#regulate your own temperature you piece of shit

[zibah-ho]

need my body to work properly for just one goddamn second please why must I always suffer

#oof ouch owie #zh.txt #regulate your own temperature you piece of shit #I’m ill overworked and angry give me money #kofi is zibah ho not kidding tysm

[petrichor-idyllic]

ON YOUR OWN PT. 2

MASTERLIST | MINHO MASTERLIST

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

Request for @d4n1elll4

SUMMARY: Follow up from part 1. Fem! Reader x Minho. Reader x Platonic! Gladers. Movie based fic.

I have a whole ass movie to cover here- so some scenes that aren't important to your character get brushed over. Sorry, this is long enough as is and I have another part to write.

You've escaped the Maze, and with your words of wisdom from Thomas, it's time to survive the Scorch. Which is harder than it looks. But what happens when you over estimate your abilities when no one else is around? At least, you think there isn't.

WARNINGS: Inappropriate language, awkward teenagers, more dumbass dog, some sexual tension if you squint a bit, Minho has lightning scars, WICKED being WCKD because movie.

Okay, maybe this was a bad idea.

After Thomas' advice, you went and raided the lab and went back to the Middle to get as many supplies as you could- which took an entire day in itself.

But still, that might not have been enough.

Somehow, the Scorch is even more confusing than the Maze. You have no idea where you are or what direction you're actually meant to head in. It would've been nice for Thomas to give you some directions, but it seemed like the boy was on a tight schedule.

It's been a couple of days, and your makeshift piece of wood with some rope attached that you're pulling over your shoulder, is a lot heavier with a lazy German Shepherd on it. Your arm aches and you're running out of water.

This is less than ideal.

Not to mention they call it the Scorch for a reason. The days are unbearably hot and the nights send chills through your body. But you can't stop, especially since you don't have a clue where you're going.

That doesn't mean you're coping well, though. You're exhausted, deciding to pick moving over sleep. You're dehydrated, sleep-deprived, your body hurts and has forgotten how to regulate its own temperature. You feel like you're dying.

And honestly, you might just be.

The blazing sun beats down on you the same way it destroyed half of the planet, and you're starting to regret leaving the Maze.

You're sweating, but feel cold and your head is pounding. You push through as your vision starts to be clouded by dark spots. Though, when your knees go weak and you hit the floor, your options are looking slim. In a desperate attempt, you roll onto your back, grasping for your water bottle, your hearing cuts out as no water comes from the bottle.

Your hand hits the floor as your eyes roll back.

You're one for the vultures now.

Well, not quite.

"Uh, guys?" Frypan says as the group bickers in the background. They'd just lost Winston, and Thomas is being salty about Teresa getting her memories back but not telling him about it whilst Newt and Minho fight over a water bottle. Aris hasn't said anything for the last two hours and doesn't intend on changing that anytime soon. They're definitely not your best shot, but it's all you've got. Not that you're conscious to argue.

"Guys!" He snaps, making the group behind him look at him. "Are you shanks seein' this or am I having a marriage?"

"Do you mean mirage?" Newt chuckles, making his way over to his friend, patting his shoulder as he expects to look out and find absolutely nothing from the top of their sand dune. "Holy shuck," he mumbles, his expression dropping.

"What?" Minho asks as he approaches, Thomas and Aris not far behind him, with Teresa being the last to join.

"Is that... a dog?" Teresa asks.

In the distance, your useless dog has decided to actually do something to help you- aimlessly run around the Scorch to try and find help.

Quest spotted them from a mile away and is making a beeline towards them, barking his little head off.

As the dog gets closer, it stops at the bottom of the mound of sand, and Teresa's face drops. "Holy shit. Quest?"

The boys snap to look at her.

"Quest?" Minho raises his eyebrow. "The shuck is Quest?"

"He is! That's- That's Quest! He's (Y/N)'s dog!" Without giving anymore explanation, she stumbles through the sand, nearly falling over as she rushes to the dog.

"Who the hell is (Y/N)?" Newt asks, just in general. Frypan shrugs, deciding to follow the girl with Thomas hot on his heels and Aris blindly following anyone who moves. Newt goes to join in, but he hesitates when he sees Minho's face.

It's an expression he can't quite put his finger on. It's like that one time someone pointed out that the Grievers were also probably made by the people who were feeding you- like a small piece of the puzzle just fell into place.

"Mate, you good?"

"Hm?" Minho snaps back to reality. "Yeah, I'm good- let's find out why there's a shuckin' mutt in the middle of the damn desert."

Minho starts walking towards Quest but it takes Newt a second to follow.

Something just happened in the Runner's head. And Newt's almost scared to find out what.

In truth, your name sent chills down Minho's spine and a rush of adrenaline through his body. He doesn't understand why- but it was that strange feeling when someone mentions the name of someone you have a crush on when you're not expecting it.

But he'll deal with that later.

"We have to find (Y/N)!" Teresa demands. "She'd never leave Quest on his own!"

"Who the everliving shuck is (Y/N)?" Minho asks as he strides over, looking at Thomas who simply gives him a shrug.

Teresa sighs. "She was one of us- from a Maze. Thomas lied about her dying and basically turned her Maze off- she has to be out here."

"What?" About three boys say at the same time.

Quest barks, not letting her explain further. He spins around, taking a playful stance before starting to run off in the opposite direction.

"C'mon!" Teresa shouts.

"Teresa-!" Thomas lets out a loud and frustrated groan. "We don't have time for this."

The boys feel like they're aimlessly wondering around the Scorch for about twenty minutes as they let this random dog take them on a wild goose chase. But when Teresa suddenly stops, gasping, they realise this might be more serious than they originally thought.

"No," Teresa mumbles, "No! (Y/N)! She runs down another dune, falling to her knees next to your unconscious body.

"What the shuck?" Newt mumbles.

To his surprise, Minho is actually the first to follow her (probably because he hates her guts). It's obvious that Minho is used to the solid concrete of the Maze as he fumbles over himself, the loose texture of the sand making him unbalanced.

Staring at your unconscious body, a strange wave of familiarity smacks him in the face. He knows you. At least, it feels like he does. But he has absolutely no recollection of you whatsoever.

"Minho," Teresa snaps, forcing him out of his trance, "water!" The boy fumbles, passing the ravenette a bottle as she opens your mouth, pouring some in and sitting you up more so you don't choke. She checks your pulse and your breathing. "She's alive." She confirms as the other boys join.

"We need to wait until she wakes up-"

"We need to move, Teresa," Thomas says, "we can't risk everything over this."

"Thomas is right," Newt groans. "We have to move- we can't afford to stay here."

"We can't just leave her," Teresa argues, "you saved her before, Thomas, even if you don't remember it- it was for a reason."

"She's right," Minho agrees, making everyone look at him. In all honesty, his curiosity is driving him more than anything, but the thought of leaving you makes his chest hurt and his fists ball. "We need all the help we can get- and if Teresa knows her, then we all probably did at some point. Besides, if we're gonna pretend to be good guys- this seems like a good place to start."

"Yeah, can't argue with that," Frypan sides with the Runner and then looks at Aris, who simply nods in agreement. Relief crosses both of Teresa's and Minho's faces as they've won the vote.

So, the Gladers set up camp as night starts to fall, with Teresa keeping an eye on you; Quest never leaving your side.

They also steal your food. Compensation, I guess.

You stir awake, your head pounding as you rise up. Quest immediately barks, getting everyone's attention before he starts licking your face.

"Quest, chill, bro," you mumble, trying to push the dog away.

"You're awake," Teresa says, snapping your attention to her. You blink. "You gave us a real scare."

You're lying on the sand, using someone's bag as a pillow as you're surrounded by people. Not only have you seen most of these people in your dreams, but you literally saw Thomas and Teresa on video.

What the actual fuck?

People. There's people. There are actual living people here and talking to you.

Maybe you should pass out more often.

"W-what?" You stutter out, straining to sit up.

"Take it easy," the girl soothes you, "you were out cold for quite a while."

"I-I don't understand," tears start to prick your eyes, "is this real? Am I dreaming?"

"Klunky shuckin' dream if you are," Minho says, gaining the courage to speak to you as he comes to your other side. "Here." He holds a water bottle out to you.

It's him.

Him.

He's here.

You look between him and the bottle. He's even more attractive in person and this weird crush you'd developed for someone you don't even remember speaking to puts you in an interesting situation.

You takes the drink, briefly brushing fingers for a second and it sends a spark down Minho's spine. Okay, what's happening to him here?

"Thanks," he pulls his lips into a thin line in response.

"Your dog brought us to you," Teresa explains. "Do you remember us? At all?"

You blink, considering your words very carefully so you don't sound insane. You open your mouth, but as your eyes flicker to movement, only one word leaves your mouth.

"You," Thomas is stood with his arms crossed, his eyebrows twitching. "Y-you stopped the Maze- you're the reason I escaped."

"Yeah, so I keep being told," he sighs. You tilt your head as you sit up straight.

"You don't remember?"

He shakes his head. "None of us do. Teresa got her memories back, but we didn't."

"What? Why don't you..?" Your voice trails off. "Were you guys from more Mazes?"

Minho almost feels weirdly jealous at the attention Thomas is getting from you. This makes no sense. So, he butts in.

"Me, Thomas, Teresa, Frypan and Newt were all from the same Maze," he explains each person giving you an awkward wave in turn, "and Aris is from a different one."

You look at him, your eyes becoming hollow before they come to your dog. "You guys were together?" Your voice is barely a whisper.

It's like your heart breaks in that moment. These people had each other? Why didn't you have someone? Why were you abandoned?

Minho looks at Newt for advice, who simply shrugs. Great help, thanks, Newt.

He crouches next to you. "You okay?"

You can't even look at him. "They put you guys together? Like you were a group?"

"Yeah," his eyebrows furrow, confusion taking over his expression, "there was like fifty boys in our Maze."

You turn to look at him again. "What?"

"What? What- I don't get it," he pinches his brow, "What's going on here?"

"You guys were together? And all I had was my dog?" Quest seems to sense your unease, resting his head on your crossed legs.

Minho's expression softens, he looks between Thomas and Teresa for help.

"You were on your own?" Thomas asks.

You nod. "Yeah, just me and my dumbass dog." You scoff.

As much as you tried to ignore it and pretend it didn't faze you, and that animals are better anyway, being on your own for so long killed some small part of you. And these guys didn't have to go through that?

There's a long pause. "Wait, hold on, you survived the Maze all on your own?" You look at Minho, who is staring at you like you're the closest thing he's going to get to meeting a God.

"Not like I had much choice," you give him a small smile, and he stands up, mumbling something to himself.

They start to fill you in on what happened with WCKD and that they're currently on the run, and you tell them what Thomas' past self told you.

It's obvious you've not been socially conditioned as you feel very awkward. Though, you and Aris get along pretty well since neither of you came from the Glade.

You sit in front of the fire, Quest sitting next to you as you hold your hands in front of you. You flinch slightly when Minho joins you, clearly yet to adapt to the boy's presence.

"Sorry," he mumbles, awkwardly putting his hands out to show he's no harm but not really sure how to go about that properly. He doesn't day anything else, seemingly just enjoying the warmth as you sit with your knees to your chest.

You have no idea what the appropriate way to act here is.

Do you start a conversation? Is it inappropriate to look at him? What's the right amount of eye contact? How to person good?

"I can't believe they put you in a Maze on your own," thankfully, Minho beats you to it. "You realise how insane that is, right?"

"Not really," you chuckle, "I've never known any different."

"Well, there was like fifty of us, and we're the only people that actually got out alive- and Winston, so..." He trails off, struggling to process it.

Minho spent years of his life protecting and helping the Gladers escape- but he had help. If it weren't for Thomas, Alby, Teresa, Newt, and maybe even Gally to some extent, Minho doubts he would've survived that long.

"Like I said, what choice did I have?"

"Bet it was lonely."

You pause, deciding to play it off instead since you really don't know him- even if it feels that way.

"Nah," you scoff, "I had Quest," you refer to the sleeping dog next to you. "Dumb mutt."

"That dumb mutt saved your ass today."

"Yeah, I know," you sigh. "One hell of a coincidence you guys just happened to be in the Scorch at the same time as me."

"Yeah, well, there's been a lot of coincidences recently- I mean, Thomas was only in the Glade for like three days," he laughs, "I only met the shank like a week ago."

"What? What's a shank?" You look at him, resting your head on your knees, and something about the way you look at him makes his stomach flip.

"It's uh, well-" he clears his throat, composing himself, "I don't really know. It's just like an insult, I guess."

"So, you guess have your own slang? That's kinda fun."

"Yeah, Alby would shout at us if we actually swore- he was like an old man."

"Alby?"

Minho goes quiet for a second. "Yeah, he- he was my boss, I guess. First Greenie in the Glade and he basically ran the joint. He sacrificed himself to save us."

You guess that's the benefit of being on your own- no grief. You can't attend the funerals of people you were never introduced to.

"He sounds like a good man."

Minho smiles softly. "Yeah, he was. Lost a lotta good people."

"I'm sorry you went through that," his eyes flicker to you, and you're surprised when he playfully nudges you.

"You, too."

The group decides to sleep, you included. The fire is put out and you all lie in the sand. Quest curls up next to you, and you've not fully recovered from your exhausted body, so sleep comes easy enough.

Though, Minho's wide awake. He sits on the ground, his eyes fixated on you.

"Alright," Newt groans, "what's goin' on in your shuckin' head?"

"What?" Minho looks to the blond, who's now resting on his elbows as he's lay down.

"You're actin' weird, dude- you like the new girl or some klunk?"

Minho drops his head, scoffing. "Shit, I was joking," Newt snorts when his friend doesn't respond.

"I mean, she is cute," Minho grins, turning into a chuckle when Newt's eyebrows raise.

"She looks like a corpse."

"Yeah, 'cause she nearly was one." Minho defends you before sighing. "But, no- I mean, I don't know. It's weird, she feels... familiar, almost. Like I used to know her." He hesitates. "Like we used to be close."

Newt processes this for a second. It's rare for Minho to be so unsure of himself. "Well, Teresa knows her, so I don't think that'd be that far-fetched."

"Yeah, I guess," the Runner mumbles.

"Get some sleep, shank- I ain't dealing with your grumpy ass in the morning," Newt tells him and Minho rolls his eyes, but reluctantly lies down.

None of you actually get much sleep thanks to Thomas.

"Guys! Guys!" He scrambles, shoving anyone close enough to get attacked.

"Ugh, what?" Someone responds.

"Get up! Get up! Frypan! Aris! Get up. I see something! You see that?" Thomas points off into the distance, lights flickering as the faint outline of a city skyline is just about visibly through the thick grey of dawn. You all scramble to your feet. "It's lights."

"We made it," Minho lets out a sigh of relief, which is cut short when the crackling of thunder turns you all around.

Deep grey clouds loom nearby, the darkness only broken up by blinking flashing of lightning.

"Let's go. We gotta go," Thomas says. "Come on!"

Panic sets in relatively quickly as everyone stumbles to get their bags and belongings. Not fully recovered from the previous day, you stumble, dropping some stuff from your (poor) luggage attempt.

"Shit," you hiss, dipping to grab some bags of food and water bottles.

Quest barks, and Minho turns to find you on your hands and knees, desperately trying to collect your belongings.

He grabs your arm, pulling you up. "Leave it! We'll find supplies in the city, we gotta go!"

He gives you very little choice but to go with him. He yanks you towards him, pushing you forward as you start to break into a sprint, merging with the rest of the group.

Booking it through the Scorch, you come across a parking lot with what looks to be an old factory building attached. You'll be able to escape the storm there.

That's until there's a blinding light to your left and Minho is thrown several feet, landing on the concrete with a thud.

A few of you are knocked down, you and Thomas included as ringing shatters through your skull. You groan, looking around. Thomas seems conscious, but the other boy is out cold.

You're on your feet in seconds as a strange feeling of almost heart break and pure panic takes over.

"Minho!" You shout, desperately trying to pull him up. "Help him!" You yell despite not being able to hear your own voice after being briefly deafened.

Thomas is the first to help you, and for a brief second you lock eyes. You don't know why you're crying- but you are. Tears pour down your face as your vision is blurred, but with the help of Thomas, and now Newt and Aris, you're able to get him up.

Frypan found a door into the building and is shouting you all to follow, but you're having some kind of emotional breakdown and Quest is getting in the way of your feet.

You've... never cried before?

Even back in the Maze, you never shed a tear. You just kind of got mad and hit things, and then got over it and went on with your day. Maybe it was because you never had to deal with the emotional attachments of other people, but all it took was Minho getting hurt for your tough act to crack.

Plowing into the dark room and slamming to the door behind you, Thomas tells you to put Minho down before turning on a tourch.

"Minho!" Thomas shakes his friend. The room is briefly filled with people exclusively saying his name.

"Move," you push Thomas out of the way, pressing your fingers to the unconscious boys throat, trying to find a pulse. Leaning in to check his breathing, you're startled when he suddenly groans.

Lifting his head, he makes eye contact with you and visible relief washes over him.

Oh, God, you're close. He lean back again, giving him room to breathe as he tries to process what the hell just happened?

"What happened?" He grumbles.

"You got struck by lightning." Newt says, bluntly after a pause.

"Oh."

The boys chuckle amongst themselves and you shake your head.

For some reason, you playfully punch Minho in the arm as he gets him. "You nearly gave me a fuckin' heart attack."

It's a simple gesture, really, but it's unusual for someone you've just met- but it's almost natural, like you've known him your whole life. I guess in a way, it does feel like that for you.

"Sorry," he mumbles, chuckling as he's fully on his feet. "Thanks, guys." He grins at his friends, who give a mix of rolling eyes and friendly pats.

"Hey," Teresa gets the group's attention, clearly not as concerned about Minho's well-being as the others, "what's that smell?"

She turns her light on and is nearly immediately attacked by a Crank. She jumps back, screaming, but the Crank hits the floor, restrained by chains, in its desperate attempt to get to her.

"Behind you!" Teresa yells and you're suddenly yanked back again. Minho pulls you behind him as Quest stands in front of him, seemingly protecting him, too.

Pure chaos ensues as the group screams and shouts, and between the blur of lights and being stuck in the middle of the huddle, you can't really make out what's going on.

"I see you've met our guard dogs," an unfamiliar voice says as yellow light bleeds into the room. Peaking from behind Minho, you watch a short-haired girl make her way through the crowd of chained up Cranks.

"Stay back!" Minho shouts, his arm coming out in front of you as you stand on your tip-toes, unintentially pressing your front into his back.

Minho is still a dumb hormonal teenage boy, so that's definitely grounds for his brain to go fuzzy- but he can't afford to get distracted here.

"You guys look like shit," the girl says, almost jokingly. "Come on. Follow me. Unless you wanna stay here with them."

You all exchange concerned glances, but no one moves as the girl walks off.

"For fuck's sake," you mumble, pushing through the boys. "We can't stay here- c'mon."

Your independence comes out as you take the lead, Thomas jogging to catch up to you but careful to avoid being shredded by what used to be people. Your options are slim, and you know who you'd rather deal with- they just decided to follow.

The girl leads you in the factory, which looks like it's been turned into a refugee camp.

"Come on, keep up." She instructs. "Jorge wants to meet you."

Leading you up some stairs, Thomas finally speaks. "Who's Jorge?" He pushes in front of you, Teresa by his side. So you fall back, walking between Minho and Newt, with Frypan next to Newt.

"You'll see. No one's come out of the Scorch in a long time- you've just got him curious." She pauses, looking over her shoulder to look Thomas up and down. "Me, too."

You look at Minho, who smirks slightly as he looks back at you before both of you look at Newt, who is wearing a similar expression- especially when Teresa's face drops. The three of you have to try not to laugh. This could be funny, and apparently Thomas is a chick magnet.

I mean, look at him; you can't really blame them. (Don't tell Minho).

But the amusement is short-lived when Newt looks behind him and there's a group of men, looking like they want to eat you all alive. Minho grabs your wrist, pulling you in front of him just a little bit as Quest keeps close to your side.

"Anyone else starting to get a bad feeling about this place?" Newt asks, noticing the way Minho's keeping you close and the way you all just interacted sending alarm bells off in his head. Maybe Minho wasn't tripping before- you do feel familiar.

"Let's just hear him out," Thomas looks back at you guys, "see what he has to say."

Going up another set of industrial stairs, you entire a large office room with a giant dome window that is covered in rust.

"Jorge," the girl gets the attention of a man fiddling with a radio, "They're here." She sits on an old sofa and appears bored whilst Jorge mutters to himself.

He turns around, hands on his hips and sighing. "Do you ever get the feeling the whole world's against you?"

You all exchange glances before he continues.

"Three questions: where did you come from? Where are you going? How can I profit?" No one says anything as you realise Newt was probably right. "Don't all answer at once."

"We're headed for the mountains," Thomas offers an answer, "looking for the Right Arm."

The men behind you snicker and even Jorge scoffs, taking a sip from his drink.

"Looking for ghosts, you mean. Question number two; where did you come from?"

"That's our business," Minho spits out as you stand by his side.

Jorge shrugs, and it's probably a signal because you're all immediately restrained.

Thomas is screaming for them to get off of him as the girl grabs a device, forcing his head down and scanning the back of his neck. "Shut up, you big baby."

The machine beeps. "What is that?" Thomas manages to shove her away, his breathing laboured.

The girl looks at the device and then at Jorge, who puts his glasses on. "You were right," she says.

"Right about what?" You snap, your hands being held behind your back by a guy twice your size as another one pins Quest's head to the floor. "What's she talking about?"

You get out of the man's grip, but that's because they all seem to let you all go- even Quest, who you're quick to grab and force to your side.

You have the urge to protect these guys, and you've survived the Maze on your own- so you don't see these guys as a real threat.

"I'm sorry, hermano," Jorge scoffs, "looks like you're tagged- you came from WCKD. Which means you're very valuable."

