around his words. “Poor little thing. If you’d seen the look on his face when he tortured girls just like you, the way he got off on it, oh, you’d run the other way.”

Alex’s steps are steady and quiet when she walks toward him at last, holding the blade she’s carefully chosen, doused in holy water. She knows how to move quietly, even in heavy boots, how to be inconspicuous and keep to the shadows. Keep herself small. The delicate roll of her foot that she learned through years of ballet, incorporated later when she snuck through the hospital corridors on socked feet. Later still, when she learned to sneak up on monsters. Even Sam and Dean’s keen instincts didn’t always warn them when she was close.

She’s gotten so good at being overlooked.

She has to raise herself on the tips of her toes to press the blade against his cheek, slow, almost gentle. Watches the way it presses into his skin, the slight, prickling burn it leaves behind.

She meets his eyes for the first time. Sees the eyes of the thing that ripped her parents nearly in two, the wide-open, frozen eyes of her brother. Sees every nightmare she’s ever woken Dean from, every haunted look in Sam’s eyes and every innocent they couldn’t save.

“He was scared of becoming a monster,” she says. “I don’t really have that problem.”

Alistair smiles, and the spark of surprise in his eyes is almost gratifying. “The little Winchester whore,” he says, admiring. “Maybe I underestimated you after all.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” She turns the blade of the knife in against his cheekbone, a quick, sudden grind that scrapes nearly into bone, and for the second time she gets to see his surprise, just for a moment.

“I’m good at compartmentalizing,” she says, mimicking his conversational tone. “Better than most. I know how to hide it all away and call on it when I need it.” She twirls the blade between her fingers, then drags it along his temple. “There are layers of it, going deep. I shuffle it like a deck of cards, so I can control what’s on the surface.”

“Control,” Alistair says, turning it over in his mouth. He licks his lips, and she pushes back the quiver of revulsion. “You’re going to have to let go of some of that if you want to play in the big leagues, honey.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, and drives the knife deep into his eye, and twists.

It’s disgusting, the blood and fluid and the way he howls, and she shivers. She’s done the same and worse to monsters before, but to see it on a human face -

Not a human, she thinks, and buries it. Shuffles it under layers of cold, calm rage.

“Good girl,” he says when he’s got his breath back, and she retreats, looking for another weapon, ready to shift gears. She can’t keep this slow-then-quick pattern going, he’s going to start to expect it if he hasn’t already. He already knows she’s making it up as she goes. “Shame I didn’t get my hands on you sooner, if this is how good you make it the very first time.”

“What would he think, if he saw you here like this?” he presses. “You think he’d realize just how little he satisfies you, that he can’t give you what you crave?” He chuckles, low and deep, and she feels nausea crawling in her gut. “Because you do crave it, don’t you? Dirty little monster girl, just dying to cut and be cut open? Things that weak little monster in training of mine could never give to you? Oh, the things I could give you, if you’d just let yourself, give up that precious control - “

With hands that are desperately trying not to shake, she pours the holy water down his throat, holds his nose, watching him choke. She’d like to drown him in it.

“Answer their questions,” she says. Her voice doesn’t shiver. That rage is simmering, buried down deep.

“Unlike Dean,” he says, and the way he says his name is unquestionably the most loathsome thing so far, with pride and a twisted sort of tenderness, “I don’t give it up that easily.”

“No,” she says. “Neither do I.”

She doesn’t know how long it goes on, how many times she hears Alistair scream or how many times she pushes back the nausea in her gut. She keeps going on until her hands shake and her arms are weak, until she’s covered in Alistair’s blood and she can distantly hear Dean shouting her name on the other side of the door.

She pushes that back, too, and wonders distantly why they don’t let him in. She’s nearly forgotten why she’s here.

Definitely more than an hour.

“He broke the first seal, don’t you know,” he says later, when he is swaying, half-conscious and glazed with pain. His voice still trills with self-satisfaction. “The righteous man, shedding first blood in Hell. The man you would make yourself a monster to protect is going to end the world.”

She does shudder that time, because she believes him, and that’s the most enraging thing of all.