And that is how you ended up hanging from a ceiling, your dog in a cage made of chicken wire on the side, and a looming pit of darkness beneath you.

"Good plan, Thomas," Minho's sarcasm echos through the room, "just hear what the man has to say. Really working out for us."

"Shut up, Minho," Thomas groans as you chuckle. "Maybe a can reach the rope."

You watch in some form of second-hand embarrassment as Thomas fails to fold on himself and looks like a poor excuse for a gymnast before giving up.

"Enjoying the view?" Jorge approaches.

"The hell do you want?" Thomas is clearly done with his shit and you can't blame him.

"That is the question," he scoffs. "My men wants to sell you back to WCKD. Life has taught them to think small. I'm not like that. Something tells me that you're not either."

"Is it the blood rushing to my head, or is this shank not making any sense?"

"Minho," you warn him, "Shut up, man."

"Tell me what you know about the Right Arm," Jorge continues like you guys never spoke.

"I thought you said they were ghosts," Newt butts in, earning a glare.

"I happen to believe in ghosts. Especially when I hear them chattering on the airwaves." He moves over to a lever, resting his hand on it. "You tell me what you know, and maybe we can make a deal."

"We- we don't know much," Thomas starts, but he gets little chance to continue when you all drop several feet. "Okay! Okay! Alright! They're hiding in the mountains. And they attacked WCKD. They got out a buncha kids. That's it, that's all we know!"

The man goes to speak, only to be cut off when someone else appears.

"Yo, Jorge, what's going on?"

"Me and my new friends were just getting acquainted- we're done now."

"Hey, wait- you're not gonna help us?" Thomas sounds desperate.

"Don't worry, hermano, we'll get you back to where you belong." He walks away, shouting "hang tight" over his shoulder.

And you're left hanging.

Quite literally.

So, you kind of make a plan- shove Teresa as hard as you collectively can so she can reach the side. Which mainly consists of Minho struggling and you being bumped into.

Though eventually, you manage.

It's a small victory that doesn't last long when you hear a voice over a loud speaker, accompanied by a helicopter. The group seems to recognise this and goes into panic mode.

Through trail and error, you all manage to get pulled to the sides, and this guy monologues in the background. You also get your dog free.

"Okay, let's go! Let's go!" Thomas' favourite phrase as you go to escape, only to be blocked by the guy from before. "We're not tryna cause any trouble, okay? We just gotta get outta here."

"Is that so? Janson, I got 'em for ya, I'll being them down- don't shoot us. Come on, let's go."

You're standing next to Thomas as the man holds a rifle in front of him. You have an idea, and it's dumb but as you look at Thomas, you realise these guys have probably survived on dumb ideas.

"I said, let's go."

You grab the barrel of the gun, a bullet flying out and narrowly missing you as you get into a wresting match. Slamming your head into his nose, there's a cracking noise as he falls backwards.

He gets to his feet relatively quickly, gun still in hand, aiming to kill.

And a gunshot goes off.

But not from him.

He falls to the floor with a thud, the girl from before standing behind him, holding a pistol. All of you stare at her.

"Okay, come on. Come on! Let's go!"

You, once again, take the lead, following the girl through the factory. "Sorry," you mumble, I didn't catch your name."

"Brenda," she says, simply. "You?"

"(Y/N)."

"It's nice to meet you, (Y/N)- you've got fire, kid, I like it."

"Thanks?"

"Your dog's also cute."

"Oh, thanks."

She leads you to Jorge, who has a lot of bags and quickly ushers you all through the building. Shoving a window open, he reveals a zip line.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," Frypan mumbles and you have to agree with him.

Jorge gives some words about getting you to the Right Arm but you're too busy worrying about getting Quest on a zip line.

"Follow me!" He shouts, whizzing off to another building.

"Okay, come on!" Brenda shouts, yanking another piece of rope.

"Wait, what about-?"

"I got him," Minho threads his legs though the loop, and then leans down to pick up the dog with a surprising amount of ease. Quest isn't exactly small. He hooks him under one arm and uses the other to hold on as Brenda pushes him forward.

Aris goes next, then you follow.

"Holy shit!" You shout as you cling on for dear life, not having time for the same safety precautions that Minho did with the loop trick.

"I got you!" Minho shouts as you draw closer. "I got you!"

You practically collide into his open arms as he steadies you, letting go of the rope, you throw your arms around him. Squealing slightly and stumbling, you both somehow manage to end up on your feet.

"You okay?" He asks as you pull away, his hands coming to your shoulders.

You swallow. "Yeah, yeah I'm okay- I'm okay."

He nods. "Okay." Your eyes lock for a second, and all you want to do is throw your arms back around him and let him comfort you about this stressful situation.

Quest barks, jumping up on you and distracting you from the boy. Though, you glance at Minho again. "Thank you." You're clearly referring to the dog, who you might actually die without.

"Don't worry about it."

Teresa's screams bring back to reality for a second time. Both you and Minho go to grab her.

"You okay?" You let her grab at you but she doesn't say anything, immediately turning around.

"No," she mumbles.

"What's wrong?" Newt asks, stepping forward after witnessing whatever just happened with you and his best friend.

"Brenda ran off and Thomas went after her-"

"What?" Jorge steps forward. "Shit."

"Uh, guys," Frypan leans out of a different window, pointing down as WCKD's guards swarm the building.

"Shit," Jorge says again before collecting himself. "Okay, we need to go."

"What?" Newt steps in. "We can't just leave them!"

"We have no choice, hermano- Brenda knows her way out."

"We can't leave Thomas," Teresa steps in front of the man, blocking him from moving.

"Brenda will keep him safe, we can't stay here or-"

He's cut off by the sound of a massive explosion. You shield your face as chunks of debris fly through the open window. The building is turned into rubble and flames, smoking billowing into the night sky.

"What did you do?" Teresa shouts, snapping her attention back to Jorge. "What did you do?!"

"They'll be fine- we'll find them in the city. We need to go- now!"

Jorge rushes off, giving you all very little choice but to follow him.

Making your way through the building, the WCKD personnel are too busy dealing with the burning building to even notice you slipping away.

I mean, they still think you're dead so that's probably a good thing.

You keep running for what feels like miles until you end up in the city. It's almost deserted, towering abandoned buildings trap you in and faint chattering beyond what you can see. It's unnerving, but you stay close.

"We have to find Marcus- he's an old friend that used to have connections to the Right Arm. Brenda will be looking for him as well. We find him, we find your friend."

"Wait, Marcus?" You jog to catch up with Jorge. "Thomas told me to find him."

"Thomas told you that? So, he didn't tell me everything."

"No, WCKD took his memories- he told me in a recording, he doesn't remember anything about it."

Jorge stops, raising his eyebrow as he looks at you, before he hums. "Okay, hermano, we'll set up came for the night. There's no point trying to find Marcus now."

You all reluctantly agree, picking a spot under the damaged bridge, you take a breather.

You sit with Quest, leaning against the wall behind you. You tried talking to Teresa, but you didn't get anywhere with that. She's been acting weird, but you can assume that's because Thomas is currently missing with some random girl.

Minho walks over to you, standing in front of you. "How you feeling? You've been quiet."

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" You scoff. "You got knocked out by pure electricity like three hours ago."

"Eh, bit achey, but I'll live." He stretches and you rolls your eyes, but your eyes lock on his exposed mid-drift. Not because it's hot (well, it is but that's not it) but because of the spider web like lines stretching across his lower stomach.

"Uh, Minho?" You blink as he drops his arms again.

"Yeah?"

"Lift your shirt up."

He freezes, blinking at you. It doesn't help that the other boys are within earshot. "What?"

"Just..." You stand up, "just lift your shirt up- I think I'm tripping."

He furrows his brows, but does as he's told.

Exposing his abs, he reveals his chiselled form, but also the pinkish, exposed vein patterns that curl from around his back and come around the edges of his front, some cutting completely across his skin. Which is what you noticed.

"What the shuck?" He mumbles. In a fumble, he dumps his jacket off and yanks his shirt over his head.

He turns around, exposing the larger and more feathered patterns that stretch across his back.

"Holy shit," mindlessly, you move towards him, touching his back and making him jump. "Dude- you've got lightning scars."

Traving your finger down his spine, goosebumps cover his body and his arm hair pricks up.

"I- you, I- what?" He clears his throat. "Lightning scars?" He turns to face you, looking down as he examines his own arms. "Shit."

He looks over at his friends, who are yet to move. Frypan, Newt and Teresa seem more interested in how this pans out than their friend being permanently scarred. Jorge and Aris don't want to be involved.

"They look kinda cool," he looks back up at you, starting to feel flustered under your admiring gaze as you stare at his body.

"I, uh- thanks?" You snort, sitting back down.

Minho puts his shirt back on, but doesn't bother with the jacket. He flops next to you, groaning.

"Well, shuck it- guess that's something I have to deal with now."

"As long as they don't hurt, they're not really a problem though, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

You settle into a comfortable silence, the other's start to go to sleep, but neither of you really make an attempt to. It's smart for someone to stay awake anyway, and you'd rather not do it on your own.

"Okay," Minho clears his throat after a while, finally gaining some courage after thinking about it for so long, "this is gonna sound weird, okay?"

You furrow your brows, but nod. "Okay."

"Okay, so, I uh, I think... I know you." You blankly look at him. "Yeah, I know, I don't get it, but you feel... familiar. I just, I feel like I know you, like we're close, in some way." His head falls into his hands. "The shuck am I even saying?"

"I used to have dreams about you." You state pretty bluntly. "Well, memories, I guess." If you're going to be honest, this might as well be the time. Especially since Minho is being open with you.

"What? What do you mean?"

"We were... friends? I guess. I don't really know. But I'd have these dreams about you, and the others and we'd be in this lab. All of it was pretty mundane and nothing really of note- you were just in pretty much all of them. Half of the time we were just chilling, or playing some game or talking about something." You shrug. "I guess my memory wipe didn't work as well as other people's."

"That's..."

"Weird, right?"

"Yeah," he scoffs, "I didn't even have any memory-dream-things. It's just a feeling. I can't explain it."

Another round of silence settles, and you laugh to yourself, making him give you a puzzled look. "I think I used to have a crush on you."

He blinks at you.

Why the fuck did you say that? Oh, yes, very subtle- like you totally don't still have a weird crush on him.

A grin spreads across his face.

"You had a crush on me?" You face starts to burn.

"Well, I uh, I think so- I mean I could feel things in those dreams- wait, no, not feel things that sounds weird. I just mean I could feel my last self's feelings, so I could feel my own feelings, I guess. That makes no sense, I uh- I'm not weird, I promise."

He barks a laugh, shaking his head. "That's cute."

"Shut up," you playfully shove him.

"Nah, it is." He smiles at you. "So, you still got a thing for me or...?" You shove him again, harder this time.

"Dude, shut up."

"I'm only asking."

"Why do you wanna know?"

"'Cause I do."

You hesitate, feeling your face grow redder. You shrug. "I uh, I don't know- I mean, you're hot, dude. But I don't even know who I am, yanno?"

"Yeah, I get you," he pauses, "so you think I'm hot?"

"Bro," he snorts again.

"Look, I don't think it really matters if we know who we are- but if we know how we feel, then that's as close as I think we're ever gonna get. I mean, we've got this far, right?"

He stares off into the city, internally dealing with these feelings himself.

You shift slightly, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. Minho freezes before turning to look at you. "What was that for?"

"You're right. And thank you, for looking out for me I guess. It's nice not having to be on my own and fend for myself for a change."

A soft smile creeps across his face. "So, you do still have a thing for me, then?"

"Shut up," it comes out as more a mutter than anything else as his hand comes up to your face.

"I'll take that as a yes," his nose brushes against yours. You lean forward, kissing him. It's a sweet kiss and it doesn't last very long.

You pull away, resting your head on his shoulder. For the first time ever, you feel actually kind of content.

"Oi, lovebirds, wake up," Jorge kicks you awake.

You didn't even realise that you'd fallen asleep, but you're both sat upright against the wall, your head still on Minho's shoulder, his head resting on top of yours and Quest sprawled across your outstretched legs.

You groan, your movement stirring Minho awake too.

"We gotta move, hermano, get up." You and Minho exchange glares before you make Quest move, getting up and offering Minho a hand.

You're on the move fairly quickly. You walk with Teresa and Aris, chuckling to yourself as you listen to Frypan and Newt tease Minho about you.

Eventually, you reach a building. It looks like a party that was in full swing about an hour ago, but now half the people are passed out and the other half are slurring their words and looking very lost.

All of you creep into the room, and you spot Brenda, who is trying to wake up an unconscious Thomas.

"Uh, Jorge?" He looks at you, and you vaguely point in the general direction.

Brenda and Jorge reunite and he instructs Brenda to take you all upstairs, Minho, Newt and Frypan having to carry Thomas.

And Jorge said he had to deal with something and would meet you up there.

You, however, did not expect him to return with a beaten up bloodied stranger that he tied to a chair.

Who is Marcus, apparently.

You leave Jorge to deal with that and join Minho and Newt as they watch Teresa caress Thomas' face.

They exchange glances. "How romantic," Minho whispers, sending Newt into a fit of repressed giggles. You elbow him. "What?" He grins at you.

"Don't be dick."

"What? It is romantic." You give him a deadpan expression. "You don't want me to gently stroke your face?"

"Try it and I will bite you."

"Please don't."

"Hey, hey, you're okay," Teresa says, bringing your attention back to Thomas as he rises up, groaning. "Hi," she smiles, "we have to stop meeting like this."

And suddenly you understand why they were making fun of her.

Minho walks over, leaning over Teresa. "Welcome back, you ugly shank."

Thomas gets up, processing the scene in front of him as he joins you and Newt. "Looks like you've been having fun," the blond boy says.

You walk over to Minho, taking no interest in the violence and honestly being pleased you don't have to deal with this on your own- like the original plan when you escaped.

Minho casually puts his arm around your waist, pulling you closer. Apparently, he has no problem with PDA. "You really think this guy knows where the Right Arm is?" He asks you and you shrug.

"It's not like we have any other option, really."

He hums in response. "I guess."

You all cringe as you watch Jorge give Marcus a piece of his mind, resulting in him kicking the man in the chest, sending him flying and stealing his car keys.

So, you ended up in some random man's career driving into the mountains. You, Minho and Frypan got into a massive fight about riding shot gun, so much so that you missed Newt taking the seat before any of you got the chance.

So, obviously you then got into an argument about who got to sit next to the window.

Minho won.

And you ended up sitting between him and Aris, with Thomas, Teresa and Brenda in the very back. Which seemed very awkward and you felt bad for Frypan- who also ended up there.

Quest decided to sit on Minho so he could stick his head out of the window. Minho regretted his decision pretty quick after that.

You were thriving, however.

The drive is surprisingly peaceful, and it gives you the opportunity to talk to Aris more.

Though, when the car slows down due to a pile of vehicles in the road, none of you really have to say anything when you get out. Silently walking through the graveyard of transport, it becomes apparent that driving anywhere past this point is unlikely.

Then the gun shots start.

You dive behind a car with Minho and Newt as the group lets out numerous shouts along the lines of "get down" and "take cover".

"Does anyone know where those bloody shots came from?" Newt shouts once it's confirmed you're all okay.

"You okay?" Minho asks you, his voice low as he pets Quest. You nod in response as he take your hand into his.

Another round of gunfire.

"Everybody! Get set to run back to the truck! And cover your ears!" Jorge shouts, making the three of you look at each other. Well, that can't be good.

Two girls appear, forcing Thomas to drop whatever weapon he has and making you all get to your feet, shouting demands at you.

That's until they recognise Aris. You lean the girls are called Harriet and Sonya, and they have a nice reunion that leaves you all confused.

It's been a weird few days.

"Uh.. what's happening?" Minho asks for you all.

"We were in the Maze together," Aris explains.

Harriet whistles before shouting. "We're clear, guys! Come on out!"

People start to appear at the mountain tops, and before you know it, you're following these two girls through the mountains.

You get into another set of cars as they take you to the Right Arm base, which is a pretty big camp.

Harriet and Sonya give you all a run down of what's going on here- which is when you meet Vince.

He seems skeptical at first, which gets ten times worse when Brenda collapses and he threatens to shoot her. Though, a lady comes through revealing that Thomas actually released the location of all WCKD locations to the Right Arm.

So, she takes Thomas and Brenda away to give her a Flare buffer.

You stick with the boys, since you don't know anyone else, and end up chilling with them on a hill. Teresa vanishes and Aris goes to catch up with Harriet and Sonya.

"So," Frypan clears his throat as you sit on the ground, playing with Quest as he tries to get a stick you've found, "are you two like... together?"

Both you and Minho pause, looking at each other. And then, in sync, you both shrug, which then causes a wave of laughter.

"Do you wanna be together? We didn't exactly have that conversation," he asks you.

"Sure," you says simply.

"Cool," he turns to Frypan and grins, "I've got a shuckin' girlfriend."

Newt snorts. "We've been out of the Glade for a couple of days and you've bagged a girl?"

"What can I say? I'm just smooth."

"You're full of shit, Minho," you say, making the boys laugh.

"What? I am smooth."

"You almost had a panic attack when I touched your back."

The Gladers lose it. They're literally crying laughing as Minho desperately tries to defend himself.

The conversation progresses naturally, and it's moments like these that you wish you could've had in the Maze. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad then.

After a bit, Thomas finds you.

"I wish Alby could've seen all this," Newt says, having a sentimental moment.

"And Winston," Frypan adds.

"And Chuck." Thomas says as he looks down at a small wooden figure.

"He'd be proud of you, yanno, Tommy," Newt gives his friend a reassuring smile.

Frypan shouts Aris, who waves back, making you smile. "I kinda like that kid."

"Yeah," Minho says sarcastically, "still don't trust him though." You playfully shove him before he throws an arm over your shoulder, making Thomas and Newt smirk at each other.

It isn't every day they get to see Minho actually happy.

Thomas goes off to find Teresa, leaving you all to your own company once again as darkness starts to fall.

That's when it goes wrong.

You watch as Quest's ear perk up, making you look into the sky as you hear the buzzing of helicopters.

"Uh, guys," you stand up, the boys doing the same as one of them flies towards camp.

"(Y/N)! Get down!" Minho dives into you as a missile strikes the camp, sending fire and debris everywhere.

You scramble back to your feet. Watching the suffering and chaos unfolding, your legs move beneath you- these people need help.

"(Y/N)- shit!" Minho and the others follow you, running down the hill and joining Vince as he shoots from a machine gun.

You send Quest away, you trained him in the Maze to hide if needed- and if you don't get out of this, he could probably survive for months on the food left.

He passes Minho a gun, who is actually surprisingly capable of using it. Harriet also gives you a weapon, and you start shooting, too.

"Nice shot, babe."

"We are not going to be one of those couples that calls each other babe."

"Noted."

"Look out!" Newt shouts before a granade goes off, electricity completely paralysing you.

You're rounded up in the centre like cattle, forced on your knees in a line as a guard scans people's necks.

"A5, A6, A7," he scans your neck, pausing. "Uh, Sir?"

"What?" The silver haired man, who you're assuming is Janson, responds.

"This just says... X?"

Janson looks at the guard before his gaze falls to you.

"Well, (Y/N), aren't you meant to be dead?"

"Bet you'd like that, eh?" He grimaces.

The guard confirms that they'd rounded up pretty much everyone, and then Janson asks the question. "Where's Thomas?"

"Right here."

Thomas approaches with his arms up, and is swiftly punched in the stomach and forced to join the rest of you.

"Why didn't you run?" Minho asks him as you sit between the boys.

"I'm tired of running."

You watch as a Berg flies over head, its bright lights blinding you as it comes to land. The doors open, revealing a group of guards and Ava Paige.

She stops to talk to Janson, and then they start forcing people onto the Berg.

She comes to talk to Thomas, and then Teresa joins her side.

"What the hell?" Frypan says. "Teresa?"

"Wait, what's going on?" Newt asks.

"She's with them," Thomas explains bluntly, his voice full of pain as Minho looks at you.

You swallow. The boys would've never found you if Teresa hadn't have gone out of her way to save you.

"Since when?" Minho asks.

"Oh," Janson butts in, "Teresa's always had an evolved appreciation of the greater good. Since we restored her memories, it was only a matter of time."

"I'm sorry," she says, "I has no choice. This is the only way- we have to find a cure."

"She's right. This is all just a means to an end. You used to understand that, Thomas. No matter what you think of me, I am not a monster; I'm a doctor I swore an oath to find a cure. No matter the cost. I just need more time."

"More blood," the woman from before says from behind you.

"Hello, Mary," Ava greets her, "I hoped we'd meet again. I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

"I'm sorry about a lot of things, too- but not this. At least my conscience is clear."

"So is mine."

A gunshot rings out as a bullet flies into Mary, leaving Vince screaming and grasping at her. Ava commands that people move as Janson puts his gun away.

Then Thomas elbows a guard in the face and pulls out a bomb.

Everyone goes into panic mode, with Teresa begging him to stop. "Thomas, please stop. I made a deal with them, they promised we'd be safe. All of us."

"And I'm supposed to trust you now?"

"It's true- it was her only condition." Ava interjects. She continues to try and convince him, with Janson even joining in.

But you'd rather die here than go with them. Moving towards the boy, the others follow.

"We're with you, Thomas," Newt says.

"Do it, Thomas," Minho says as he slips his fingers between yours.

"We're ready," Frypan agrees and Thomas looks at you.

You nod.

"We're not going back there, it's the only way."

Ava screams Thomas' name as he goes to press the trigger, only the be stopped by a loud beeping noise.

A truck slams into the side of one of the helicopters, sending debris flying as you all dive to the floor.

In the truck, Quest is with Jorge. So, two treats for Quest for getting help again, I guess.

A guard goes to attack Thomas and he lets off the explosive, diving to safety before getting knocked by Janson.

Who is promptly shot down by Brenda.

You all scramble, Minho finding a gun as you retreat to safety. Hiding behind a box, Minho stands guard.

And then he's shot. The shock of the Launcher leaves him defenseless.

"Minho!" You scream, both you and Thomas trying to get to the boy as he's dragged away, whilst the Gladers try and hold you back and keep you safe.

You're dragged backwards, watching them as they take Minho with them and the doors of the Berg closing, with him inside.

Gone.

The real damage is shown when morning comes.

The camp is destroyed and Vince makes plans to move you all to the Safe Haven.

You sit with Quest, listening in.

"I'm not going with you," you state.

"What?" Vince asks you.

"I'm going to find Minho- I've dealt with worse shit on my own. I'm going after him."

"She's right," Thomas nods at you. "I made a promise to Minho that I wouldn't leave him behind, I'm going after him, too."

The others try and talk you down, but it doesn't work, Jorge saying it's like suicide.

But Thomas has he mind made up, and so do you.

You're going to get him, even if it's on your own.

Bro omg this took so long. Ik the pacing is probably completely wack, but there were scenes that writing them fully out would take up even more space and my tumblr is already bugging out over this.

Part three should be out at some point soon, but we shall see if I stick to that.

I hope you kind of enjoyed lmao :)

#🌿 petri tmr minho #🌿 petri writes #🌿 petri writes tmr #🍃 petri tmr #tmr fanfiction #tmr minho #minho the maze runner #minho tmr #tmr imagines #minho tmr x reader #minho maze runner #the maze runner

[gweeistermybeloved]

wip Wednesday #1!!

t4t komahina won,, so here it is!! all of this is the first draft so it's a bit rough,, but I might remake this one if it's popular

plus I have another t4t oneshot I'm working on,, I will post that one eventually

slight warning for internalized homophobia

Hinata huffed, tightness straining across his chest. His shirt wasn’t helping the feeling, damp and rough against his skin. God, he was getting dizzy–

Fuck.

Hinata lifted the bar one last time, setting it on the rack with a sharp clang. He felt disgusting, but he wasn't even halfway through his usual workout. All in all, he had to finish twelve more reps.

“Great job, Komaeda!” 

Nidai’s voice rang throughout the weight room. Hinata froze and sat up, hurriedly adjusting his shirt. Hinata fixed it right as Nidai ran around the corner, laughing loudly.

“Hinata! What brings you here?!” Nidai grinned, popping his knuckles. “Were you planning to join our training routine?”

“No, I just decided to work out. Sometimes you just feel like it, you know?” Hinata breathed out slowly, trying to regulate his heart rate.

“Of course! Exercise is great for you!”

Komaeda walked into the room right as Nidai struck a pose, nearly smacking him in the face.

It's fine, obviously, since they were both – Hinata screwed his eyes shut, hands tightening against the chair. He couldn't even bring himself to say it. Surely that's what it was, right? He couldn't be a boy, no matter how comfortable and light he felt while dressing to look more masculine. And Komaeda… well, Hinata wasn't sure. What was he? Hinata knew that Komaeda used he/him pronouns, but what…?

Shit, this is wrong. I can't think like that.

After a moment of silence, Hinata spoke.

“Well,” he started, voice cracking awkwardly. “I should probably ask you something.”

“Mm?” Komaeda didn't look up from his book. “What is it?”

“Firat, can I have your attention for once?” 

“Why should I give you even a fraction of it?” He flipped a page, nose twitching. “Why would I give you anything?”

Komaeda tucked a piece of hair behind his ear, almost delicately. It was nearly ironic. Komaeda, being delicate? Hinata knew better than anyone about just how much Komaeda was willing to do for the things he believed in. 

“This is serious.” Hinata scowled and forcefully slammed Komaeda's book shut. “We need to talk.”

“I need you to shut up, Hinata.”

Hinata gestured towards Komaeda. “What exactly are you?”

“Compared to you I'm nearly a god, but in the grand scheme of things I'm merely a pathetic worm. To put it simply, you're below one of the worst people in–”

Hinata waved his hand, flicking Komaeda in the arm lightly. Komaeda hissed and smacked him back.

“That's not what I'm talking about, Komaeda. I mean, what gender are you?”

“Oh.” Komaeda stopped and looked at him, pursing his lips. “Why does it matter?”

“You keep– stop responding with that! I'm not going to force you to tell me but I want something, a ‘I don't want to talk about it,' or anything else, please.” Hinata breathed out a heavy sigh between his teeth.

“‘Please?’” Komaeda smirked, reaching for his book again. “I didn't expect you to start begging.”

Komaeda flipped back to his page, settling into the cushions with a smile. Hinata obviously couldn't get anything else out of him, so he did the same and picked up his own textbook.

Aside from the terrible start, it was a nice day. The winter air was still trying to creep in through the windows, but the library held fast. It always managed to stay exactly the same temperature throughout every season, but was reserved mainly for the ultimates. Hinata’s money was probably being funneled into it. The thought made his anger flare.

Eventually, finally, Komaeda spoke.

“It’s really not my right to tell you, but I'm a trans guy.”

“You are?” Hinata looked at him, surprised. “You, uh, didn't have to tell me that you're trans, you could've said you're a guy, but I'm glad you trust me with that. A lot of people act strange once they know, but I promise I won't.”

“I got the surgery too, which I'm still upset about. It was a terribly selfish act and I had no right to indulge in that.” Komaeda continued, talking without regard for Hinata’s own words.

“Komaeda.” Hinata stared the man down, resisting the urge to shove his book down again. “Getting top surgery isn't a crime. It's good that you chose to take care of yourself.”

“Coincidentally, a surge of bad luck was enough to teach me a lesson! I was hit by a truck the very next day.” Komeada flipped a page in his book, face perfectly calm. “I broke three ribs and cracked my left tibia. It's one of the reasons I struggle with walking nowadays.”

“...Holy shit, what do I even–”

“So, are you happy now? Getting an ultimate to spill his life story?”

“Yes, I'm obviously glad I know what your gender is. Can you promise me something?”

Komaeda sighed. “I can't promise you anything, but tell me anyway.”

“...Fine. I’m trans too, Komaeda.”

The room went dead quiet, shadowed by the fact that they were the only ones in the library. Komaeda looked confused– curious, maybe? Hinata looked away, directing his attention to his book. His fingers dug into the pages, trembling. 

“I couldn't have deduced that if I tried, Hinata.” Komaeda kept his gaze steady, paying attention for once in his life. “I really could've sworn you were a cis man.”

“Oh.” Hinata smiled shakily, feeling warmth bloom in his chest. “You too. You've always seemed like some sort of fairy, I've never been able to tell what your gender was.”

“Fairy…” Komaeda trailed off. “I've never heard that before.”

“Well, now you have. Congratulations.” Hinata responded with a dry smile. His phone buzzed and he checked it, thumbing over the faint cracks in the screen. It was getting dark, and curfew was drawing uncomfortably near. 

He stood up, bones popping as he gathered his materials. He shoved his books back into his bag and stood, but Komaeda grabbed his arm, squeezing it with a strange sort of strength.

“Before you go,” Komaeda breathed out. “I appreciate you telling me this.”

“Yeah, it's no problem.”

Probably. God only knows what Komaeda might do with this.

Hinata yanked his arm out of Komaeda's grasp, fuming silently.

“Goodbye, Hinata. Stay safe!” Komaeda chimed happily, waving his hand. “Try not to get beaten by the guards again!”

Hinata grit his teeth and walked off, pointedly trying to ignore the feeling of Komaeda’s eyes on his back.

#danganronpa #sdr2 #nagito komaeda #komahina #hajime hinata #t4t

[eddiessidegirl]

so today ended on a shitty note

four piece of shit frat boy types got on the bus with their one pick-me girl friend and one of them had to sit next to me (oh no the horror 🙄) and they started complaining about something and one of them says (about their female friend) “well she’s from switzerland she can’t help it” and then the guy next to me motions to me and says “not her, her”. i’m going to assume they were talking about b.o of some kind but like i legit don’t smell anything other than my deodorant (which is vanilla). and i know it’s not my shoes cause i just washed those things like a week ago. so i’m assuming they mistook their own smell for me. but i was so embarrassed and i could hear them over my podcast through my noise cancelling headphones. thank god i had only one stop to go i was just about to break into tears. i thought about smacking him with my purse but decided not to get banned from transit. i hate people but men like that in particular. like you could have sat behind the bus driver. also it’s SUMMER people sweat. it’s called your body regulating its temperature to stay cool.

#personal post #eddiessidegirl #txt post

[gethighithefloor]

Summer is your worst season.

Let’s start with the basics: heat. It’s too damn hot no matter where you go, from the beach to your bed beside the fan, or the river that runs alongside your apartment. The medications that make you sane and functional take away more than your sex drive: they take your body’s own ability to regulate its temperature.

No more days of walking outside in a black hoodie, not a drop of sweat on you. High school seems like a cool, distant memory. Maybe it’s not just the meds, but the climbing temperatures and erratic weather patterns as well. Or both.

But due to this your body always hurts, you’re always sticky with sweat, and phantom pains buzz around your old surgery site. You feel like you can’t walk too much or you’ll pass out from the heat. It saps you of energy and patience, making it second, close first, for losing friends.

What they don’t understand is you teach small children for eight hours a day in unconditional classrooms. Their little bodies radiate heat, especially after recess and their hair is dripping with sweat. This is the season you repeatedly almost pass out, especially when you have your period, and have to stumble to the hallways before collapsing. They don’t understand that after shaping your body into A B C’s and singing and running around, you’re exhausted and at your limit.

Speaking of heat, here’s the next reason: your body. Once thin and light, you’re now at your heaviest, teetering the line between ‘normal weight’ and ‘overweight’ depending on the BMI chart. You’ve exchanged bikinis for one pieces, now big shirts and skirts that are waterproof or that you don’t mind getting salt water on. At least this is the season you eat the least, because food in the heat makes you sick.

Sweat clogs pores and your back is dotted with acne from it. Same under and between your boobs. Bugs are back and bite, leaving you to wonder: fuck are they mites again, or just because I sat in the grass the other day?

You feel like a beached whale dotted with barnacles, bloated and tired and ready to explode. Spill your guts everywhere, in the sand, in the ocean, on onlookers and cars and streets. Dye it all red, like your face after walking home in 90 degree weather.

Last but not least: trauma.

Apparently your body doesn’t give a shit that you spend upwards of $1,000 on therapy a year. The conclusions your brain has reached over 5 years of agonizing conversations and sobbing and screaming and laughing has stopped just there: in your brain. Not even the whole thing, just the reasoning portions.

The body holds trauma like a storage unit that will never get bid upon. February March April May you remain, for the most part, light hearted and reassuring to everyone around you. You might have the same work schedule but your body is cooler and nothing of note has happened in the past that rocks your body with anxiety and deep sorrow.

June comes, and with it a constant nausea, from the heat and your birthday. Despite everyone looking forward to theirs, you almost wish yours would go by like a whisper, barely heard nor recognized. But the child in you screams in delight at birthdays past, with treasure chest cakes and water sprinklers and wrapped presents. The young adult and teenage you curls up in fear and self hate, feeling unworthy of anything, screaming and sobbing when you get $200 from grandma. You thought you’d gotten past it, flaunt fake confidence in front of others and say ‘it’s my birthday and I’m important!’ For a laugh or a smile and eye roll. They think you really feel this way. You don’t. You hate it. You don’t want to get older. You don’t want the attention you don’t deserve.

Being born is not a celebration for you. The gift of life you never asked for and tried so many times to throw away. A wretched, fetid present, a box filled with placenta and umbilical cord crawling with maggots and fat biting flies. The gift of life. What a joke. It’s the responsibility of life. The burden of life. The sometimes-joy of life.

June is when you were kicked out. When your goods were smashed on the blacktop, and your mother screamed to get out of her sight. June is when you packed your life into a backpack and lived out of that for weeks until you found a temporary home in your managers guest room. Than some sofas. Then your first apartment. Your body remembers the fight and flight, even if it’s dull. A blade is still a blade, even if its edge no longer shines and is filled with nicks and cracks. It can still hurt. It still hurts.

It’s an unknowable ache that holds onto you until July, like a tick ripped off but its head remains.

So, summer is your worst season. You were born in it, you were cast away in it. You sweat and bake in it, you bite your skin and slam your head in it. You run along sand and ocean in it. You cover your body in it. You tremble with weakness in it. Fuck summer. Fuck summer. Fuck summer.

You hate summer.

#I write #summer sucks

[thunderheadfred]

❄️Todoroki HC's🔥

Aged-up pro hero Shouto. NSFW under the cut. Minors do not interact.

- - -

General

Might as well be tied with Bakugou for the #1 pro hero spot; they seem to pass the crown back and forth every other year. Everyone knows about their intense frenemies uber-rivalry. Well. Everyone but Shouto.

He's asked to speak at a lot of charity events. If he has time to prepare (and hire a speech writer) he is capable of stirring crowds to standing ovations. But if caught unawares... he gets cornered into hilarious on-the-spot interviews. He's been memed. Mercilessly.

He's an OP character, but unfortunately he rolled -500 in fashion sense. Eventually he wises up and hires a stylist. When he finally cuts his hair a slightly different and even more flattering way, it's a national event. People faint in the street.

Does god-awful sleight-of-hand magic tricks when he meets young fans, even though nobody asked him to. The second-hand embarrassment is palpable. But he keeps doing it. God, why does he keep doing it?

Has hovering arm syndrome in every fan photo.

Super into pop music. Not a fan of any particular group or artist, couldn't tell you the name of a single song. But every time he turns up the volume on the radio it's like... really? THIS? Probably pumps that shit through his hero agency to keep up morale. Has no idea what you mean when you tell him his music taste doesn't match his personality.

Similarly, he enjoys brainless romantic comedies and old silent movies. Doesn't laugh at jokes but loses it over physical comedy. Thinks Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd are the funniest people who ever walked the earth.

He's long and limber. Runs practically a hundred miles every day just to "relax." Doesn't even get sweaty doing it. A filthy yoga addict. He'll probably live to be 200 years old.

He can regulate his body temperature for quirk use but in everyday life he's always half a degree outside the Goldilocks zone. It drives him quietly insane; he has an epic love-hate relationship with his thermostat.

Has a therapy animal pet. Doesn't matter if it's a dog or a cat or a bird or an iguana or a teeny tiny rodent. It's the best-behaved animal in the country and speaks more languages than you. It has its own room and an instagram account with millions of followers.

Lives in a traditional Japanese estate that doubles as a national treasure. Probably has government-appointed snipers at the gate, and he's just like, "don't worry about it." You are afraid to touch anything. Fuck, don't even look at anything, just to be safe.

Has an outstanding personal chef who only gets to cook five things unless (thank fuck!!) company comes over. Impossibly picky eater. He rotates between a few "safe" foods and suspiciously side-eyes everything else. If you cook something unfamiliar for him it will be the most awkward meal of your life, because he'd never tell you he doesn't like it. But oh lord, just look at his face.

This clashes directly with his love of traveling. Frequently uses his hero earnings to visit exotic foreign locales over long weekends... but rarely tries the food.

- - -

Dating

A grey-ace demisexual disaster. You could count the number of people he's been attracted to on one hand. He falls madly in love every time and always gets his heart smashed to pieces when his crush can't magically intuit the meaning of his frigid longing glances and generically courteous romantic gestures.

Which is stupid, because he gets propositioned constantly. He can't walk out the door without being flirted with. People keep slipping him their phone numbers and he always directs them to his agency like a moron. It's a good thing he will never understand how attractive he is because that's the only thing keeping him from total world domination.

Conventional attractiveness does not compute. Shouto doesn't have a type, doesn't care that he's an eleven whilst you are merely mortal. He will fall for your personality above all else.

Probably falls head over heels because your schedules overlap in a completely ordinary way and he witnesses you doing something endearing or brave or most likely: utterly mundane.

Pick a favorite, because you're his favorite coworker, or his favorite barista, or his favorite random bystander in line at the grocery store. You made him smile once; then he spent the next three months daydreaming about your future together before you accidentally stomped on his foot, initiating your first real conversation.

He's big on healthy communication. HUGE. He goes to therapy and it shows. Will talk through literally everything to the point of delirium. Sometimes his dedication to resolving every issue right away can get overwhelming; sometimes you just need some frickin time alone. But it pays off, because the two of you have practically never have a "real fight." There's just no way for bad vibes to fester.

STILL, his family wasn't exactly... erm... verbally or emotionally supportive, shall we say. For that reason, he might not give you all the compliments you deserve, because it simply doesn't occur to him to do so. He assumes you know how he feels. If you're self-conscious or insecure in the relationship, it might take him a while to notice. But when he figures it out (or even better, when you tell him directly) he will make it up to you with enthusiasm.

Will take you on lavish dates. Spoils you rotten without actually intending to. He's clueless about money. If you wanted a sugar daddy, you just hit the fucking jackpot. But if the word valet makes you uncomfortable, perhaps suggest some romantic picnics instead. He can still go all out with the food and five-star location without making you see cartoon dollar signs.

Chronic Insomniac. Stays up too late watching YouTube every night. His viewing history is an incomprehensible blur of k-pop music videos, serial killer icebergs, and super girly crafty ASMR channels. When he's watching a video, he is unreachable. Please call back later and try again.

He's disgustingly cute when he sleeps. Doesn't snore, but drools. Sometimes the drool freezes and leaves frost trails on his face in the morning. Still sleeps with the giant stuffed cat pillow that his mother gave him when he was like, zero. He'll inadvertently suffocate you with it, and you will welcome death with open arms because awwwwww!!!!!

The first time he tells you he loves you will be after your traditional Japanese shinto wedding. You won't hear it again until you start a family. Honestly, it's a good thing he doesn't say it often and is always holding you when it happens. It's a knee-buckler.

- - -

Icy-Hot

I don't even need to say it. Shouto is as old-fashioned as they come. You will never open another door or pull out another chair for yourself as long as you live. He will ask before he holds your hand. He will ask before he kisses you. He will stop and check in if you so much as breathe funny during sex.

If you don't orgasm at exactly the same time while staring into one another's eyes, he'll consider himself a failed lover. God forbid you want him to pound you into the futon... cause you are going to have to present that scenario to him in writing first.

Physical intimacy rarely leads to sex. He loves cuddling, craves physical affection. He'll sprawl all over you and turn into goo while you hold him close. He's an amazing, astounding, phenomenally good kisser. And that's... nice and all... but sometimes you have to grab his face and say, "Shouto, I'm horny," before he's like so that's why you're currently dry-humping me?

Even if he isn't technically a virgin the first time (or the millionth time) you sleep together, you won't know the difference. He's a blushing violet. Every. Fucking. Time. This doesn't mean he's a bad lay, oh no. But there's always ten minutes of confused bumbling before he hits his stride and remembers oh yeah, I DO know how to fuck good.

Absolutely silent during sex. Focused. Intense. Sometimes you have to push him a little to make any kind of noise at all, just so you know you're pleasing him (oh don't worry, you are).

His cock is Just Right. Not to big or too small. Perfectly proportioned and symmetrical. Somehow pretty. Like a fucking factory prototype. It truly is not fair.

Gets handsy and restless at night, even if you both have work the next day. Seems to crave sex at three in the morning. You've given him more than one exhausted handjob.

Gets offended if you don't cum. Will go down on you for hours. Of course he uses his quirk to tease you. He doesn't typically use it during actual intercourse, but he's all about foreplay, and he'll use every tool in his arsenal.

His sex drive is completely fucking unpredictable. Sometimes he's all over you, other times he's an icy slab. His line of work leaves him busy and stressed on a near-constant basis, so you can't entirely blame his personality for this one. Just give him some time and help him take care of his basic needs. He'll come back around soon enough.

#todoroki shouto #todoroki x you #todoroki x reader #todoroki x y/n #gender neutral reader #todoroki headcanons #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #smut #fred writes #bnha #mha

[alderaani]

Embers

summary: After Umbara, Boil learns how to endure, and how to reclaim pieces of his brothers marching on | AO3 | series

warnings: canonical character death, grief, animal injury + mentions of animal death (completely not explicit, on the level of canon-typical violence).

a/n: finally another part of my 100 clone prompts - the rest of the series is linked above! i know there’s not much in canon to support Waxer being an animal lover, but i wanted to give Gree a friend to nerd out with and it’s cute. also gotta pay homage to @nibeul’s wonderful art here - while I wasn’t consciously inspired by it, it hits on v similar themes and is just beautiful like...that image of waxer holding up numa lives in my head rent free.

-

Insects swirled in a halo around his helmet. They swarmed around the seams of his blacks, too, attracted to the small beads of sweat there, to the tiny strips of flesh he couldn’t quite cover. The rising bites itched, rubbing where the edge of his vambraces met fabric, and the buzzing was enough to drive a man mad. Boil sighed, brushing them off half-heartedly and watching them billow angrily away. They’d be back. They always were.

In the reprieve, he fumbled at his belt for the viewfinders hooked there and brought them to his visor. As he spun the dial to within half a klik so that he could search the undergrowth, his thumb settled in the comforting groove where Waxer had dropped them and chipped the plastoid. He worried at it with his nail while he scanned, frowning.

It was too still.

Too quiet.

Had been in his head for weeks now, verging on a month, and he was still waiting to feel something other than crippling emptiness. There weren’t any dreams any more, none except for the oldest one they all pretended not to have; levelling a blaster against Kenobi’s head and pulling the trigger. Even that didn’t feel like the nightmare it used to.

Eventually he lowered the viewfinder, feeling the hair stand up on the back of his neck at the stifled sound of his own breath in the dense air. A faint, humid breeze stirred the leaves, sending a cloud of thick yellow pollen up towards the canopy. Boil blinked to bring up the filter diagnostic on his HUD, keeping his belly low to the ground to avoid the stuff as it drifted lazily overhead.