When he does, finally, get loose, and she knows that she’s failed, he barely gives her a second to scream before she’s being beaten half to death, the worst, most terrifying pain she’s ever felt in her life. He’s so strong, so fast; she can’t hide anymore. He’s still covered in blood, and now I’m covered in his, she thinks and wonders if this is how Dean had felt, if they’ll be tied together forever now.

Somewhere Dean is shouting her name again.

And even as she thinks I’m going to die here, I’m really going to fucking die, she doesn’t feel an ounce of regret.

She wakes to find Dean holding her hand, woozy with pain, and she smiles at him.

“Baby,” he says, voice is scared and relieved all at once. “Hey. Jesus. Alex.” His hand squeezes hers. There are tears still in his eyes, but he doesn’t look like he’s been hurt.

“I saw him,” she murmurs. “I looked right at him. I didn’t look away.”

“Alex,” he says again, frowning in confusion, “I don’t - “

“I got him back,” she says, dreamy. “Kicked his ass.” She tries to squeeze his hand back, but it’s weak. “Sorry I got hurt, baby.”

“It’s okay,” he says. There are tears coming to his eyes again. “It’s okay, baby, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m not sorry,” she says. Everything’s fading again, but that’s still so clear. “Not sorry.”

She’s going under, and she smiles.

#text post tag #writing tag #dean x alex #saferincages #alex........is fucking scary #i didn't want to get too into the weeds with this one #but she does kind of disassociate and it's grim. this wasn't easy to write #but it felt necessary #a character study WITH TORTURE #honestly cas scares me the most in this #he and alex will both be monsters for dean with no regret #my fic

[itsworn]

RideTech 1970 Chevy Camaro

I saw the early Mustang one afternoon on an early Power Tour (1997, I’m pretty sure). That was when it was still a fairly intimate gathering and before there were way too many cars suffocating that trail. There were legs sticking out from the rear bumper (there’d been a small electrical fire that Rob Kinnan was able to easily extinguish with a beer he happened to be holding—further details never mind). Those substantial limbs belonged to Bret Voelkel and it was a bit before anybody knew anything about RideTech, probably not even Bret Voelkel.

Twenty years after that broiling tarmac story and dozens of pertinent products and integrated systems later, Voelkel was in a position, free to go nuts, doing stuff the rest of us can only imagine, only closing our eyes and ruminating happily. The RideTech 1970 Camaro and another one similar became the basis for an ambitious experiment. Two builds. One known as the 48 Hour Camaro … the other, the Track 1 Camaro. Yeah, sure, they’d be fun to whip on and try like hell to break; the thought amused Bret, but ostensibly research and development were his practical aspirations. Substance sayin’ something, rather than a flaky vanity plate caption sayin’ something. The 48 Hour represents a basis for initial changes to engine, suspension, and the rolling stuff. It was designed as a magnet for components that required nothing more than holes and fasteners, OK, maybe a church key, but not one second of welding required for any of it. As a bolt-on car, it maintains a conservative place that the more complicated Track 1 rooter surpasses in all categories.

Bret thought that the naked fastener aspect was important, would be encouraging, and a place for the less experienced to learn about now and then what comes later. In fact, the car was converted in 48 hours for all to see, broken up into eight six-hour shifts, under a canopy in a parking lot. Bret: “This agenda was very tight. No matter how well you plan one of these chingos in advance, parts get chased at the last minute. And you know it’s never easy to build a car in a parking lot.”

It was done to prove something—the merits of a 100-percent bolt-on build, no trickery involved. The components include a new rear subframe-style named “unicradle.” It revolves around a four-link system. The stock but rewelded front subframe incorporates the RideTech TruTurn front suspension system, which includes a taller spindle to improve the camber gain and a raised spindle pin that lowers the car 2 inches free and easy. The steering arms are designed to correct bumpsteer and to accommodate up to a 10-inch-wide wheel with a 5.75-inch backspacing. The drag link bracket bolts onto the OE drag link to relocate the inner tie-rod end to minimize bumpsteer. Finally, the tie-rod assemblies integrate with the new steering arms and centerlink. Maybe the subtext here is “you can keep your original subframe.”

Volunteers queued up. Bret said Rick Love (Vintage Air), Chad Reynolds (BangShift.com), Chris Smith (Smitty’s Custom Auto), Mark Bowler (Bowler Performance Transmissions), Bill Fowler (Baer, Inc.), Mike Ballard and Josh Powers (Custom Image Corvettes), and Jeff Abbott (Painless Performance) were among them.