“Kid, you doin’ alright out there?”

He listened to the static hum of the comm line for a few moments, biting back the panic that crawled up the back of his throat when it dragged on just a beat too long.

“Apart from gettin’ gnawed on by the bugs? Just grand, Sir.”

Potshot sounded a little winded, but that was probably just the heat. Blacks self-regulated temperature, but only to the extent that they made sure you sweated evenly. It never used to be quite so bad; that had been the one thing Phase 1 armour had going for it, for all it was bulkier and less adaptable to varied terrain. He supposed the Republic had had to cut costs somewhere. Waxer would’ve been whining by now that his ass was so hot they could light a flare off it. Potshot was young enough that he’d never known any different.

“Good, you see anything?” Boil grunted, pinging his location anyway. There was no real reason for it; Potshot might’ve still been green but he wasn’t stupid, and he’d done well to keep up so far. Boil could stand being self aware enough to acknowledge that he hadn’t been the most welcoming, or the most patient with the new partner he’d never wanted. He wouldn’t have had any right to be overbearing now, but it was for his own comfort, however small and bittersweet.

“Nothin’ at all. That seem odd to you too?” Potshot said, as the surveillance holos he’d taken popped up. Boil flipped through them, earmarking a couple to show him how to improve the angle later. The important shit was all there - enough to confirm what he’d already suspected. No birds, no creatures, no fresh droppings.

Just the bugs, and the trees, and them.

“Yeah, it’s odd alright. Think we’ve found what the general’s looking for.”

Boil felt pressure around his right boot and turned, vibroblade in hand, to stab into the fleshy vine knotting round it. It writhed and retreated, leaving behind pitted, smoking trails where acid had started eating into the plastoid. He registered the damage with a dull sort of annoyance. It was something else to take care of later, a way to look busy and shape the silence. It would fend off the others and their offers of company, made out of pity he couldn’t bear to look at.

“Really? What’re you seein’, boss?” Potshot asked.

Boil glanced upwards to track the position of the sun; high, almost directly overhead. At the peak of the day this place should have been teeming. Instead the only tracks he’d found had been baked solid, and this wasn’t the shocked quiet that followed a stampede. It was stagnant, aging.

“This forest is in the centre of an old super-volcanic crater, right?” he asked, not waiting for a response. It had been in the mission dossier, alongside profiles of the flesh eating plants, the deadly pollen and the venomous creatures, all of it fenced into the sloped, unforgiving bowl of the terrain. It was the kind of forest that stuck in the mind. “And we know that something has driven the wildlife away.”

Potshot hummed, the comm muffling for a second as he shifted. It took a moment of bitter disappointment coiling in Boil’s belly for him to realise that he’d been waiting for a sharp quip that wasn’t coming. He swallowed thickly, wondering how it was possible to feel so wrongfooted while lying down. If he’d ever find his balance again. If he ever wanted to feel whole now that such a fundamental piece was missing.

Potshot groaned suddenly. “Kriff it, the factories we’re looking for are underground, aren’t they?”

Boil forced a chuckle, choking past the self hatred clawing up through his lungs. The kid deserved better, deserved a superior who didn’t constantly treat him like a ghost.

“That’s it, kid. Just like the simulations, eh?”

Potshot laughed, the easy sound making Boil’s throat seize in longing so strong his teeth ached. Waxer would’ve loved him, and that made it all the worse.

“Hardly. What do we do next?”

“Alright,” Boil said, lifting the viewfinder for one last look at where he could see slight fog rising through the trees. “You get your ass back to forward command and debrief the General, I’m heading in for a closer look.”

“ What? But - Sir! We’re supposed to be working as a team. I can’t leave you -”

“Sometimes working as a team means you do your duty and trust the others to do theirs.” He cut in, keeping his voice steady by force of will. Sometimes, it meant carrying on alone. Boil clipped the viewfinder back into place and prepared to move, even as Potshot continued protesting. Boil didn’t answer for long enough that silence fell on the line.

“...am I not performing to the standard expected, Sir?”

Potshot’s voice was soft, all vulnerable underbelly. Still so shiny, and Boil remembered feeling like that, like there was still a scorecard constantly on his forehead.

“No - kid -” Boil sighed, dropping his head forward. He’d never learned how to be gentle - it hadn’t ever come naturally, and there had been no reason to lose his sharp edges when Waxer had always been there to foil them for him. He felt sharper now than ever, full of shards that didn’t sit right, and fished among the pieces for something his brother might have said. “I trust you to have my back. You’re doing everything right. But...sometimes we’ve gotta think of the mission. We need more proof before we can move in, but the two of us get caught, command loses what we already know.”

“Can’t we just send a comm?” Potshot asked, his voice still tight and hurt sounding and he was fucking this up, shouldn’t have been trusted to try to fix himself without breaking everyone else wide open in the process.

“Don’t trust it not to get intercepted,” Boil said, which was only half a lie, and would have made Cody scoff at the back to front over-caution. “And it don’t all fit in a comm. They’ll need everything you can remember to plan the advance.”

Potshot sighed, but when he spoke again his voice was looser. “...Yes, Sir. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” Boil said, feeling his own chest lighten. “If you don’t hear from me by 1100 then raise me on the priority channel.”

He listened until Potshot had stated a reluctant affirmative and clicked off the line, then bellied out of the undergrowth and headed further in, to the epicentre of the unnatural quiet. He liked the way his mind went silent on recon, how everything else fell away. It wasn’t quite the same, tilted just a little off axis, but similar enough to when it had been Waxer at his six that if he didn’t think about it, he could almost trick himself into believing nothing had changed.

Plus, the space was good, just for a few minutes, where he didn't have to pretend for anyone.

It was a quiet journey, for the most part, punctuated only by the steps he couldn’t quite muffle. His thoughts were broken some time later when he suddenly heard it; the distant mechanical boom of something deep underground. He quickened his pace, following the vibrations until the earth under his feet grew hot, the air shimmering unnaturally in front of him. It had been like this at Point Rain, when the sand baked and glinted, glass-like, under the blaze of the overhead sun. If he hadn’t known the super-volcano was very thoroughly extinct, he could have kidded himself that it was just the geothermal energy of magma moving close to the surface. A clever disguise. But not clever enough.

The ground sloped ever downwards the further into the bowl he got. He watched where he placed his feet as it grew rockier, stones and small craters acting like pitfall traps concealed by the moss. Boil pinged his scanner every minute, searching for Seppie probes as the terrain tapered, falling away into a green-rimmed yawning abyss. Set into the centre of it was a huge grate, the source of the searing air. Here were the factories they’d been looking for, exactly where he’d suspected. It was a muted sort of satisfaction.

He crouched at the edge of the drop, taking holos and transmitting them directly to the Commander’s HUD. Then he checked his chrono and sent an unapologetic follow up that he’d be late to rendezvous, seeing that 1100 was about to come and go. Then he minimised the comms on his HUD to flash for priority only; he’d get bollocked for being late sooner or later, but he figured it would be novel to have it fully in person.

Finally he turned, ready to start the rapid scale back towards the 212th's forward camp, when he registered a low, keening whine.

His blaster was in his hands within a moment, trained at the knee-high leaves. The sound came again, higher this time, followed by laboured panting.

He gently brushed aside some of the foliage with his blaster barrel. Dark eyes stared at him from between the leaves. They both froze. It was some sort of animal, obviously; a mammal, probably a predator. It was small too, with paws too large for its scrawny body and a dark, downy fur that rippled with every laboured breath.

Sharp teeth. A narrow muzzle. A long, whip-like tail.

A vornskr, Boil thought, and hated how readily the identification came, how readily he tensed in anticipation of the inevitable Boil can you see - do you know how rare -

He shook the memories away, of Waxer leaning precariously over the top bunk to wave some manual Commander Gree had sent him in his face, bleating about some animal or species that Boil couldn’t pronounce. In the present the vornskr pup cowered away from him, pushing backwards on thin, spindly legs. Deceptively powerful though, he’d bet.

The creature let out another whine and stumbled, an odd abortive movement. Boil pressed more of the leaves away to get a better look and swore when he saw the brutal metal trap closed around one of its small hind legs, paring down to bone. His blaster was up and trained on the thing before he thought much about it. Better to shoot it, put it out of its misery, than prolong its suffering. It was what they did as part of the cleanup sometimes; wildlife was usually pretty good at getting out of the active battlefronts, but there were always stragglers. The too old or the too young, mostly.

Creatures like this one.

The vornskr stilled, staring at him with those big, wide eyes as if it knew exactly what he was thinking. Boil swallowed. Waxer wouldn’t have let him shoot it. Waxer also wasn’t here now to stop him, but Boil felt his arm lower all the same, just a few inches before he pulled the trigger. The vornskr yelped as the trap hinges came apart in two neat halves and immediately tried to run. It didn’t get very far before it collapsed, panting again.

Boil sighed and shook his head, holstering his blaster across his back.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” he tsked, shuffling closer.

He kept half an eye on the tail, remembering something about it being venomous. While being high off his ass on some unknown substance had the potential to make Cody’s dressing down more interesting, it might also kill him before he got there.

The vornskr growled as he leaned over it, baring needle sharp teeth, and made a snap at him when Boil reached out.

“Ah, give over,” he muttered, batting the attempt away. The little body was light in his hands as he lifted it, careful to let the injured leg hang out as he folded it into his chest. The vornskr made an odd, throaty sound and shifted, almost experimental. Then it huffed, and after a pause laid its head across his vambrace.

Boil rolled his eyes at the display, setting off towards forward command as soon as he was halfway sure he wasn’t in danger of losing a finger.

It was...nice, to have that little body cradled to him, reminiscent of better occasions when Waxer just had to stick his nose into every curious happening and inevitably adopted some struggling lifeform. However much Boil had complained, it had never steered them wrong.

When he got back to command it was to find Cody pacing the perimeter, Potshot perched on a crate nearby. The Commander’s bucket was under his arm. Boil winced. With Cody that was never an accident - usually so he could get the full weight of a glare in, the excavating kind he’d learned from Kenobi and then weaponised so that it pierced straight down to bone.

“Boss!” Potshot exclaimed, pushing off his seat. “You made it!”

“What time d’you call this?” Cody demanded, stalking over. “I was about to -”

Cody stopped short, gaze dropping to the furry bundle against Boil’s breastplate. Something in his expression softened and Boil felt in his heart, panicking as a lump rose in his throat.

“What’s that?” Cody asked.

Boil let his gaze slide downwards to a point far beyond, where two troopers were fighting over a tarp.

“Found it in a trap,” he said, his voice ragged. “Couldn’t - couldn’t let it die.”

He flicked his eyes back to Cody’s face and breathed through the grief and understanding he found there. Cody stepped forward and clasped Boil’s elbow.

“I’m sure Tranq will be able to do something for it.” A little upturn crept into the line of Cody’s lips. “Debrief in fifteen.”

Boil nodded and broke away, tipping his head to Potshot before clearing his throat roughly and popping his bucket off one-handed as he made his way to the medtent. The sun was warm on his face here, the air lighter. A butterfly flew lazily past and the vornskr lifted its head, tracking the motion with large, interested eyes.

Boil smiled, hoisting his bucket under one arm and daring to touch the creature's head with his freed hand. It wouldn’t ever bring Waxer back, but it meant something that this little life continued, because of the choices his brother would have made and all that he had been. Like the phantom touch of the sun still lingering in cooling earth.

It wouldn’t ever be enough. But, perhaps, it was just the right amount to cling onto.

-

taglist // @nelba @leias-left-hair-bun @simping-for-fives @iscream4clones @bad-batch-of-fics @battletales @majorshiraharu @dom-i-nic @snippytano @missinashkin @808tsuika @eries45 @lussyyung @whatanoof // join here

#clone trooper waxer #clone trooper boil #original clone characters #clone oc potshot #commander cody #212th attack battalion #the clone wars #star wars #the clone wars fanfiction #alderwrites

[alarajrogers]

Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

I wrote a thing. It is a very long thing. It probably contains very little information that most people didn’t already know, but it puts it together in a way I’ve never seen it before.

Most of it will be behind the cut but you get the first few paragraphs out here where you can see them.

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

Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

So you know how you read all this bullshit about “X improves your energy” and “Y gives you quick energy but then you crash” and “Z improves your metabolism” and it all just sounds like words? Technobabble from the world of science fiction television shows?

It may surprise you to know that practically everything you’ve ever personally observed about energy levels makes sense, as do a lot of the layperson observations you’ve heard in your life, and that there are really good reasons why being sick makes you sleepy and why exercising hard on weekends when you’re a slug all week is bad for you, and that all of this is very understandable from a layperson perspective. Or maybe not, maybe you know all this. I’ve spent years knowing all this, but recently it just dawned on me that it’s all interconnected.  All the things I know are pieces of an amazing whole.

So I’m going to explain this revelation I’ve had, and when you read it, my guess is you’ll come away thinking “But I knew all that already… but now I understand how it all works together!”

Metabolism

First, let’s talk about metabolism. What is it?

We usually use the term to mean something like “the speed at which my body does the things I’m not consciously controlling it to do.” Like, “I have a really fast metabolism, so food just runs right through me!” Or “I have a very slow metabolism so I have to be real careful about how much I drink.”

To metabolize means for a living thing to process something it has ingested. Metabolism is usually used to mean the process of converting food and nutrients into energy. Sometimes we use it to mean the levels of efficiency or speed at which a body does this, which is where we get “a fast metabolism”. Here, I’m going to try to use metabolism specifically to mean the process by which your body converts stuff to energy.

Life Energy

No, a vampire from an alien planet can’t suck it out of you, but you really do have life energy! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive.

The fundamental molecule of life energy, the thing that if it wasn’t there no life processes would be possible because they would not have any energy to work, is a battery called ATP. Its full name, adenosine triphosphate, is a bit of a mouthful, but it basically means that this is a molecule with three phosphorus atoms.

You may have learned in chemistry class, once upon a time, that chemical reactions can be endothermic – they use up energy – or exothermic – they emit energy. Fire is an exothermic reaction; you get it started with heat, usually, but it generates a lot more heat than it took to make it burn in the first place. Your baking soda and vinegar volcano from the science fair a long time ago is also an exothermic reaction. You didn’t put any energy into it to make it bubble like that. On the other hand, melting ice is endothermic. You don’t get any energy when ice melts. It uses up energy to melt.

When ATP releases one of its phosphorus atoms, it becomes ADP – adenosine diphosphate, meaning just two phosphorus atoms! This is an exothermic reaction. ATP turning into ADP is what powers pretty much every single endothermic reaction in your cells. It’s the battery that you run on.

Charging the Battery

Fortunately ADP is rechargeable! An endothermic reaction turns it back into ATP.

The mitochondria do this. You may be thinking, “aren’t they something the lady who wrote A Wrinkle In Time made up?” And you’d be close. The mitochondria appeared in the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door. Madeleine L’Engle didn’t make them up, but she did make up “farandolae”, little creatures in the mitochondria, which don’t exist as far as we know. (Although, if scientists do discover little thingies in the mitochondria that let it do its work, they’ll probably name them farandolae because scientists are big geeks.)

Mitochondria in reality are organelles, components of a cell that do work. They’re independent organelles, which have their own DNA and do all their own reproduction. The only other things we know that work like that are chloroplasts, which are only found in plants… so far. (Personally I think being able to photosynthesize from my skin would be awesome and I am eagerly awaiting the day that genetic engineering allows us to put chloroplasts in human skin, but this isn’t a thing yet.)

Mitochondria combine glucose – a molecule made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, in the formula C6H12O6 – with oxygen, an element that comprises about 22% of our atmosphere, to create carbon dioxide (there’s that di again, meaning two – carbon dioxide is one carbon and two oxygens), water (our old favorite, H2O, sometimes called “dihydrogen monoxide” as a joke about weird chemical names), and enough energy to put a phosphorus atom on a molecule of ADP. Now it’s ATP again! Glucose and oxygen combine in an exothermic reaction.

(Ever wonder why all life on earth depends on the sun? Converting CO2 and H2O into glucose and oxygen is an endothermic reaction. Plants use their chloroplasts to absorb energy from the sun so they can convert CO2 and water into glucose and oxygen. Then animals, like us, eat the plants to get the glucose, and breathe the oxygen. Without the sun, chloroplasts wouldn’t work, plants wouldn’t make glucose, and we’d all starve.)

The Basic Things We Need For This To Work

There are a lot of components going into this system.

The mitochondria need a steady supply of oxygen, but oxygen, being a highly reactive molecule, can’t just float around in the bloodstream like glucose can. (Glucose is iffy too, more on this later.) Hemoglobin, a molecule made with iron, bonds to oxygen and can carry it around safely. Red blood cells are full of hemoglobin. They float in the bloodstream, which goes everywhere in the body. Vitamin B12 is involved in the production of these red blood cells. The bloodstream also carries glucose, but hopefully not too much of it, because glucose is also a reactive molecule and if you have too much, it starts tearing shit up.

The lungs draw in the oxygen that the red blood cells carry, and expel the carbon dioxide. The heart forces the blood to go around and around in this system of blood vessels. The pancreas makes insulin, the hormone that binds up the glucose and regulates how much of it is available in your bloodstream for your cells to take. The speed with which all of this happens can be regulated by thyroid hormone, which requires iodine, and also a working thyroid.

You need all that and a million other things for the system to work perfectly. If the system does not work perfectly, you’re not making as much energy as you could be. That’s pretty obvious.

But here is the thing that’s obvious once you spell it out, and yet, we so often behave, as a society, like we don’t understand it or don’t believe it:

An optimized system still puts out a finite amount of energy at any given time.

If you were in perfect health, right now, you would still have a limited supply of life energy to work with.

We know this. But we behave as if it’s not true. As if we can power through exhaustion with willpower, because being exhausted is a flaw in the system, rather than a really obvious application of the laws of thermodynamics.

What Uses All That Energy?

We also often don’t think about the systems that use those energy, and what they use it for.

The Brain:

The brain is a huge energy hog, using up a whopping 20-25% of all of the body’s energy while awake and conscious (or dreaming – a dreaming mind is as active as a conscious one.) Asleep (but not in REM sleep), the brain still uses about 85% of that, which, lemme do some math here, is 17% if the waking mind was using 20%. A living being can drop to about 50% of that with certain types of anesthesia, but that – the minimum required for a brain to keep a body alive – is still 10% of total energy consumption.

It's not clear how much energy on top of that a very active brain needs. Estimates of how much energy complex and difficult thought consume range from 100 calories a day to 6000! It’s plainly not much on top of basic consciousness, or there’d be no such thing as a fat person doing highly intellectual work all the time, but it’s evident that it’s something.

The Muscles:

We all know about this one. Hard-working muscles use up a lot of energy. How much? Well, swimming, one of the few activities we do that can fully engage the leg muscles and the arm muscles to the same high level at the same time, can burn as much as a quarter of a normal daily intake of calories in a single hour. Most of the time our muscles are not working that hard, but anything more strenuous than vegging out on a couch does burn resources.

The Immune System:

This guy. This guy is the one everyone forgets. The immune system is hard at work all the time protecting you from infections (and, if you’re one of the zillions of people who have allergies or autoimmune disorders, things like cat dander, pollen, and yourself apparently), but when an infection has actually taken hold, the immune system goes into high gear. Most of the responses you experience when you’re sick – nausea, coughing, sneezing, runny or stuffy nose, fever – are actually things the immune system is doing to you to get rid of the infection. Nausea, to expel it through the mouth. Diarrhea, to expel it through the anus. Coughing, to expel it from the lungs, and sneezing, to expel it from the sinus cavities. Mucus, to trap it so it can be expelled. Fever, to kill it, because germs are a lot more sensitive to temperature variation than you, a large multi-celled creature, are. It takes a lot of energy to do all that. Plus there’s white blood cells and T cells and antibodies, all doing their thing.

The Digestive System:

Ever hear the expression “It takes money to make money?” That’s true of life energy as well. The work of moving your food all along the gastrointestinal tract, breaking it down, squeezing and mushing it, making the enzymes to convert it to molecules small enough to get out into the bloodstream, and then pushing the waste out – that’s a lot of effort. There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

The Reproductive System:

Making sperm costs energy. Making a lining for an egg and then expelling it if it’s not used costs energy. Firing up the hormones that cause libido costs energy. And then there’s all the energy burned by the muscles in actually having sex.

Heart and Lungs:

Typically we don’t think of these things as needing a lot of energy because, quite simply, your body’s going to take the energy it needs to run these essential systems whether you want to or not. There’s no re-allocation of baseline energy away from the heart and lungs. But in exercise, when the oxygen demands and the needs of the muscle cells to get more and more fuel increase, the heart and lungs need more energy too.

This is a rough breakdown. You have other systems – we haven’t talked about kidneys and liver and stuff like that – but we’re going to look at these systems in our simplified model.

Everything takes energy. And you have a finite pool of it. Eating more food does not give you more energy – your mitochondria can only work as fast as they can work. If you weren’t at capacity, then yes, food can give you a boost, but it consumes energy first because digestion is work, and if you’re at capacity, any extra calories get stuffed away as fat because extra circulating glucose is bad for you.

By the way, this is why sugar gives you a quick pick-me-up, and should probably be considered a stimulant! Sugar – sucrose, which is basically 2 glucose molecules smushed together, or fructose, which is glucose but in a different shape – supplies your bloodstream with glucose fast, with very little extra work. And it can start doing it in your mouth, because your saliva can break sucrose into glucose and your mucuous membranes can pull glucose into your bloodstream.

But as soon as you start ingesting sugar, your pancreas revs up your insulin production (assuming you don’t have diabetes, or that if you do, it’s type II and not so advanced that you basically don’t have your own insulin anymore.) Insulin, you may recall, is the hormone that keeps circulating glucose levels in your bloodstream down to the levels where the mitochondria can use all of it and there isn’t a lot extra. Extra glucose that nobody is using damages your blood vessels, making them harder and less elastic, which is why circulation problems are a big thing with diabetes, and why my feet are SO FUCKING COLD all winter, not that I’m bitter or anything.

So. You ate sugar, and your body prepared to balance your glucose levels with a lot of insulin. But then all you ate was sugar. You didn’t add fats or proteins or complex carbohydrates in any significant amounts to keep the glucose coming after the initial burst was over. So now you have all this insulin and it went and picked up all the extra glucose and now you know what? Not only is there no extra glucose anymore, there isn’t even enough to keep the home fires burning! Woo, dizzy. Low blood sugar hits the brain hard, because the brain is the energy hog, and feels any dip in energy levels before any other body systems do.

In short, you may have given yourself a quick burst of extra fuel, but in the long run, it may actually make your energy levels drop. And if you ate a substantial meal to go with that quick snack… now we have to send power to the digestive system. And that is why eating more food does not give you more energy unless you’re starving. (Or diabetic, more on this later.)

Energy Trade-offs:

You know the drill. Finite amount of energy. Many systems competing for it. Brain takes the most. So what happens when one system suddenly needs extra?

1.       Complex thought shuts down.

I know you’ve experienced this. You’re overtired, or you’ve just done hard exercise, or you have eaten a big meal, or you are sick. You can no longer brain at the levels you expect. Study? Maybe, but retention and comprehension will suuuuck. Math? Probably not. Reading? Depending on how difficult reading in general is for you, maybe this is just the thing, but the topic’s going to be light and easy to comprehend, like fiction, or maybe this article here that you’re reading. Or, maybe reading’s out of the picture. Watching TV? For most people, this is ideal, but if you’re autistic and have an auditory processing disorder and facial recognition issues, hoo boy. Not that I know anybody like that, or anything.

2.       Muscles need to be at rest.

Muscles don’t have to move a lot. You could be sitting on a couch. You could be laying in a lawn chair. You’re awake, but you don’t want to move your muscles because it’s hard.

When what you lack to burn your fuel is not glucose, but oxygen, you can get by sometimes. As long as there’s some oxygen. But the byproduct of making energy without enough oxygen is called lactic acid. Which is acid, and it’s in your muscles. Not good! Nobody likes extra acid in places where extra acid shouldn’t be. So your muscles burn. The good news is, the body breaks down lactic acid pretty fast. The bad news is, you may be building it up faster than the body can break it down.

Hard exercise? You’re gonna feel the burn. But you may run into this same problem attempting to walk to the bathroom if you’re very very sick, because all the energy has been re-routed to the immune system, so there’s nothing there for the muscles.

3.       Consciousness itself shuts off.

The unconscious brain still consumes a lot of energy, but we’re cutting what we can, and you being conscious is not helping here. Shut down anything we don’t immediately need to use. That includes consciousness.

If you are bleeding out and there’s not enough blood in your body to carry the fuel –

If your blood pressure is low or your heart has stopped working and so the fuel isn’t moving fast enough to where it needs to be –

If your circulating glucose is too low because there’s too much damn insulin –

If there isn’t enough water in the body, so blood pressure drops because blood is mostly water –

If you have a fever, which makes all the chemical reactions in your body go kind of screwy and inefficient –

-- You pass out. You cannot remain conscious because your body has to cut services to keep the whole thing going, and this is how.

Sometimes stupid shit triggers this reaction. Like vasovagal syncope, which can happen from triggers like extreme emotional stress or the sight of blood. Like getting blood drawn (which is probably also vasovagal syncope but seems to have a more physiological basis than some of the other things that can cause it, given that it can occur in people who are absolutely cheerful and fascinated by the fact that blood is leaving their body and not upset about it at all. Not that I would know anything about that, either.)

4.       Or, you are highly encouraged to shut down consciousness.

The digestive system is hard at work. There’s no emergency, per se, but this work would get done a lot faster and with less stress if you would just go the fuck to sleep. Thus, “carb coma” or what the cartoon “The Boondocks” called “The Itis.”

The immune system is busting its ass. Things aren’t so serious that you need to pass out. Falling asleep vs. fainting is kind of like shutting down your computer vs. suddenly losing power. You definitely want to go to sleep if the situation is not dire enough to require immediate shutdown of consciousness.

Your body needs to run nightly maintenance. Several systems that operate in low gear when you’re awake need to rev up, and your brain actually needs to do some shit to organize your memories while you’re not recording new ones, and extra energy is needed for the immune system because it’s doing nightly sweeps. Or something like that. We don’t really understand everything that sleep does for us, but we know that if we don’t get it:

-          The pancreas doesn’t work right, resulting in getting fat and maybe diabetes

-          Also high blood pressure

-          Also memories are kind of shit

-          Also the immune system doesn’t work too well

We don’t actually know how your brain would operate without sleep if it wasn’t saturated with the “go the fuck to sleep” chemical GABA, which is broken down while you’re sleeping. GABA does a lot of things, but in this context, GABA builds up in your body to send the signal to your brain to stop using so much damn energy and sleep already. And if you attempt to function mentally with high GABA levels… well, you can’t, okay? Your brain is full of GABA receptors that tell it to turn things off. So those things are turning off. How well does your computer run when it's in the middle of shutting down? I thought so.

(Actually we kind of do. There are chemicals that block tiredness. People who use these chemicals can function on significantly less sleep at significantly higher cognitive levels than people who are not on these chemicals. But the stuff like the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the immune system weakening… all that appears to still be happening. Sleep happens for a reason.)

5.       Other systems that are highly dependent on energy levels shut down.

 -          Exercised your ass off? Now your digestive and immune systems have been tamped down because the energy went to your muscles. Eating when the digestive system isn’t working at full capacity results in stomach cramps or nausea. Forcing the digestive system to work when the muscles need maximum energy levels causes muscle cramps. This is why you’re not supposed to go swimming after a big meal – muscle cramps while swimming can kill you.

-          Ate a big meal? I bet you are not feeling like having sex right now. Probably also not winning any chess tournaments. And don’t move around too much!

-          Feeling sick? Cough, runny nose, sneezing? You’re probably not too hungry. (Especially not when you have a fever. Fevers burn a lot of energy.) You probably do not feel much like having sex. Your muscles ache and you don’t want to move around much. And you are sleepy.

-          Feeling randy, baby? You are probably not also feeling hungry.

What Happens When We Game The System?

I briefly mentioned stimulants above – chemicals that artificially reroute energy levels back to the brain, improving concentration and mental acuity, at the expense of everything else.

Well, not literally everything else. Stimulants suppress pain to some slight extent, increase heart rate and blood flow, and make your muscles more eager to do work. Many people report that stimulant use also makes them horny. So those systems are in good shape too. But you know what took a hit? Your digestive system and your immune system. Now, your digestive system… you can feel that immediately. People take stimulants in order to lose weight, sometimes, because they’ll suppress your appetite. Energy rerouting to brain and muscles means the body shuts down digestion. What’s already there will get processed but let’s not add to it, okay?

You did not feel your immune system slow down and weaken. You won’t, today. But maybe tomorrow you’ll get sick. Maybe the day after that.

Oh, but you gotta work, right? The boss won’t tolerate you not coming in. So you stuff yourself full of stimulants – pseudoephedrine, dries up your nose and keeps you awake; caffeine, keeps you focused – and go to work anyway. With energy being forced away from your immune system to keep your brain and your muscles working. That’s not gonna work out well for you, now is it. You wanna pull the military off the front lines to have a parade, when you’re being actively invaded?

Keeping your brain functioning at full capacity, continuing to use your muscles, when you’re sick, will slow your recovery time, because you took the energy away from your immune system to pump it through your brain. Because the amount of energy you can produce is finite, and relatively fixed.

Oh, you can improve some things. Your blood and everything it does, and practically every chemical reaction in your body, is totally dependent on the presence of water, so stay well hydrated. Stock your body well with the vitamins and minerals you need to make all these things function. Are you getting enough oxygen, citizen? Eat food, but with the right balance of carbs and proteins and fats so that your digestive system isn’t overtaxed, you don’t end up with an insulin spike, and you’re not wasting resources. If your system lacked any of these things, then you can improve metabolic efficiency, and your energy levels, by providing them.

But stimulants can’t give you energy. They can make you feel like they did because the energy is going to places where your conscious mind can feel it… but they didn’t increase the amount of energy you have. Resources are being taken away from other areas. Your immune system is taking a serious hit right now. And you can’t feel that, but it’s gonna fuck you up later.

Brains That Have To Work Extra Hard At Basic Stuff

This is a simplified model, but: all brains are full of little modules that do things. And consciousness, ego, is actually pretty bad at most stuff. The little modules that do things are like dedicated co-processors for specific tasks. Spatial processing. Language acquisition. Basic math. Recognizing faces. Managing executive functions.

The neurotypical mind comes with a basic set of things that neurotypicals don’t even realize exist unless they study psychology or spend a lot of time with neurodivergent people, because they all have them. The thing that recognizes faces. The thing that processes sound into speech. The thing that generates speech from thought. The thing that picks up social rules. The thing that can look at letters and figure out easily and quickly how to pronounce them. The thing that tunes in to body language cues. The thing that’s always aware of how loud you’re talking. The thing that enables you to kind of guess how much time has passed. The thing that lets you control what you’re paying attention to. The thing that does basic math.

Many of these little modules need to be trained – language and math and reading don’t suddenly appear in people’s brains, they’re taught – but once trained, the little modules just… do the thing. The person doesn’t have to think about it. They no longer experience any sense of “I’m doing a thing”, it’s just happening.  

Not all neurodivergent minds have these things. Many such minds have found a workaround. Use conscious processing power, not black box processing power, because the black box isn’t there, but main cortex is. You can apply intelligence to solve problems like “who is that guy, I know that I know him” and “what are the words those people are saying” and “how do I turn those letters into a sound”. “How do I keep track of how much time I am spending on this?” “How do I make myself do shit that bores me?” We use conscious mind processing power, not the much more efficient black boxes that people aren’t even aware they have.

But what happens when energy is sucked away from the conscious mind, and we’re reduced to vegetating, still awake but without the ability to perform complex thought right now?

If we’re routing skills through the conscious mind, we will lose those skills in proportion to how much we lose the ability to think in general, as energy is drawn away from the brain. And NTs, using the much more efficient black box modules, have no idea that this is even a thing that can happen. It would take far more drastic energy loss for them to lose the work the black boxes do.

Some of us have black boxes that the average NT does not have. I can do complex worldbuilding in my head when I’m so exhausted I can’t talk anymore. There are people who just know the answers to complex arithmetic problems the way most of us just know the answer to 2 times 5. Some people have advanced spatial processing coprocessors that mean they’re almost never lost, because they’re effortlessly creating a map of their surroundings any time they go anywhere, and something in their head is tracking what direction they are in and what turns they’ve made. But some of us do not. Not all of us get a trade, skill for skill. And some of us get black boxes that turn out to be kind of useless. Like, suppose a person more or less effortlessly memorizes the name of every dinosaur ever discovered. Unless they are a paleontologist, when is that going to help?

The important thing to note here is that even a small drop in energy can cause a noticeable drop in an ND’s ability to fake being “normal”, because they are using a less efficient means of computing to perform those skills, and it cuts out on them when energy has to draw down from the brain to go somewhere else.

Spoonies

People with auto-immune disorders are constantly using high levels of energy to do useless and self-destructive shit (not that they want to, but their immune system did not ask first), because their immune system is always on high alert against things like their own nervous system. Overactive immune system consumes energy; body parts taking damage consume energy.

People with cancer or other diseases that lead them to take chemo are burning a lot of energy trying to replenish vital functional cells that the chemo keeps killing. Chemo destroys fast-dividing cells… like white blood cells, and the ones in your mucous membranes, and the ones in your hair follicles. And you can do without hair, but you sort of need your mucous membranes and your white blood cells.

People with fatigue disorders might be suffering from an auto-immune issue, or they might be suffering from a metabolic issue. For instance, low levels of thyroid hormone will cause metabolic processes across the board to slow down, drastically decreasing the available energy.

People with depression might literally actually have a fatigue disorder that manifests in not having enough energy to process serotonin and dopamine correctly. Also, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are brain chemicals that do energy routing, having an effect on what the body is putting energy into. Failures to produce enough of those or at appropriate times, or spending energy breaking them down when you still need them, will screw with the body’s ability to deliver energy to the right places.

Whatever the reason, if you have a disorder that drains your energy… even if that’s all it does, even if it literally has no other symptoms, having something that lowers your available energy for your brain and muscles makes it literally impossible for you to function at the levels you would like to. Like, the same way it is impossible for a Chevy Malibu to go 800 miles on one tank of gas. The available energy is not there. Either it is going someplace stupid that you’d rather it didn’t, or metabolism itself just isn’t working well.

If you are neither a spoonie nor neurodivergent, odds are, your body’s working at a reasonably high level of efficiency already, so you can get a dramatic improvement when you find one of the few things you lack, and you fill that need. Hydrate? (Everything runs on water) Exercise? (Speeds up circulation, and fitness in general will cause your metabolism to be more efficient) Vitamins? (Sure, if you’re missing some, vitamins are real useful.)

But if the problem is, you’re pouring energy into activities society requires you to engage in but your brain cannot do them easily and efficiently, so they cost you a lot more than others; if the problem is, your body is wasting a lot of energy on an immune response to things that shouldn’t need an immune response; if the problem is, there’s a food your body can’t break down, so you’re eating enough to feel full but never getting enough energy from it; if the problem is, your metabolism is lacking something esoteric that almost everyone else has enough of, so it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s missing… exercise and hydration and vitamins will not help. Or, they may help, if you were lacking them, but they won’t fix the problem.

Expecting you to just push through a lack of energy through willpower is a total misunderstanding of how the brain and body work. You cannot do what you don’t have energy to do, and if you route energy to your brain or muscles to accomplish something that requires really pushing yourself, you are taking it away from somewhere else. Probably your immune system. So you’ll get sick. And then you’ll be even more overtaxed.

It’s amazing the degree to which ignorant people think that all bodies literally work the exact same way. (And yet many of these ignoramuses think that people of a different race are somehow completely different from them in some fundamental way. Make it make sense.) What’s even worse is the number of doctors who believe that the only way bodies can malfunction are the ways they happen to know about, so anything outside their experience is fake.

But if you understand how complex the system is and how variable the things that can go wrong with it are, and you understand the role of energy, and energy distribution, in the body, it becomes obvious. You can’t force yourself to do what you don’t have the energy to do without taking it away from somewhere else.

Weight and Energy

There is no question that it’s possible for a human to get to a place where their weight is a severe drain on their energy levels. But very few people are actually there.

Muscle is heavier than fat. But muscle does the work of dragging the weight of a body around. A body with good muscle tone – fat but fit – is in a much better position, in terms of energy production and distribution, than a thin body with weak muscles.

Fat actively helps with energy conservation in the cold. A fit fat person – someone whose musculature is strong and healthy enough that they have no difficulty moving their own weight – has reserves to burn in the event of a disorder that consumes so much energy, it inhibits digestion. (To be honest, so does a weak fat person, but they’re losing energy every time they move because they’re too heavy for their own muscles. But this is true of physical weakness in general.)

Not everyone can be fit! Exercise, if you recall, is one of those things that burns a lot of energy! If you already have very little energy, you’re going to have a very hard time exercising enough to become fit.

All of this is normal. It’s natural. It makes sense. Why would being fat automatically make you less healthy in all situations than someone thin? Being underweight is correlated with a significantly shorter lifespan than being overweight.

I’m Gonna Talk About Diabetes Here

We’re told over and over that there’s a giant health crisis among Americans of increased obesity, and this is causing diabetes.

Bullshit.

Consider this. Diabetes is a disorder where you don’t produce enough insulin, but many Type II diabetics got that way because their body massively overproduced insulin to the point where they wore out their pancreatic cells. Remember when I said insulin takes circulating glucose out of the blood stream and stuffs it somewhere safe? You know where it stuffs it? Fat cells. Doctors have been telling people that being overweight causes diabetes… when we know for a fact that diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, a condition where the cells don’t respond well to insulin, so insulin levels go up, and the body’s ability to produce its own insulin is worn down by heavy overproduction. Do the math. You had high levels of insulin production for years because your cells were resistant to insulin? Insulin stores sugar in fat cells, as fat? Gosh, I wonder if the condition that led to your becoming diabetic happened to be the exact same condition that caused you to get fat!

In a case like that, losing weight wouldn’t do jack shit for your insulin, but changing the way you eat so there’s less circulating sugar in the first place would, and this would cause you to store less in your fat cells, which would cause you to lose weight. But it’s not the weight loss that helped you. You couldn’t solve your problem by cutting calories, because calories didn’t get you into this position. High levels of circulating glucose did. Exercising super hard and going on a diet and actually losing weight – which would be hard, because super high levels of insulin storing all that sugar as fat, and yet your blood sugar is still high because your cells don’t respond to the insulin, but let’s say you pull it off – that does nothing. Maybe you see an improvement in your symptoms because eating very little produces very little circulating blood sugar… though now you’ve got some other symptoms. Namely, no energy. And any improvement you experienced is temporary, because you’re addressing a symptom, not the problem.

Doctors know that insulin stores sugar as fat. Doctors know that diabetic people with Type II generate higher and higher levels of insulin as their body tries to compensate for not responding to it, until finally the cells give up and the patient needs to take artificial insulin. And yet, somehow, we are still hearing “fat causes diabetes, lose weight and you won’t get diabetes!” There’s a disconnect here.

Overclocking

I’m going to talk about something as dangerous as fuck here.

When your body’s natural systems are not regulating your blood sugar, and so you can have greater than normal levels of sugar in your bloodstream… this can make the pie higher.

Remember I said you can’t increase your energy levels by adding more fuel, because the mitochondria can only work as hard as they can work? Well, that’s not completely true. Mitochondria can apparently work harder than that, if they have access to more sugar. It’s just that more sugar is destroying your circulatory system, resulting in damage to your retinas, the nerves in your hands and feet, your ability to regulate the temperature of those extremities, the speed at which you can grow back skin in an injury, and, oh, pretty much everything else.

Get to a certain level of blood sugar and you feel like absolute shit. But in the range between that – higher than you should be but lower than the levels you can actually feel bad in – you have more energy.

This is fucking awful, to be honest. Everyone wants more energy! Energy helps you get shit done! More energy to the brain makes your brain work better.

And you want the sugar. You want the high glucose. You don’t know that’s what you want, but you know you crave sweets and carbs, and when your glucose is high (but not too high), it’s a stimulant. You’re awake, you can focus, your mental energy is good. Cut down the way they tell you that you need to, when you’re diabetic, and now you’re sluggish and depressed.

It’s killing you slowly but not doing it is depressing and hard and the slow death isn’t causing you any significant amount of suffering, until it does, and then it’s too late.

Sugar is a drug and you’re addicted. But it’s food. There are no regulations to protect you from eating all the food you want. There is no social opprobrium in general against sweet foods or carb-high snacks. (If you are fat you might suffer from this, but thin people are allowed to eat whatever the fuck they want, and honestly if you’re fat you will probably catch shit for eating a nice big steak, which is a lot better for you if you’re diabetic than a piece of toast.)

You’re overclocking your brain, the same way gamers overclock their PCs to get higher performance. Except that when they melt their CPU they can just buy a new one. You are not buying a new brain anytime soon.

I Am Not A Doctor

I didn’t go to medical school. I did study biology at the graduate school level, but no medical degree.

But everything I’m saying is backed up by pretty much any source I look at. It’s just that the conclusions that I’m drawing, while they are logical outgrowths of the things I’m saying, are for some mysterious reason not the conclusion that people who go to medical school are drawing.

Bodies are all different. Bodies are very complicated with many interlocking systems. Many, many things can go wrong with bodies. Far more things than science is fully aware of yet. Therefore it makes perfect sense that if someone is tired all the time for no good reason, there is a good reason and we just don’t know what it is. If someone can’t easily do a thing another person can do, that is absolutely normal and expected, unless that other thing is something that falls into a range that most humans can easily do. Then all of a sudden it becomes impossible to imagine that a human couldn’t do it? Bullshit. We don’t understand the brain perfectly.

It is absolutely normal that when a person’s energy levels are high, they have the resources to accomplish things they cannot do when their resources are low. The notion that if you’re disabled, there’s a thing you can’t do and you can never do it and that is the way it has to be, is nonsensical. Yes, of course some people are disabled in that way. If you have no legs, then no matter how much energy you have, you will never have legs. But you might be a lot better able to tolerate uncomfortable prosthetics when your energy levels are high.

“If you could do it today then why couldn’t you do it yesterday?” I don’t know, Karen, why couldn’t you vacuum your carpet after you’d been working all day, when you were pushing that vacuum around with no trouble last weekend? People can accomplish more when they have more energy. Doing things consumes energy. Once your energy is consumed, the fact that it can only replenish at a finite rate means you have to wait to get more. While you’re waiting, you can’t do stuff, because stuff takes energy, that you don’t have, because you used it up on other stuff. What part of this is unclear?

Being fat is a symptom of underlying conditions in most of the diseases that it’s correlated with. It’s not that being fat is unhealthy, like losing weight would make you healthy again; it’s that it is a symptom of your disorder that shows up before the more definitive symptoms do. It is possible to improve your health by exercising and changing what you eat, and sometimes, this may result in weight loss, but it wasn’t the weight loss that improved your health. It was becoming fitter (more muscle) and eating stuff that isn’t poisoning you because some of your metabolic pathways don’t work. If you don’t lose weight, you may still be getting healthier.

(I suspect it’s actually true that being fat will damage your joints. You’re putting more of a load on them, so it makes logical sense. What doesn’t make sense is to say that being fat causes diabetes and high blood pressure when we know for a fact that overly high levels of insulin cause both being fat and diabetic, and overly high levels of blood sugar cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and general circulation problems, so. Um. All of these things come from insulin resistance? That is the problem? Not the weight, that’s a symptom?)