To begin with, the coupe Bret picked was a chicken. It was a gem. “I found it for sale at the NSRA Street Rod Nationals. It looked nice enough with a blue paintjob and your typical 350/350 drivetrain combination … and it has the cleanest original floorpan that I have ever seen, original primer still intact.” To this day, the 48 Hour maintains an all-steel body and components. Since the sheetmetal was exemplary, the shell prep was handled by RideTech’s R&D fleet-only own body shop. The floor had to be ventilated a bit behind the rear seat to make room for the protruding suspension upper links, but that was it.

Besides that, they inserted a few aftermarket props: Anzo USA headlights and Ringbrothers hood hinges. All trim is original. Kurt Blackglove and Dennis Niehaus did the painting dance, wafting the shell with PPG Velocity Orange. But it would be up in Nebraska where Tracy Weaver at his Recovery Room Hot Rod Interiors would finish the gut work. Tracy smoothed out the leather surfaces for the Recaros and laid some more cowhide on the door panels, as well. Since the Camaro was surely a road-going conveyance, Bret would be bringing a competent sound system and refrigerated air along with him.

The beautification process of the 48 Hour Camaro was countered by a few pertinent changes to the mechanicals. The TruTurn steering configuration ensures that 275-series tires on 10-inch-wide wheels would always fit without any body or chassis modification. Because the shape of the unicradle and four-link suspension is compact and more room was available, mini-tubs were unnecessary. Down there in its belly, Bowler Performance fixed the big 4L75E with a ProTorque billet converter and Sonnax gear ratio change that enable engine braking, high-rpm shifting capability, and the ability to hold Low gear with full pressure.

What fun, right? Bret says the most memorable experience had nothing to do with winning an award or special mention. The FM3 Marketing road trip Cars N Cones Charity Tour that begins in Indiana and ends in North Carolina, whizzes through six states with an autocross event every day. Bret: “The event benefitted a fellow enthusiast who is battling CCL, a form of bone leukemia. The camaraderie on Cars N Cones is tough to beat.” CHP

    Tech Check Owner: Bret Voelkel, Jasper, Indiana Vehicle: 1970 48 Hour Camaro

Engine Type: LS3 Displacement: 376 ci Compression Ratio: 10.7:1 Bore: 4.065 inches Stroke: 3.622 inches Cylinder Heads: OE L92-style ports, CNC-ported, 68cc combustion chambers, 2.165/1.590 valves Rotating Assembly: OE nodular iron crankshaft, powdered metal connecting rods, hypereutectic pistons Valvetrain: OE 1.7:1 rocker arms, Lingenfelter springs, OE lifters and pushrods Camshaft: Lingenfelter GT11 hydraulic (0.631/0.644-inch lift; 215/236-deg. duration), Lingenfelter rocker covers Induction: Holley intake manifold, Holley Dominator EFI, Spectre Performance air cleaner, FiTech steel fuel tank, Earl’s braided steel lines Ignition: MSD box and primary wires Exhaust: Hooker 1 3/4-inch primary pipes w/ 3-inch collector and mufflers, 3-inch system Ancillaries: C&R aluminum radiator and fan, Edelbrock water pump, Vintage Air alternator, Vintage Air Front Runner accessory drive, Painless Performance Pro Series wiring installed by Jeff Abbott (Fort Worth, TX) Machine Work: Lingenfelter Performance Engineering (LPE) Built By: LPE Tuner: LPE Output: N/A

Drivetrain Transmission: Bowler Performance 4L75E, ProTorque LSXT billet converter w/ 2,600-stall speed (lock-up capability in all gears), Sonnax 2.84/1.55 gear ratio conversion Rear Axle: Currie Turn 9 “Crate” w/ MillerBuilt floater ends, 3.25:1 gears, Wavetrac limited-slip differential, AZ Driveshaft custom aluminum prop shaft