And sometimes, sugar is an addictive drug. If you’re feeling self-satisfied because you’re not an alcoholic, and you don’t smoke, and you’ve never taken an illegal drug, but you can’t do without your blueberry muffin in the morning and your ice cream after dinner… stop feeling superior to people addicted to illegal substances or well-known vices. The only difference between them and you is that you got addicted to a substance that will kill you but that is safe for most people, and because it improves your mood and your productivity, capitalism is more than happy to let you indulge it until you drop dead.

#alara original post #alara original writing #stand back i'm gonna try science

[anothertimdrakestan]

Hot Stuff (Tim Drake x Reader)

Words: 3k

Req: “can you do a fic where the reader has to get protected and she doesn't want to and thinks it's dumb but like otherwise someone is gonna try to kill her so a batboy (of your choice) has to protect her and they like realize they like each other? i just think it would be really cute sorry haha you can ignore me.”

I’m not gonna ignore you!!! this is adorable! also i let ppl vote not knowing the prompt and they picked tim hehehe so this will be fun! you really left me a LOT of creative freedom lmao so i tried my best but had a lot of fun lolz hope you enjoy angel!

It had been at least 5 years since you had ever shivered. And the last time it happened you were like 20 seconds away from dying so the fact that it was becoming a common feeling was definitely a problem. But your near death every couple minutes was a pretty dumb excuse to get you holed up in the batcave being watched over by none other than Mr. Batman himself. 

The whole problem arose when all the cold-powered super villains decided it was time for their equivalent of a crossover, deciding that if the world was frozen over they could... steal shit? Then unfreeze it or something? They were always a little slow (call it brain freeze if you will) but the beginnings of their plan worked and the temperature of the Earth was dropping steadily which didn’t bode well for a hero like you who’s powers revolved around heat and energy, the colder you got the weaker- making this the reason you were in a makeshift furnace set up discreetly in the Batcave. 

“Morning y/n let’s see how you’re doing” Tim greeted you with a wave, grabbing a tablet that was tracking your internal body temperature and other boring statistics on whether or not you’d live. “Oh man, okay, lemme turn it up” Tim tapped at the tablet while you folded another paper airplane and threw it at the glass. “I feel fine man, like really, I’m just chilling” you shrugged, incinerating the paper airplane with a small flame in the center of your palm while Tim chuckled. “Well ya see, you ‘chilling’ is actually quite a bad thing, but yeah a couple minutes with extra heat and you can come to breakfast!” you rolled your eyes at his smothered laughter. “How long you been sitting on that one?” you teased him. 

“Long enough Sparky, now warm up I’m hungry” Tim started you on a burst of energy while he moved on to the main BatComputer. “Whatcha solving today? Anything I can help with?” you squinted at the screen hoping for something interesting. “Bruce is going out to see if he can find the location of all the machines dropping the temp, and no, you’re definitely not going outside anytime soon” Tim chided you while you groaned and let sharp flames jutt from your clenched fists. “I’m not a child, I can regulate my temperature on my own, hell I can still make fire so clearly I’m fine” you said matter-of-factly holding up a flame and letting it dancing into a small burst. 

“And I’d like to keep you that way y/n let’s not risk it, now c’mon I think you’ve taken in enough energy” Tim opened the door to your little glass room, his eyes widening at the heat that brushed over his face. “Dude you ever got hot in there?” Tim questioned, fanning his face from the exposure. “Nope, I’m kinda like that all the time” you explained, casually taking his hand to show him how your skin practically radiated heat. “Oh- wow, you’re really warm but it’s kinda cool.” Tim mumbled, pushing your palm flush up against his, the tops of his fingertips curling around yours while he grinned, “your hands are so small” you snorted, “whatever Drake, I could cook you like a bird if I wanted to,” you laughed, racing up the steps towards the kitchen ready to warm up some breakfast.

That afternoon you were helping Damian through homework hoping for any excitement in the pure boredom. “Alright, done. I’m going to take Titus out you can come- uh actually nevermind.” Damian shot you an apologetic look before grabbing Titus’ collar. “No actually I can go! I’m super warm and got the go ahead!” You quickly stood up, telling yourself a little getaway was necessary. “Really? I believe Drake said-” you cut Damian off, “Tim is like never right about anything yaknow? Let’s go!” You zipped up a couple of your jackets with a grin while Damian led you outside. 

The air was crisp, like a fall day that was on the verge of shifting into winter. “You’re not going to die on me are you?” Damian glanced at you while you breathed in the fresh air peacefully. “No haha, this is just regulating my temperature using my powers for a little while, I get ill when I do it for too long, let’s go!” you raced down the street loving the freedom even though you could feel the cold creep in. 

“Y/n? Y/n? Guys I think her eyelids are moving! Y/N! Can you hear me?” a familiar voice buzzed over the white noise while you began to regain your senses. Slowly you blinked your eyes open to see Damian, who looked pissed, Bruce, who also looked pissed, and Tim, who looked worse than ever. “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING YOU LIED TO DAMIAN TO GO OUTSIDE THEN ALMOST DIED!” Tim was waving his hands and showing you charts of your warmth-cold ratios being at all time lows and spouting off concerning facts about your health while Bruce just looked at the ceiling asking ‘why me’. 

“I thought I’d be fine” you whispered, feeling your throat scream at it’s use. “It’s like freezing outside- freakin colder than winter- and you wanted to go outside???” Tim looked exasperated, he was in a loose tank top and shorts, it looked like he’d been sweating so he had probably been next to you for a while during your recovery. “I didn’t think I’d get so cold” you mumbled, flexing your hands while you tried to regain your strength. 

Eventually Tim calmed down, he went back to working on cases but you noticed him frequently checking to confirm you hadn’t left your new room. Damian chastised you for lying and told you how you essentially fainted a couple blocks into the walk, it was just way too cold too for you to function outside. But the small taste of freedom was worth it. 

“Hey hot stuff,” Tim gave you a little devilish smile at his new nickname for you. “Cute Drake, but what’s up?” you called back as he approached your makeshift oven-room. “Nothing much just thought I’d come hangout- warm up your cold dark heart for once” you shook your head at all his heat-centered puns. “Tough talk for a glorified shish-kebab” you said with a laugh, letting a little spark dance on your finger tips. 

“What does it feel like? The powers and being cold?” Tim asked, his eyes still staring at your palm. “Mhm it’s a part of me yaknow? So when it’s cold its like a piece of my being is being stifled, like choked out of me. But normally, it just flows through me and I can channel it and what not but right now it feels... rigid, like every ounce of warmth is being used to circulate through my own body” you said with a sign, missing the freedom and immense warmth. “We’re gonna fix this y/n you know that right? This is only temporary, I promise.” Tim whispered, inching closer to the glass. 

You felt a tear slip out, quickly you pushed it away feeling it evaporate in your hands you looked up at Tim who was inches from the glass, his cheeks were red from the heat radiating on him as he stood bundled in a sweater. Slowly he gave you a hopeful smile, putting his hand up against the glass. With a small smile you uncurled your hand up to meet his, for a second you just met his eyes and knew you were safe. Even when everything seemed so cold Tim was warm, and he was always there for you. 

A couple days later you were stable, but constantly needing reheating. You’d spent a lot of time with Tim who had set up a little workspace outside your room. He’d work on cases and talk to you, sometimes he’d catch a few minutes of sleep, his cheek pressed adorably up to the warm glass while you stifle giggles as his sleepy breaths fog the glass. Your situation was bearable with Tim, and you were really starting to enjoy his company.

“Red Robin we’ve got something” you watched Tim shoot up from his work as Bruce descended into the Batcave. “Barry Allen and the rest of Star Labs have reason to believe the frost machines aren’t actually underground, but their above us. Think pumping out cold air like an AC machine for the Earth” Tim nodded, sitting down at the batcomputer as he began typing rapidly. You were straining your neck against the glass to try to see what he was doing. 

“Got it, try here, here, and here” Tim was pointing wildly at a map while Bruce sent out the coords. “Suit up, if we’re right this’ll be a real fight” Bruce said as he left to go get the others. After Tim was in his suit he came up next to your room with a grin. You looked at him with hopeful eyes, “you think this is it?” you asked Tim while he flashed you a hopeful smile. “I hope so y/n, if we’re lucky this will be it” he answered, taking a deep breath and clenching his hands into fists. “Well you need extra luck” you told him, he nodded then stopped short when you burst out of the room, throwing your arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. “My hugs are super lucky” you whispered into his chest while his hands wrapped around your back. “I’ll take all the luck I can get” he mumbled, lowering his head into the crook of your neck. The hug was easy and perfect- until you started to shiver. Quickly Tim deposited you back into your room, turning up the heat. 

“Guess I’m not hot enough for you” Tim snorted while you rubbed your shoulders. “Shut up dork, now go fix the world so I can give you a proper hug” you placed your hand against the glass again. With a nod he placed his hand to yours, “will do” he said, dashing off towards Bruce and Damian who were also all suited up. 

“Y/n I must inform you they have in fact found the base and will be going into battle shortly” Alfred called from the computers while he monitored the team’s location. “Yes!” you shouted, pumping a fist in the air while you paced around your room. 

The plan was clear, there were 10 giant AC machines pumping out the frost across the world, some heroes had been separated into teams each tasked with taking out their respective machine then any hero strong enough to lift the machines were in charge of bringing them to an undisclosed location on one of Bruce’s private islands for inspection and dismantling. Alfred had Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian’s vitals displayed on the screen as their suits were consistently monitoring them and you’d been craning your neck to keep track of the little bars. “god Alfie how do you take it? You can see every hit they take, every injury, you’re basically looking at it all going wrong!” you felt like tearing your hair out, watching the screen light up with every hit each boy took. 

“You get used to it Ms. Y/n you must have faith that they’ve seen worse and can survive anything” Alfred answered cooly but it didn’t stop you from wincing everytime Tim’s bar lowered or lit up meaning he took a hit. 

Over the comms you heard Bruce and Damian confirm their machine was sufficiently broken, as well as 8 of the other machines. As it turned out, Tim, Dick, and one of those annoying speedsters had been sent to the head machine, a few members of the league were at the other. You watched Tim take hit after hit, clearly him and Dick were struggling. “Alf is it just me or are Tim and Dick’s bars not going up” you were pounding at the glass of your room. Slowly Alfred nodded, abruptly standing up. To your shock he began moving around the cave, setting up what looked like a makeshift hospital room. “There will almost assuredly be some injuries after this battle. But how are you feeling Ms. Y/n as over half of the machines have been taken down” Alfred drew you away from the flashing bars as you realized you were feeling better, still not top shape but better than you’d been in days. “Yeah you’re right I’m definitely feeling better-”

“Hey Alfie Tim just got buried in snow any recommendations?” you heard Dick’s voice come over the speakers. Your head whipped to his bar which was flashing wildly as you shrieked. Alfred replied quickly, “Master Dick you must remove him immediately and wrap him with something warm as his suit cannot regulate him in freezing temperatures.” as he made his way back to the batcomputer, talking Dick through his next actions. 

“Will do, he’ll be okay but he’s kinda a popsicle right now” Dick’s voice came over the comms again while you let out the breath you’d been holding in as you saw Tim’s bar sliding back up. Shortly after they were aided by the rest of the league, promptly taking out the final machine and finding the villains hiding inside. 

Dick, Tim, and Damian returned to the cave shorty, Bruce was busy with league business interrogating the villains. Damian came in first, declaring he now hated the cold after how freezing that mission was. Following him was Dick who was walking with a slight limp as he called to Alfred explaining that he just twisted it when he dug Tim out of the snow. And last, Tim made his way into the cave. His hair was wet, clearly melted from being buried under snow. He was wearing a Star Labs sweatshirt and sweatpants as he held his waterlogged suit in his slightly shaky hands, and a towel was draped over his shoulders. “Alf you want my suit? Pretty sure I fried half the tech” he called as he shook his head, little water droplets flying from his hair. “I’ll see to it’s repair Master Tim” Alfred nodded, gesturing for Tim to place it next to him. “Also, might I recommend you spend some time with Miss Y/n as she is quite capable of warming you up” Alfred gestured towards your room before going back to examining Dick’s ankle. 

Tim nodded in agreement, giving you a little wave as he stumbled into the room with you. Letting the relief flood your head you quickly brought him into a warm hug, focusing on pushing some of your energy forwards to warm him up. “Mhm” Tim’s eyelashes fluttered shut against your neck while he melted into your embrace. “You’re so cold” you whispered with a giggle. “Yeah and you’re really hot” Tim groaned in reply, though you could feel his lips curl into a smile against your neck. “I think you meant warm” you tried to ignore the butterflies having a rager in your stomach. “Hm no I said it right” Tim whispered in your ear making your eyes widen at his upfront response. “Oh, I- uh, thanks? I think you’re pretty cool- no not cool cuz like that’s the opposite of hot- yeah you’re-” you were silenced as Tim pressed his lips to yours. Your eyes shot open at the feeling of his ice cold lips pressed to yours but they quickly fluttered closed when his hand wrapped around the back of your head, pulling you deeper into the kiss. His lips quickly warmed up against yours making your breath hitch when he slipped a cold hand around your waist pulling you flush against him. His fingers felt like ice as they grasped your back but you couldn’t but melt into his touch. 

You pulled away first, taking in gasping breaths while you couldn’t help but grin. “You warm yet?” you teased, pulling his hand away from your back and placing your hand in his, giving it a warm squeeze. “Mhm one more kiss” he pouted, leaning down to place a smiling kiss onto your lips while you scrunched your nose. “I should seriously freeze to death more often if it means I get to kiss you” Tim said while you rolled your eyes. “Or you could just not die and I might give you a good-job kiss?” you offered with a grin. “Will do” Tim nodded, giving your hand a squeeze. 

“Goodbye oven!” you shouted, practically kicking the door open as you finally got to leave the cramped room behind. Just a day later the Earth had returned to average temperature and you were free. “I am SO ready to go home, not that I didn’t like it here” you said, giving Tim a little smile as Bruce return all your belongings after a little over a week in Bat-Solitude. “Come back soon though?” Tim piped up with a hopeful looks. “Definitely, I won’t give you the cold shoulder” you snorted at your own joke while Damian groaned, saying something about being happy he’ll be free of your puns. 

Tim walked you out, chatting your ear off about his next cases and all the time he had to come see you, over the course of the frozen-adventure you’d found a best friend and possibly something more, maybe the oven was worth it after all? 

“Okay, so I’ll see you in a couple days?” you grinned as Tim nodded. “Yup! Now before you go, I need another good luck hug- they definitely work wonders seeing as last time I got buried in snow” Tim laughed, wrapping his arms around you as he chuckled into the hug. “Not my fault you turned into a snowman Drake” You gave him a squeeze before pulling away, locking eyes with him. His hand slipped to your chin again, but this time you wrapped your hands around his neck, pulling him in for a goodbye kiss, loving the way sparks danced on your lips. Pulling out of the kiss as the car arrived Tim opened the door for you like the gentleman he is, giving your hand a squeeze.

“See you later hot stuff” Tim winked at you, shutting the door and waving as you drove away, shaking your head at his never ending puns, you smiled to yourself as soon as he was out of view, loving the idea that you’d get to tease that cute dork for the rest of your life. 

#tim drake #tim drake x reader #tim drake x y/n #tim drake x you #tim drake x fem!reader #damian wayne #batboys #dick grayson x reader #bruce wayne #tim drake fluff #tim drake fanfic #red robin #red robin x reader #batfam #batfam x reader #dc fluff #jason todd #dc fanfic #timothy jackson drake

[felassan]

The Origins of the Halla

[theory]. cut for length, Tevinter Nights spoilers and because it’s not very pleasant

(pls note I hope this theory isn’t true and neither do I want it to be true. it’s speculation only and the idea of it is horrid and not okay in any way)

Those halla certainly are proud and beautiful. It's as though they realize how special they are.

Tevinter Nights, with the new information it contained on Ghilan’nain and what she once used to get up to, brought this stuff back to the forefront. it’s possible that the halla did not have.. nice beginnings as a species. it’s possible that the first halla were elves Ghilan’nain changed and experimented upon. some of the bases for this notion are as follows:

first, she’s literally called in surviving Dalish lore “the Mother of the Halla”. the title obviously carries with it the idea of a force which created, a progenitor. she’s also sometimes called “the first halla” and “mother of them all”. it’s a mythos-style ‘mother’ title, ofc, not necessarily meaning that Ghilan’nain literally gave birth herself to all original halla, and in Dalish lore it seems more like she’s the patron of halla or similar (our phrase ‘Mother Earth’ is similarly symbolic, for example.) still, from a different angle coupled with some other bits and pieces, it can begin to take on a sort of ominous feel. a Creator, indeed... 

we know from the Temple of Mythal inscription that Ghilan’nain created many beasts and monsters, including earth-bound creatures. among them were the halla. she clearly did create them, it’s just a question of what that creation involved, and if it was similar in nature to the things we read about in TN and the Trespasser lab notes. we also know that the hallas’ origins go way back to the ancient times - as far as Arlathan, per WoT. they’re not a recent addition to the Dalish. it’s not the case that elves of Halamshiral bred them into existence.

the way Dalish elves view halla and their relationship with them: the Dalish stress that halla are companions, not simple pets. they’re not akin to human horses. Dalish elves see them as noble entities. in one Codex a halla-tender states “they are our brothers and sisters”. this is more of a symbolic descriptor, reflecting the clear reverence/appreciation and kinship Dalish feel for halla. this makes complete sense in a normal light due to how important halla are for Dalish clans - halla help clans navigate, they pull the aravels (homes and storage space), they’re sources of dairy (food), wool (clothing, temperature regulation), leather (armor etc) and horn (tools, weaponry, decoration, potentially a lucrative item to trade or sell), possibly also a source of meat, possibly they might still be used sometimes as mounts, and spiritually in the Dalish faith halla lead elves who have passed away to the afterlife. the reverence also makes sense for Dalish culture as we know it. still, again, from a different angle “brothers and sisters” in combination with other stuff can feel a bit more.. ominous, a bit more literal. the Dalish don’t remember everything and unfortunately got some things ‘wrong’ (this isn’t a criticism of the Dalish, it is not their fault and their culture/belief system of today is valid in its own right). it’s possible that the original thing feeding into the idea that halla are siblings to elves was forgotten/lost.

the nature of halla: noble creatures, as the Dalish are described as noble wanderers (Duncan in DAO). graceful, as in-universe humans sometimes see elves as being. fierce and proud, like the Dalish are noted to be (“[a halla] would sooner fight to the death than demean herself” - compare with such things as “never again shall we submit”). according to tales they’re resistant to human yokes, as the Dalish are. halla are preternaturally intelligent - they only listen to their Dalish tenders, and Dalish elves ask them to accompany them rather than force them. it sounds more like how someone would interface with a literal colleague rather than with an animal companion. which makes sense in a normal light, given their innate intelligence and the respect Dalish elves hold for them. it’s possibly also the case that their intelligence is not the result of anything dark, that it’s natural to the species or is the result of some magic being involved in the breeding of them (the mabari were magically bred by the Formari and as such are also very intelligent, as an example of such a thing). however, it’s possible though that the human or near-human (for lack of a better term) intelligence of halla is because they originally were elves.

the Dalish lore that Andruil turned Ghilan’nain into a halla/the first halla. possibly unfortunately misremembered, since the ToM inscription says that Ghilan’nain created the halla. it’s entirely possible that a mix of both codexes is the truth, or that the Dalish version is figurative. it’s just that it’s interesting that what Dalish elves remember about the first halla involves an elf (Ghilan’nain was once a normal elf) being turned into a halla by a god.. if Ghilan’nain made the halla by transforming elves into them, that could be the grain of truth which is the origin of this piece of Dalish lore.

the halla were the most beloved by Ghilan’nain of all her creations. she loved them above all the rest, such that she couldn’t destroy them prior to her apotheosis. in the Dalish faith no other animal has a god of its own. is that because they were once elves? is it because they were her most successful experiment/signature ‘creation’? they’re closely associated with her, in the lab notes she uses a halla-head symbol as her sigil on a stamp, and in Hormok the striations on the columns are halla horns that repeat over and over. it kinda feels a bit like.. not literally, but what it calls to mind is that if Ghilan’nain was a science/tech company, the halla would be its logo/signature product. 

the Trespasser lab notes and Tevinter Nights: speaking of these things. in the bas-reliefs, armies of halla pulled prison-ships with barred windows to Ghilan’nain’s lab. prison-ships with barred windows are used to transport sentient prisoners, not non-sentient livestock animals. the repeating paintings show a queen figure looking mad/cruel as she makes physical changes to the figure which represents one of her people or supplicants. the magic pool can clearly affect humanoids of human-style sentience (it changed Jovis). and as for the wording in the notes (quote from a previous post I made):

About the weird wording: supplies brought in from the same stock (remember prison-ship aravels drawn by halla being taken to the lab mountains); bindings, weaving, meshing, grafts (like different parts of different beasts being stitched together); the aim to improve coordination and sharpen the heart (the new darkspawn are more clever than the old ones); explaining the process to the “stock” as a courtesy (yoo that is straight up telling a sentient being what you’re doing to it. You don’t explain shit to mixing acids in a beaker in a school lab or whatever or to your science fair volcano, those things are inert/non-sentient and cannot understand you); and the lesser animals thing (i.e. the ones she was working on at the time in these notes were higher, complex forms of life). These are probably some of her research notes.

some of Ghilan’nain’s experiments clearly involved sentient beings. the Evanuris institutionalized a system of slavery using vallaslin as brands. that’s not in question. the only question is whether or not her creation of the halla involved this predilection of hers for using sentient beings. I want to say No to the halla question, because it’s kinda like fridge horror/nightmare fuel/And I Must Scream, and I want the Dalish to have only nice things, but I digress

What happened to Warden Friedl: the way in which Friedl was mutilated and died in TN has an eerie similarity to the Dalish story of how Ghilan’nain became the first halla. in the Dalish story, Ghilan’nain was bound, blinded and left for dead in a forest. she then prayed to the gods for help. Andruil then sent hares to chew through the ropes, and turned her into a white deer. Friedl was found by Jovis and Lesha in the woods, raving and ghostly white. her eyes were gone, clawed out. they are forced to tie her to the litter, where she mutters a litany over and over (interesting word choice - a litany is obviously a form of prayer). in the morning they find her with her ropes chewed through.

The elven paintings from the ToM

(I think these pulls from the game were by Tumblr user pantymink, but I don’t know what their current url is. if you do know, please let me know so I can edit this)

obviously we begin with the statement that halla are clearly deer-like.

These deer-like creatures look sad (down-turned ears, even a tear-like pattern on one). the red backdrop is ominous/bloody. the designs on their faces look like vallaslin. it could be two creatures, one standing behind the other, or a single creature with 2 heads. (see the monstrous halla description below [multiples of body parts] and remember Ghilan’nain’s grafting and splicing).

the lines on this deer-like creature remind me of full-body vallaslin. it has too many legs and different horns to the horns of modern halla (see the description below about monstrous variants of halla that are different, wrong, insectile, with longer horns, and a harder more rounded look). it’s yellow, golden halla are a thing.

inside this deer-like creature is a line of downtrodden elven slaves (they have vallaslin), in a line like they’re being forced to go somewhere or are having to go somewhere they don’t want to go. it’s potentially both a symbolic - like ‘inside halla are elven spirits’ - and literal depiction - Ghilan’nain’s creations sometimes involved the literal physical meshing and grafting of parts of different creatures and people, using their bodies to make something new. in a way it reminds me of when Orsino used blood magic and the bodies of his dead compatriots to transform into a mashup abomination. and you might also squint at this image and see blood (the red) being drawn out of the slaves.

inside this last deer-like creature, which again has the too-many legs and subsequent insectile theme, are what to me look like a schematic or plan (which makes sense.. if you’re putting together furniture irl, you sometimes follow a schematic. to craft things in-universe in DAI, you find schematics. in a school science lab, you follow experiment instructions. if you were grafting and splicing different parts of things together, you might have drawn up plans or a schematic beforehand). it also looks like a star chart (which is interesting considering that the horse constellation Equinor may really have been a halla in relation to Ghilan’nain but its ascribed animal species was supplanted over time by humanity). if it’s a copy of schematics Ghilan’nain made on paper, maybe that’s supposed to be blood spattered on it (red).

(This last one isn’t from the ToM.) The deer on the far fight looks to be most delicate and refined and modern “halla-like” of the three, and looks to be ‘emerging’ from the previous iterations. the middle deer has a strange elongated body. the uppermost deer is blood-red, and the red paint is stylized in such a way that it looks like blood dripping from the deer’s underside.

Some additional thoughts -

The horribleness of this wouldn’t be out of character for an Evanuris based on the revelations about them in the ToM and Trespasser. or at least a latter-days Evanruis, if you believe they did not start out like that and instead became corrupted over time by power and possibly also by the Blight or red lyrium or some whack force.

The first halla may have originally looked quite different to modern halla. The Hormok bas-reliefs of halla were “different, wrong [...] too many horns [...] harder, more rounded look than was normal [...] almost insectile [...] the horns themselves were longer and ridged. Organic, somehow”. insectile might imply several things, but multiple legs is one possibility. If halla were spliced together in awful experiments on elves, or in experiments on elves that also involved other animals, the first ‘specimens’ or ‘batches’ (I hate this phrasing) may not have resembled the halla we know today. they might have been more akin to the bas-relief description or to the new Hormok darkspawn (darkspawn with animal parts) or the other creatures that were found in the pool room (like the halla-varterral hybrid thing). the halla-varterral thing was especially notable because varterrals are spider-like (insectile), ridged and look wrong.. yknow (also consider that the pool made an insectile thing from Jovis, the centipede monster). was the monstrousness of the first halla intentional on Ghilan’nain’s part? was it because the first batches weren’t successes? hard to say. at any rate, she may have then refined them, or made different varieties that looked closer to modern halla in appearance. alternatively, a long long time has passed between then and now. it’s possible that the way halla look naturally evolved over time or that elves selectively bred them (genetics is weird in Thedas and magic can clearly influence breeding of animals). wolves look a lot different to toy dogs in our world.

maybe the least-frightening reading of this stuff is that Ghilan’nain sacrificed or drew blood from elf slaves to power her experiments or increase her magic for her experiments. that’s still awful but slightly (only slightly) less nightmare-inducing than the other possibility.

anyways.. :|

#dragon age #bioware #video games #mj meta #thanku to the discord who helped synthetize this stuff #pls dont be true though #tevinter nights #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #spoilers #spoiler

[practicingmedicine]

Practicing Medicine: Chapter Seven

(+)7

2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

14302 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-WORST-THING-EVER"

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 42%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 92F

HEALTH

BP: 170/130

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 99.5F RR: 28

HR: 185

TIME

Day: 24 SEP. 2279

Time: 16:10

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 76 F

Atmospheric Pressure: 750 mm

Background Radiation: 1.321 RAD

WARNING: Dangerous wasteland creature in range!

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock! Why don't you tell me my chance of survival as a percentage too!

I'd been tipping back in my chair when the wall exploded, so now I was sitting on my ass in a state of total mental shock, slowly butt-scooting my way backwards. The NCR soldier who I'd been sitting beside popped up, knocking his stool over in the process.

"Ayuda!" he shouted. He was shooting his rifle, but it wasn't making any noise. He screamed something about shit ammo and started yanking on the charging bolt.

Amongst the wreckage, Tandi tried to stand back up. How she survived an impact like that was beyond me, but I wasn't about to point that out. She turned her head to look at Gram.

"Gram, get the-" she started. Before she could finish, the big white reptile threw itself directly at her, knocking over the entire table and crushing Cook and Jas as Tandi rolled out of the way, trailing pink insulation foam behind her. Gram sprinted past me and started clambering up the stairs to the second floor, leaving poor Chomps sitting in stunned silence.

The deathclaw reared around to face Tandi, who had drawn a six-gun from her hip.

"Fuck off, cyka!" shouted Tandi, and emptied it directly into his face, shattering his jaw and blasting off his nose.

The gunshots, the shrieks of the injured beast, the dust that was gathering in the air... it was all so overwhelming! I'd never been so close to anything so dangerous, and my whole body was screaming at me to run for my life, but I just couldn't send the signals to my muscles. I couldn't move, couldn't shout, couldn't breath...

The beast lunged at Tandi again, and she caught him by his arm and snapped it against her leg, then grabbed onto his broken jaw and forced it into the back of his throat. He immediately swung his other hand at her, impaling her through her forearm and thigh. He probably would have disemboweled her in the next motion, but was interrupted by a sudden hail of gunfire.

My eardrums pounded as the soldier fired shot after shot from his now-functional rifle, striking the deathclaw all across it's back and arms, poking lots of inconsequential little holes in the thing. By the end of the magazine, I couldn't hear anything but a loud ringing, so I didn't even get to hear the soldier's scream as the Deathclaw reeled around and folded him against the wall, taking all the life out of his body and sending him tumbling to the ground in a way that made it clear that he'd not be getting back up. The beast stalked over to him...

And in Came chomps like a goddamn pro wrestler, swinging a stool over his head like a sledgehammer. The beast didn't even bother to turn around as it raked Chomps across his entire upper body with its good claw. I could see the blood running down his face as Chomps stumbled backwards into the fallen table and fell onto his back, trying to figure out which of his massive wounds to clutch as he writhed about with his legs in the air.

Then, the thing turned it's whole upper body to face me. Our eyes connected.

Have you ever been so scared that you choked on your own spit? Because, as the beast stared at me with its one remaining eye, I distinctly remember gagging so hard that I started choking on my own spit.

It started walking towards me- a big, ghost-white beast, stained all over with its own blood, all its parts hanging loose- and I involuntarily let out a mix between a wet cough and a squeal. More logic-defying noises escaped my mouth as I scrambled for the stairs, trying and failing to stand up in the process. But it wasn't me who the deathclaw was keying in on now- It was Gram, standing behind me on the stairwell with a laser gun.

"Cover your ears, Boy!" He shouted over the ringing, and I followed his advice. I pressed my hands against my ears and shut my eyes.

Next thing I felt was heat on my skin- wasn't no light, but there was heat alright! Heat and a noise like a can of sarsaparilla taking a fifty cal right in the center! Drops of hot liquid splashed across my skin.

Next thing that hit were the smells. Burning fat, a delicious dinner and clouds of gunpowder, pools of coagulating blood and bodily fluids; The sounds- screaming, shouting, sobbing, and there was that damn ringing in my ears! My head hurt too, and my skin was all hot and prickly. I swear I could feel my chest caving in, I was breathing so hard…

"Isaac! Isaac, get moving, people are dying! ISAAC!"

Someone hit me in the back of the head, so I turned around and bit them as hard as I could. I could taste blood so vividly, as they pulled their hand back, putting them off balance. I grabbed the wrinkled, bleeding hand and yanked it forward, pulling its owner down the stairs and onto the floor. Someone walked up to me and tried to say something to me so I started screaming as loud and hard as I could, until they backed away.

Then it struck me- the deathclaw was dead. It's head had been hollowed out, pieces scattered all over the room. No one was even paying attention to me as I beat the ever living shit out of Gram, who had probably just saved my life. They all had their own problems.

I was hyperventilating, I realized, and it was making my vision go dark around the edges. I tried to regulate my breathing as I scanned the room, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do first. But it was hard- so, so hard with all the ringing, and the prickly hot feeling on my skin and the static in my head!

Where to start? I started compiling a mental list of all the problems that I had to fix, or "doing triage," as my father would have said. In my head, it looked something like this:

I'd hurt Gram after he hit me in the back of the head, but he was already getting back up.

Cook was lying underneath a table, wheezing and trying to get it off her chest- she was probably having trouble breathing, but Jas was helping her at the moment, and she was making noise so it couldn't be that bad.

The NCR soldier was in a bad way, probably got his back broke. I couldn't tell if the blood all over his back was his or the deathclaws, which warranted a closer look, but there was still air going through his body so I'd put him on the back burner for now.

That left Tandi and Chomps, the two with the nastiest wounds. If the claw had hit his throat, Chomps would be dead very soon, if he wasn't dead already. I decided to deal with him first. Ignoring Gram's muttered insults, I stalked across the room and fell down on one knee beside the old man. There was a frightening amount of blood pooling around his head, and my heart rate picked up when I dragged him on his side and gave him a quick once over.

Three parallel gashes- One deep wound across his stomach, one relatively shallow one across his upper chest and collarbone, and one across his forehead that was bleeding profusely but which had stopped at the skull. I saw no signs of life-threatening bleeding, though his intestines were poking out through the stomach wound. I motioned towards Gram.

"Gemme a wet towel." In spite of what I'd done to him, he didn't argue with me, disappearing into the kitchen without a word. I looked back at Chomps. I'd been an idiot and left my medical kit in the cart, so my emergency treatment was going to have to be improvised. I didn't like that, but I wasn't about to leave any of the people in the room to go get the kit. I'd have to make do for the moment.

First step would be to remove the clothes around the evisceration. How was I going to do that? I couldn't just pull off his overalls. I'd have to cut through them. What options did I have for cutting? My utility knife was in my medical pouch. But, when they'd set the table, there had been steak knives…

Find a steak knife, I told myself, and started scanning the floor. I could faintly hear the back door open as Gram headed outside to pump water on a towel, which I'd use to dress the evisceration. Steak knife, steak knife…

Amidst the debris, I found a fork and steak knife lying together, so I took both just in case I ended up needing the fork for something. After putting a quick gash in the pale, unfeeling strip of skin on my forearm to get a feel for the knife's cutting edge, I leaned back over Chomps and slid the knife against his blood-soaked denim. It took a bit of force, but once I had cut through the tough edge, it became a lot easier to run my knife through the worn material. I cut out a rough square of cloth all around his chest, and carefully peeled it off his sticky, bloody skin. Poor man was conscious, I noticed, but he wasn't saying nothing. Just watching.

"Don't try and move. Your guts weren't ripped, but they might be if you start squirming. No matter how much it hurts, you gotta stand still," I said, tearing off the loose strip of overalls and bunching it up into a makeshift rag for later. It wasn't sanitary, but it'd have to do. 

Gram came back in shortly after, carrying several ragged towels soaked in water. I gave him a nod of acknowledgment and held my arms out for Gram to drop the towels into. Not stopping to check his trajectory, Gram tossed the load in my arms, and continued walking until he reached Tandi. He knelt down beside her.

"Toss me the pip boy!" He shouted. I was confused for a second, then remembered the medical profiles I'd created. Quick as I could, I logged off the pip-boy, and tossed it underhanded to Gram. I didn't wait to see if he caught it.

"Remember: Don't move," I said, laying the wet towel across Chomps's jutting intestines. He winced as the towel touched the wound, but he didn't squirm. Don't think there was much that could've made Chomps squirm. 

"You're doing great!" I told him, securing the towel around the edges. I checked the rest of his wounds. His airway was swell, and the leaks in his forehead and chest weren't gonna kill him. Which means he was as stable as he was going to get, without a stimpack. "I'll come back to you soon. I need to check the soldier…"

"No, Fuck that guy! Tandi's been thrown through a goddamn wall!" shouted Gram, but it sounded quiet next to the ringing in my ears. I rubbed my temples. Jas had gotten the table off of Cook, and was doing what I guessed to be a misguided attempt at CPR on her, for some reason. Probably because she was complaining about breathing? First things first, I needed to put a stop to that 

"Jas, does Cook have a pulse?" I asked, barely able to hear my own voice. Jas nodded. 

"Yeah, but she says that she can't breathe, so I'm doing-"

"Stop doing that! CPR is for dead people!" Jas didn't complain no more, instead standing up and going to examine the NCR soldier. If Gram was telling the truth, I didn't have time to worry about how Jas was going to screw him up, so I ignored her and hurried over to Tandi. Surprisingly, she was still conscious. She gave me a weak middle finger as I sat down.

"Helmet off- stop moving it if she complains about her neck," I said. Gram complied immediately. Tandi didn't have anything to say as the helmet came off, revealing her sweaty, mutilated face. There were no new injuries there, though it was still as shocking as ever.

"Where's it hurt, Tandi? Is your back okay?" I asked. She looked up at me like I was stupid.

"No, I'm completely paralyzed. Dumb whore..." I rolled my eyes.

"Surely, I am as dumb as they come! But, the pip-boy says you've got internal bleeding, and it's still figuring out where. Where're you hurtin' at?" Tandi laughed a little.

"Internal? Then it's in the right place." I shook my head and inspected her pip-boy image. There were so many warnings that it was impossible to try to interpret them all. I suddenly really wished I could read, even just a little more.

"Tandi, this is life or death! Where did it-" Suddenly, the image on the screen changed. The pip boy beeped, and a blinking warning sign appeared dead in the center of her character's chest. The BP stat, I noticed, was down from the last measurement.

"Y'have no idea how often people say that. Anyways, he hit me-" she started. I began to pull off her coat. I elbowed Gram in the shoulder, and pointed at the stricken woman.

"Strip her down. Tandi, please help as much as you can!" She gave me a suspicious look.

"And what if I don't want you exploring all up in my nooks-and-crannies?"

"Tandi, something is very fucking wrong! Help me take the armor off!" She clutched her wounded leg and growled at me.

"...Aggghhh, Fine! But I'll kill you afterwards."

Gram worked on taking off the armor supporting her back, while I removed her dented chest-plate. Once I'd gotten that free, I took off her shirt, Gram removed her baggy jeans, and we got to work freeing her armor harnesses. When one of the clips got stuck, I picked up my steaknife from the ground and sliced through the whole strap. It was surprisingly easy to cut through, I guess for emergency situations like this. Once I got that off, Tandi was left in her sportswear. I removed her chest wrapping on account of some bruising in that area. Her knickers weren't covering nothing up, so I left those alone.

The full picture was distressing, real distressing. Amongst Tandi's considerable collection of old scars, there were several huge, rapidly swelling patches of yellow, purplish skin all over her body, the biggest of which was right over her heart. I pulled my stethoscope off my neck and plugged it into my ears- had em backwards, got them in the right way and then checked around for her heartbeat, and got back a faint, muffled noise. Combined with her wormlike neck veins and the fact that I couldn't even get a pulse on her femoral at this point, that made Beck's Triad. Father always told me I'd never be able to diagnose tamponade like that on a real clinical exam, but here were all three symptoms, sticking out like a compound fracture.

"Oh no," I breathed. I tried to compose myself, but panic was already overtaking my mind. Before I even spoke, I could hear my voice cracking. "Jas! Get- uh, break into the wagon out back, and grab the orange bag and the other one, the other emergency-looking one. Bring em back fast!" Jas looked at her fallen companion, who she had sat up against the wall, then at the door, then at me. Slowly, she stood up, walked away from the unconscious soldier, and exited out the back door, picking up speed as she went.

Preparing myself for what came next, I placed the cold knife against Tandi's bare, swollen chest, and started counting ribs. One, two, three, four, five... The tip came to a rest beneath her right breast.

"What are you doing?" She asked. I pressed the knife a bit harder, seeing how hard I'd need to press to cut her sweaty skin. Not very. A drop of blood seeped out from under the knife.

"There's blood gathering in the lining around your heart, Tandi. I gotta open your chest up to fix you." Tandi's eyes opened wide.

 "What- NO!"

I felt her grab onto my wrist, but she was late; I'd already abandoned any doubts that might've been left in my head and punched my knife through her chest, right by her sternum. A primal scream filled my ears as I dragged the blade through the layers of skin and fat, all the way to her shoulder blade. I shoved my hand into her intercostal space.

"Spread her ribs and hold 'em," I grunted. Gram made a face.

"Oh, Christ..." Tandi continued to shriek in pain and squeeze my wrist as Gram spread the wound like a clam shell. I tried to wrap my fingers around her pulsating heart, but couldn't quite get at it. I pushed her lung aside.

"Stop it! Da idi ty, fuck you! Otvyazhis'!" Tandi cried, but I didn't stop. I couldn't. It had to be done, or her pericardium would fill up with blood and squeeze her heart til it stopped beating. I kept digging around as the blood coursed over my hands and arms; I was slick up to the elbows with it. 

"Anyone got a flashlight?" Gram shook his head. I swore and spit on the ground. That was gonna make this next part a lot harder.

Tandi kept on hollering and thrashing as I tried in vain to get a grip on the pericardial sac without also grabbing the throbbing heart inside. My fingers were too slippery to pinch it, so I pulled the dinner fork out of my pocket and hoisted the sac up that way. It slipped off the fork a couple times before I could get it in a good position, but once I had it pulled taught, I didn't waste any time opening it up between the phrenic nerves- Tandi was dying quick. She looked like she'd been drained by a vampire, and her shrieks of pain had already quieted down to confused sobbing.

"Ah hell Isaac, I don't know how long I can hold this! Could you hurry up?" grunted Gram. I could see the muscles straining beneath his skin, bulging in his face and neck. His arms were quaking.

"Yeah, sure! Now help me turn her over…" I put my hands on Tandi's back and worked with Gram to move her on her side, so the blood could leak out of her cavity. The floor was covered in the stuff by now, and it had streaked and smeared where she'd been struggling. I tried to ignore it as I got down on my hands and knees and stared into her wound. "Great. I'm gonna peek down here again, try and figure out where it's-"

Before I'd even finished my sentence, a gout of bright red blood sprayed out the cut I'd made in the pericardium, all over my chest and face. It dripped down my glasses like some sort of cheesy horror-movie effect.

"Doc! Hey, Doc, I've got the stuff!" I looked over my shoulder to see Jas stumbling in through the back door, carrying both the stimpack bag and my medical bag in her arms. I motioned for her to set them down next to me. "Um, there's a few stimpacks here, which should I-"

"Fuck it! It don't matter!" Something like a laugh rattled through my chest as I snatched the syringe out of Jas's hand. Tandi's heart coughed out another gob of blood, but I'd already moved to the side, and soon my hand was in the clamshell wound again. My fingers clawed for the source of the blood. 

"I'm hurting bad!" grunted Gram. I started probing with my stimpack.

"Well don't let go, use a- I don't know, use anything!" I was hardly paying much attention to Gram at this point. I could feel the blood coursing over my fingers as they brushed over some artery, can't say which one, and I figured pretty quickly where the rupture was. I jabbed the stimpack in. 

And Missed.

I tried again, and missed. Which gave me that sinking feeling that you get in your stomach when you realize that you've not got much time, and your body just isn't the right machine for the task. Usually that came with a certain embarrassment, that telltale hotness of the skin, but not this time. This time, the hair on my arms stood up straight, and the sweat on my skin grew cold.

 I looked over at Gram. His eyes were jammed shut, he'd bit through his upper lip- and his hands, shaking more than ever. My hands were shaking too. The animalistic energy that'd been carrying me through this had gone. For a moment, I was just a kid again, in over his head and scrambling for a way out. 

But it was only a moment. Like a lumberjack throwing all his weight behind an axe, I took three more passionate stabs with the needle before piercing the artery. I had no hope of suturing it now, so I just hoped to high hell that pushing stimpack juice through the pipe and pinching the rupture shut with my nails would actually work. I'd made so many choices based on pure hope already, what was more on the pile?

The moment I pulled my hand out and discarded the empty stimpack, Gram grunted and collapsed on top of Tandi. He'd stopped holding the site open, but his fingers were still buried in the bleeding wound. His lungs rattled with each jagged breath.

"What- what should I do? Do you need help with her?" panted Jas, and I waved her away. I was panting too, panting and hot and covered in sweat and blood and god knows what else. I could feel my heart beating in every crevice of my aching body.