Chassis Front Suspension: RideTech dropped spindles, TruTurn tubular A-arms, TQ Series triple-adjustable coilover shocks, MuscleBar antisway bar Rear Suspension: Four-link triangulated with rear subframe and R-Joint rod ends, TQ Series triple-adjustable coilover shocks, MuscleBar antisway bar Brakes: Baer 13-inch rotors, Baer Track four-piston calipers, front; Baer 12-inch vented rotors, SS4 four-piston calipers, rear; Baer master cylinder; Earl’s braided steel lines and hard lines

Wheels & Tires Wheels: Forgeline ML3C 18×10 front and rear Tires: BFGoodrich Rival S 275/35 front and rear

Interior Upholstery: Tracy Weaver Recovery Room Hot Rod Interiors (Plattsmouth, NE) Material: Leather Seats: Recaro, RideTech four-point harnesses Steering: RideTech TruTurn assembly, Turn One box, Flaming River column, MOMO wheel Shifter: Horseshoe-style w/ Shiftworks detent Dash: Stock, sheetmetal gauge insert Instrumentation: Classic Instruments AutoCross series w/ custom RideTech logo Audio: Kicker KMC20 Entertainment Center, Kicker speakers/amps HVAC: Vintage Air SureFit

Exterior Bodywork: RideTech (R&D vehicle body shop) Paint By: Kurt Blackglove and Dennis Niehaus at RideTech Paint: PPG Velocity Orange Hood: N/A Grille: OE Bumpers: OE

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[amassingeffect]

So it’s been a bit, but about a month ago, I wrote a bit about Tank-Born being on Tuchanka and then necro-om-nom-nomicon asked a simple question: WELL? WHAT'S HIS NAME?

And I was pretty much like, “WELL SHIT WHAT IS HIS NAME?” Add in wondering about the krogan language (because I’m apparently so extra and can’t just make up something up) and well, yeah, another long overdue Tank-Born bit. Also, this is the VERY LAST TIME I will ever call him such. Because, you know, NAME :D

So yeah, have a ficlet.

The world went from ancient ruins and sky to moving dirt and vibrations. Kalros had dragged the tomkah under, her jaws and mandibles crushing the front. He’d moved on pure instinct, seeing the metal crushing inwards. He ripped off the door, throwing it behind him. He burrowed out into the dirt as Wreav’s screams rang in his ears. The thresher tendrils were weak down here, brushing at his arms and legs as he pulled himself through the dirt. They got stronger further up, wrapping around his arms and legs, trying to drag him back down to become a morsel for Kalros.

He pulled at them, kicked them off as he broke through to the surface. His left arm throbbed, bruised from the tendrils’ harsh grip but healing quickly. There, before him was a Reaper, the strafing sounds of the turian ships distracting it. The battle had moved forward, in the fabled arena dedicated to Kalros. He pulled the tendrils off as he began jogging in closer.  The ramps of rubble didn’t stop him and as he jumped a barricade, the gong rang loudly enough for him to feel it in his bones and guts. 

Snarls from Brutes echoed across the ruins, making him unclip the shotgun from his back, turning on the ammo setting from sheer habit. The second gong came now, making his blood sing. He ran through the clouds of dust, seeing a massive human and a turian taking on four Brutes, ducking and dodging the wide swings while strafing fire. 

This was his kind of fight.

He charged in, crashing into a Brute and letting it get a faceful of burning ammo. The human male let out a whoop, rolling between the Brute’s legs and smacking something onto its rump. The gurgling howl that that followed the grenade explosion only left three more to deal with. 

Kalros’ attention on the Reaper made the battle more interesting. She launched herself at the machine, grappling with it only to be slammed up against the side of the tower. His shotgun barked out rounds as he kept the Brutes’ attention on him, letting the human and turian strike more precisely. The last Brute fell when Kalros launched herself at the Reaper from the side, wrapping around it tightly and dragging it under. His arm had taken a glancing blow, leaving a nasty looking gash visible through the armour. His suit didn’t have a med suite. Not that it mattered; he could do with some scars. 

“Hey,” the human male came over. “We’re heading back to the rendezvous point. Thanks for the assist.”

Before he could reply a tomkah came rolling in, brakes hissing as it stopped. The door popped open and Wrex could clearly be hear.

“Move it, pyjaks!”

They all got in and he found Wrex turned in the driver’s seat looking at him. 

“You survived and my idiot brood brother didn’t?” Wrex laughed as he turned back around and started up the tomkah. “Won’t Grunt be pleased to know you escaped Kalros and survived this assignment.”

The tires spun as Wrex circled around to somewhere. All he did was grunt, settling back in the seat as everyone thought looking at him was a good idea. It was only a few minutes after they started moving that a deep echoing boom was heard. Then came the sound of an explosion a few minutes after that.

As soon as the tomkah parked, the door was open and Wrex slid out first, followed by Eve. The massive human male went, then the turian. He looked down at his wound, seeing that it started looking scabby. Good. It would be a suitable battle scar one day.

He finally came out the tomkah, finding a human female a few feet away from them. She was standing atop a small pile of rubble, her hand held out as she watched the golden snow-like material drift down from the sky. It felt like snow, he had no other way to describe the sensation of how it melted and vanished on his skin. Wrex came up beside him, eyes taking in the wound. He shifted his arm, clenching a fist, earning a nod from Wrex.

“Get us back to the Hollows. I got some things to discuss with Shepard.”

He nodded, heading back into the tomkah and settling in the drivers seat. Once everyone was back in and the door closed, he headed back. It took awhile, detouring around down bridges and shifting the gears to get over the massive new piles of rubble made during Kalros’ recent activity.

When he finally parked the tomlah, everyone got out. Nearly everyone, since Shepard was still sitting there.  He had been on deployment for so long, battle after battle that he had never seen Shepard before. Grunt spoke of the human female with respect, named her Battlemaster and krantt.

Looking at her face carefully now, he realised he had been wrong. He had seen her before. Only the once.

“I am glad to see that you survived Commander Shepard.”

Her gaze snapped to him, something fierce and hard there. “We’ve never met.”

“We have. Like the time before, something about you makes me speak. You listened to me as I spoke of Okeer and my tank, my glass mother.”

She didn’t say anything for a few moment before she stated, “Korlus.”

Of course, he had his helmet on then. “You surround yourself with mighty company. I know of no other salarian to sacrifice so much for us krogan.”

“Know much of the salarians?”

“I know that science can be just as deadly as ammo and tactics,” he shrugged. “Okeer didn’t bother much with lessons before he flushed me. What I know now is earned by myself, my own strength and my own smarts.”

Shepard smiled now, small and strained. “Then honour his sacrifice.”

“If I am allowed to breed, one shall be named for him. As I would named one for you. You who is bahador.”

Confusion was clear on her face as Shepard said, “Bahador?”

Her translator must have glitched. He was silent for a moment before explained, “Honoured, I think, is your closest word. But more than that. Far more. You draw words from me, brought esteem to Grunt. You fight for Clan Urdnot, for all krogan. ... No, you are not bahador,” he studied her dirt streaked face. “You are makhlar.”

Now she was studying him, the silence stretching out. He thought she would ask what that was. If there was anyone worthy of that title, it was her. But she simply stood, eyes still fixed on him. There was curiosity there but a considering look now. 

“I can’t call you Tank-Born. What is your name?”

“I am Urdnot Jivant of Clan Urdnot.”

“Commander Shepard. Spectre. Systems Alliance.” she offered her hand and he shook it.

“I cannot name one of my brood after you, if you don’t tell me your name.” Jivant said.

Her laughter was deep, from inside her belly and burbling out. It was a surprisingly pleasing sound. He found himself grinning a bit, inordinately pleased.

“Leaving Korlus was the best thing you did. If the krogan ever -”

“Everything okay Shepard?” the turian’s head appeared in the doorway.

“Garrus, meet our friend from Korlus. He opened that door for us. His name’s Jivant.”

“Nice to meet you. Well, again, I guess.” Garrus’  mandibles widened a bit in a turian grin. “Thanks for charging in when you did, perfect distraction. You’d fit right in on the Normandy.”

“High praise,” Jivant had heard enough of Normandy’s exploits, recent and past. “Did you require something?”

“Wrex and Eve are looking for you Shepard. I said to give you a moment but they’re getting pretty insistent.”

Shepard nodded. “Be right there,” once Garrus’ head vanished she looked at Jivant once more. “Really going to name one of your brood after me?”

Jivant nodded. Shepard smiled, seemingly pleased by that. Her name followed right after.

#mass effect #headcanons #necro-om-nom-nomicon