But was Tandi's heart still beating?

Her eyes were open and unreactive, her skin was pale and waxy. Seemed like she was breathing, but the hairs on my arms still stood up as I prodded around for a pulse near her groin; there was nothing at first, then a faint squirming beneath my fingertips, and then nothing again. The skin felt cool as glass. I put my hand on Gram's back.

"What's her- check the pip boy, what's her BP say?" Gram lifted his head up just slightly to look at the pip boy screen.

"Seventy six and fifty." There was a solemn silence. "Is that…?"

"That's good. Better, I mean.

I wiped some of the sweat off my brow again. It was pointless, seeing as how I probably deposited a bunch of blood when I did it, but I had to let out all that relief somehow. I hadn't even been able to get a femoral pulse when I'd checked last time, which meant that her pressure had been somewhere below seventy. A jump back up to seventy six was good news.

Of course, Tandi's troubles weren't over- her pericardium was slit, she still had herself a gaping hole in the chest, and the cavity was still full of blood in spite of my efforts. I grabbed my hand-suction pump from out of my bag and hooked up the reservoir, plunged in the tip, and got to work squeezing. An onlooker might have thought that I was still putting in my all, but at this point, my mind was elsewhere. I glanced over my shoulder. 

"Jas, you wanna be helpful, right?" I asked. I didn't wait for a response. "Prepare the worker's quarters for all these patients. I want beds, I want chamber pots, whatever we can get. And when you're done with that, you and me are gonna haul these folks upstairs."

Jas might've said something to me after that, but I couldn't hear it over the fuzz in my head, the static of stress. I looked around the room one last time, and I don't think I have to tell you the specifics of what I saw; just that I could tell right then that this would be, without a doubt, the longest night of my life.

[+]

#fallout #fallout fanfic #fallout fanfiction #fallout fandom

[nalgenewhore]

A rogue storm had her presumed dead and stranded on the red planet. Left on her own, astronaut Aelin Galathynius has four years to make it to the next drop-site, some two thousand miles. Armed with her smarts and dwindling supplies, Aelin attempts to survive on an inhospitable planet, when the nearest help is only millions of miles away. 

masterlist - ao3 - next chapter

Fuck this entire planet, Aelin Galathynius thought to herself as yet another bead of sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. She wished she could wipe her brow, the stupid cooling system in her space suit was nothing in comparison to the blazing sun. Stupid planet, stupid planet with no atmosphere. 

It wasn’t just the sun, the piece of machinery she held was worth more than her entire life and with Fenrys Marama cracking jokes over the comms, she was not paying as much attention as she should. “I really hope that penetration test goes well for you, Ace. Is the core still soft?”

Despite herself, she huffed a laugh, “I’ll have you know that the CPT is no joke and this is serious science.”

“Oh, please,” his cocky voice crackled through the headset, “you’re a dirt engineer.”

Lorcan Salvaterre, from where he was helping Aelin steady the drill for the core penetration test, rolled his eyes but stayed silent, wanting to know where the argument was leading. The blonde astronaut was quick to reply, “Geotechnical and it’s soil, Mr. Fancy Aerospace Engineer. Isn’t your job today confirming that the FAV is still upright?”

Dry laughter was heard from their other crew members and Fenrys bit back, “Actually, it’s visual inspection of mission vehicles.” He paused for a second, “I’m very happy to report that on base inspection, the FAV is in good shape and yes, it’s still upright, dipshit.”

Before Aelin could speak, their commander cut in, “If you guys stopped leaving your comms open, we could all be exempt from the truly witty commentary.”

She frowned down at Lorcan Salvaterre, the mission leader and mechanical engineer, sticking her tongue out at her friend who smirked in response. A gentle, cool voice spoke up, “Happy to shut them off from here, Salvaterre.”

The golden-haired man child squawked in protest, “Hey! Radios are our only way of communication on this inhospitable planet-“

“Shut them off, Faliq.” The next thing Aelin heard was a slight static and then complete silence. “Oh, this is nice,” Lorcan said, the only person who could speak now. “We need fifty samples, G, one hundred grams each.”

Since her radio had been cut, she could only give him a thumbs up and focused on the task at hand. After a few minutes, the radio crackled back to life, Nesryn’s voice tight with worry, “Commander… you’re gonna want to see this.”

Lorcan’s head lifted up and he turned to look at the surface habitat, like their mission’s system operator could see him, “What is it, Faliq?”

A shiver of nervous energy straightened Aelin’s spine and she stopped the drill, her brow furrowing and her hands becoming clammy.

“Mission update. Storm warning.”

“I saw that on this morning’s briefing, we’ll be inside before it hits.”

“Storm’s gonna be a lot worse, estimate says to prepare for emergency departure.” Aelin breathed sharply as Lorcan exhaled, turning to look over her head at the horizon, his dark eyes calculating. “Commander?”

When his eyes slid to Aelin’s, she felt her heart drop. They were fucked. “Everyone inside the hab. Now.”

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

All crowded around Nesryn’s computer, staring at the screen where the words, ‘Abort mission’ flashed across it underneath the storm estimate, tension was high. Hardly anybody dared to breathe as the dark-haired computer engineer read the update, “…eleven-hundred kilometres in diameter…”

“That’s heading straight for us,” said Rowan Whitethorn, the mission doctor, tapping his finger on the screen and tracing the trajectory. “What’s the estimate force, Nes?”

The beginnings of the storm shook the structure and Aelin saw Elide Lochan’s - resident chemist - eyes narrow for a second before a mask of indifference settled over her features, even as she hooked her pinky around Lorcan’s, the black diamond ring on her left-hand glinting. They shared a small smile that made Aelin’s heart ache, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking of such things. They had a mission to worry about, she could fret over her aching soul later, Aelin chastised herself as her gaze flicked to the green-eyed man across the desk from her.

“Ninety-two thousand Newtons,” Nesryn all but whispered, her voice aghast.

Lorcan swore, tangling the remainder of his fingers with Elide’s and squeezing, “What’s the abort force?”

“Seventy-five thousand,” Fenrys read, his brows wrinkled with worry as he ran his hand over his short hair, brushing it forward into the wave pattern like he did when he was stressed, “any higher and the FAV will tip.”

“We’re scrubbed?” asked Aelin, worrying her bottom lip, the voice of her mother telling her not to do that sounding in her mind. All her life’s work, the whole crew’s life’s work just gone. The mission they’d worked themselves ragged for, over. Just like that. She wasn’t ashamed of the tears that pricked her eyes.

Red letters flashed across the screen, Prepare for emergency departure.

Elide’s calming voice brought the crew back, as she stepped away from Lorcan and leaned over the computer, analyzing what was on the screen, “Maybe it won’t be as bad as they say, they’re estimating a significant margin of error.”

Everyone turned to Lorcan, in the end – it was his call to make. Aelin nodded in agreement with Elide’s words, “Let’s wait it out.” His face was emotionless as his eyes shuttered, that mind of his running through each scenario he could think of. “Let’s wait it out,” she repeated.

They waited with bated breath until Lorcan shook his head once, “Prepare for emergency departure.”

“But-“

“That’s an order, G.” No one commented on the barely heard words, a look of mourning on Lorcan’s face. “We’re scrubbed.”

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Debris struck the sides of the airlock tunnel as Nesryn pulled down the latch of the door, “Ready, Commander.”

Everyone turned to Lorcan, their suits and headlamps on. “Visibility is almost zero, stay together and if you get lost, follow my suit’s telemetry,” he indicated the bio-monitor on his arm with which they could home in on each other’s location and other various functions, “Wind picks up further from the hab, so be prepared.”

The airlock door opened and the six astronauts struggled further into the sandstorm, each step requiring full body effort. The three women tucked behind the men, keeping close, hands on oxygen regulators.

Through the screaming sound of the storm, they heard metal creaking – the Farnor Ascent Vehicle. Aelin stepped out from behind Lorcan, barely able to see her fellow crew members. “We need to shore up the FAV,” she yelled, hardly able to hear her own voice. If it somehow tipped, without them in it to launch, they would never get it up again.

“How,” Fenrys asked, his voice straining above the storm as he pushed along, Elide close behind him.

“We can-“ Aelin screamed as something ripped free from the habitat structure and crashed into her, lifting her off the ground and throwing her out of sight.

“Aelin!” Elide’s scream pierced the monotony of the whirling debris. Everyone froze, looking to where they had last seen her.

“What happened?”

“Something hit her and she was just gone, she flew west,” Elide cried, her voice shaking. That was her oldest friend, her sister-

“Galathynius, report.”

Nothing but static. Nesryn looked down at her bio-monitor, pressing on Aelin’s suit button. “Her suit’s offline, I don’t know-“

“Galathynius, report,” Lorcan’s voice broke and again, nobody answered him.

“Her decompression alarm went off,” Rowan said, “she has less than a minute.”

Lorcan’s stomach dropped, “Shit, ok, ok, Marama, get to the FAV and prepare for launch, everyone else, home in on Lochan.”

As Fenrys took off to the rocket, leaving Elide to face the storm herself, she stumbled, “I can’t see anything.” Slowly, too slowly, the remaining crew members struggled their way to her and huddled together.

“We’re gonna line up and walk west. Small steps, she’s probably prone and we don’t want to step on her,” said Lorcan, his voice raised. They nodded, confirming the plan and set out, eyes wide open, hands out as precaution in case… they tripped over her body. “Doc, report on Galathynius.”

Rowan read the information on his suit’s computer, “Faliq, her bio-monitor sent something, a ‘raw packet’-“

“Yeah, I got that,” Nesryn confirmed, reading what the others couldn’t. “BP 0, PR 0, TP 36.2.”

“Copy. Blood pressure, 0, pulse rate, 0, temperature, 32.6.”

“Temp’s normal,” Elide commented, confusion clouding her mind, “why is her temp normal.” It wasn’t a question.

As realization set in, Rowan paled, “It takes a while for, it takes a while for the body to… cool. Blood’s still hot.” At that, everyone stopped, whirling to Rowan where he flanked Nesryn and Elide.

“Commander,” Fenrys’ voice crackled over the radio, “we’re tilting to nine degrees, with wind pushing to eleven. It’ll tip at twelve.”

“If it tips, can you launch before it hits the ground?”

The pilot hesitated, “Uh… yes, sir, I can take manual control.”

“Copy that, everyone, get to Marama. Prepare for launch.”

Nesryn started, “What about you, Commander?”

“I’m going to keep looking, get to the FAV.” Nobody moved, Elide’s eyes wider than ever before and filled with tears. “Now.”

“You really think I’m leaving you behind,” Fenrys asked, his voice breaking. “Lor-“

“I just ordered you to, now get moving,” Lorcan said, in a tone that brook no arguments. When they still didn’t move, he cursed, “Fucking hell, I said go.”

With that, Nesryn and Elide tucked behind Rowan as they made their way to the FAV.

Once they were in the airlock and had pressurized the vehicle, Elide swore, low and in Blackbeak, “Dilo, what is he doing.” She was the first up into the cabin next to Fenrys, eyes on her fiancé’s telemetry, “He’s going too slow, he won’t be able to find her in time.” Nesryn and Rowan climbed up into the cabin and the silver-haired man was nearly shaking, eyes wide.

“Commander, we’re at 11.5 degrees, you need to get back here-“

“Faliq, can you use the proximity radar to find her?”

“It only works for metal, there’s not a single piece of metal on any of our suits.” Defeat bled through her voice.

“Copy. Give it a try,” Lorcan told her, still determined to leave no being behind.

“Lorcan, I know you don’t want to hear this,” said Elide, “but Galathy… Aelin’s dead.”

“Try the fucking radar.”

Fenrys shot Elide a look, “The fuck is wrong with you, Lochan?”

Her dark eyes were unreadable and she strapped herself into her acceleration seat, “My sister is dead, I don’t want my fiancé dead too.”

Their pilot went silent at that and turned his eyes back to the controls, “Negative on the radar, Commander.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lorcan muttered, groaning in frustration and desperation. He was grasping at straws; they all knew it. “Nothing?”

Rowan had gone silent in his seat next to Elide and he offered her a bleak look, tight-lipped, when she reached over and squeezed his hand, no words to say. Everyone knew what had been between Aelin and Rowan, except for maybe themselves. Nesryn shook her head, “It can barely see the hab, there’s not enough-“

The FAV let out a screeching sound as it tipped more and Fenrys barked out, “Commander, you need to get back to the ship now. I got one more trick and then we’re fucked.”

Silence on the comms. Fenrys tried again, “Commander-“

“Copy that,” Lorcan bit out. “How far?”

“11.9”

Elide spoke, “Salvaterre, Galathynius is gone. We need to get out of here.”

Lorcan said not a word. Finally, Nesryn pleaded, “Lorcan, she’s gone, ok? We need you here.”

“Roger that,” his voice was defeated, “on my way.”

Despite themselves, they all let out a relieved sigh, breath they didn’t know they were holding. Maybe a minute later, the airlock whooshed and Lorcan appeared, staying dead silent and not meeting anyone’s eyes as he strapped himself in next to Fenrys. “Prepared for launch.”

“Roger that, Commander.”

The ship began to shake as Fenrys blasted the jets, pulling them up and out of the storm. The only words spoken were from the control system, marking every one-hundred metre mark they reached.

Half an hour later, they were docking on their rocket station, named The Lani, after the goddess of dreams – their expedition The Matron , phase two of a three-part mission. Once they had completed the post-boarding instructions, Lorcan spoke, rubbing his eyes as his shoulders slumped, “We’re done for the day, don’t worry about logs or the mission. I’ll, um, I’ll send a report.”

Everyone nodded and dispersed, grim looks on their faces. Lorcan stayed behind, leaning against the wall of the airlock. Elide waited by him, cupping the side of his neck and stroking her thumb over his jaw as it feathered and he dragged his eyes to hers. “I’m sorry.”

She just shook her head, indicating she wouldn’t speak of it now, “Not now, love.” Her lip trembled, her face crumpling before Lorcan tugged her against him and cradled the back of her head. She cried silently into his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt. All he could do was bury his face in her hair and whisper his apology, his heart splintering in his chest.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

It was late. The other crew members were in their sleep-cabins, mourning the loss of their friend, no. Not friend, family. Their family was broken now. Lorcan was still up, sitting in the central area, staring at the blinking cursor on the computer.

With a heavy sigh, he began to type the report to the flight and crew director, Manon Blackbeak.

Blackbeak,

Mission Specialist Aelin Galathynius is presumed dead after being struck by debris during the storm late this afternoon on Farnor, day 18 of our 31-day stay. The remaining crewmembers were forced to abort the mission. Awaiting mission directions.

Commander Salvaterre

After sending it, anger sparked in his chest, indignation of the fucking unfairness of it. With a snarl, he slammed the laptop shut and stalked to the window, looking down at the planet until his eyes blurred and stung but still he watched, eyes roving over the red dirt as if he would be able to spot her body.

@mythicaitt​ @kandasboi​ @schmlip-scribble​ @the-regal-warrior​ @westofmoon​ @empire-of-wildfire​ @rhysands-highlady​ @city-of-fae​ @shyvioletcat​ @alifletcher2012​ @tangledraysofsunshine​ @ttakeitbacknoww​ @tswaney17​ @ourbooksuniverse​ @flora-and-fae​ @that-other-pineapple​ @sleeping-and-books​ 

comment to be tagged! 

#supernova #supernova chapter one #the martian au #rowaelin #rowan x aelin #aelin ashryver galathynius #rowan whitethorn #elorcan #elide x lorcan #elide lochan #lorcan salvaterre #fenrys moonbeam #nesryn faliq #isa writes #nalgenewhore

[edwardslostalchemy]

Shouto.....Shouto making so many FRIENDS has me WEAK, you guys. I'm telling you, I have been sobbing about this for MONTHS because I love platonic relationships and friendships and they're so GOOD and I want for my son to have ALL OF THE FRIENDS, DAMN IT. LISTEN TO ME.

Shouto, Momo, abd Tenya knowing each other since they were kids???? So good. The rich kids club is wholesome not because they're rich, but because they love and support each other.

Shouto and Momo being like siblings???? Oh my God I'm in TEARS. Both of them looking out for each other and knowing each other's cues. They can talk in a certain manner to each other because they care. Like Shouto making Momo eat if she skips a meal and he gives her half his food like "you are NOT going hungry" and shes like "you're such a mother hen".

Shouto and Tenya being those pals that are just. Really in tune with each other???? Like!!!! They don't have to tell each other something like "I got your back", they just DO.

Shouto and Izuku!!!! Oh my GOD these two could kill a man and get away with it, but they don't do it because they're good kids, Brendt. These two are in tune, too!!!! Like they GET IT. Izuku gives Shouto one look and Shouto knows what he has to do. Or Shouto starts walking somewhere and Izuku doesn't even have to ask, he just follows because they come in a package.

Shouto and Ochako!!!!!! My sweet winter children!!!! They're so chaotic!!! If you think Shouto and Izuku and Tenya are chaotic, you have not met Ochako!!!! The pranks these two can pull!!!!! They WILL miss with you and your stuff!!! Make your stuff float while it's frozen solid oof rip your favorite lamp or whatever. Also she gets him into Disney and Studio Ghibi movies!!!! Ponyo is their movie!!!!

Shouto and Kyoka oh my God. Shouto giving her feedback on her music and telling her she could maybe mess with different genres. I love the headcanon of him knowing how to play the bass and sings like an angel, so I can see them bonding for their love of music and also writing music and lyrics together. Wholesome. So very wholesome.

Shouto and Denki. Meme Lords Extraordinaires. Denki is responsible for educating Shouto on memes and you better believe he's a good student. He's a little confused but he got the spirit and then he finally gets it! And Denki is so proud of himself ohmg. Aizawa gets extra gray hairs when he sees these two together. No brain cells found and that's the point.

Shouto and Eijirou please oh my God please. Training with ice, Shouto making it and throwing it at Eijirou while Eijirou uses his hardening to break the ice. Them being cool work out buddies (with others like Mido and Iida) and like being spotters for each other or whatever theyre called, idk I dont lift weights. MANLY.

Shouto and Yuga ahhhh pretty boys UNITE. Please oh my God Yuga has been wanting to dress Shouto up because he's just. Really pretty. And Yuga is like I must advise him. He can look fabulous. And he does. Everyone dies because Shouto comes out with shiny fashion clothes and it's Shoujo Shouto all over again rip in pieces.

Sho u to and Mina!!! Mona teaching him how to dance hello???? Or he already knows how to slow dance and she teaches him new things ahhh get on this with me!!! Imagine!!!! The possibilities!!!

Shouto and Tooru!!!! It would be so cool if they could work on quiet operations together. He is a quiet guy in demeanor, but his quirk is loud, so it would be cool if he could work with Tooru to be sneaky. In turn, Tooru is a quiet girl with her quirk but she can be a loud person. So Shouto teaches her how to keep quiet. STEALTH FRIENDS.

Shouto and Rikitou!!!! He teaches Shouto how to bake!!! One day Shouto comes in to the kitchen and brownies are ready and there's Rikitou cutting them in squares and Shouto is like *star eyes* and asks if he can teach him. And when Shouto learns, he makes Rikitou and the rest of his friends cakes and brownies and pastries alskdjslafk. Making food for friends is the way I show my love and I think Shouto would do the same thing.

Shouto and Mezou!!!! Quiet guys!!! But cool guys!!! I think it would be adorable if Mezou would give his friends piggy back rides like how he carried Izuku, and I think Shouto would Crave a Piggy Back Ride, and so. It would happen. Please Mezou carries Shouto if he's super tired like ready to pass out tired and Shouto, to return the favor, can be like his hot/cold compress if he gets any of his appendages hurt. They can also relax together like can these two please meditate together?

Shouto and Fumikage!!! I know Shouto provides light with his fire and Dark Shadow is not a fan of light, but what if he was a fan of warmth, like a cat? And Shouto is very warm. I can see Dark Shadow gravitating towards Shouto and Shouto is real cool about it like yeah get your warmth. And Fumikage is embarrassed at first, but it like helps them to become friends. They trade offence/defence secrets.

Shouto and Tsu!!!! SWIMMING BUDDIES. SWIMMING BUDDIES. SWIMMING BUDDIES. It would also be cool if they trained together to help Tsu with the cold and it could be a way for Shouto to train his temperature regulation, too. Getting too cold for Tsu and shes about to hibernate? Turn up the heat from your left side. And Tsu would be a happy frog.

Shouto and Ojirou!!! (Idk how to spell his first name!!!) Their first mock battle experience is behind them. They are sparring buddies. Shouto is lacking in close range and Ojirou is lacking in long range fighting so they team up to spar and work on that. Shouto can spar with others, too, like Ochako and Izuku, But Ojirou has a lot of experience in martial arts and Shouto has a lot of experience in long range fighting. They get stronger together.

Shouto and Koji!!!! More quiet guys!!!! And very sweet guys!!! Shouto tends to draw the attention of cats because he is Warm^TM, and Koji tends to attract cats by talking to them. So they have a very good time while going outside and cats just. Come to them. Its so good okay. They love cats. They have snuck in a cat together before and Aizawa hasn't found out, mainly because Koji has been talking to the cat to stay quiet and Shouto is attentive to feed it and let it outside.

Shouto and Hanta!!! THE SPORTS FESTIVAL IS BEHIND THEM. I can see them training, playing video games, sending memes, causing absolute chaos in the group chat, you name it. Mischief like the kind Denki would be proud of. They have... That suspicious air that theyre up to something and their friends are like "should I watch out for something?" At this point, everyone is suspicious of them but they havent pulled any shit lately to keep people on their toes. Next thing the kids know, the whole common area has been rearranged. Not in a new position. Just a little to the left, enough to make people slightly uncomfortable. Its hilarious.

Shouto and Katsuki ahhh ive been thinking about them for an au and for my fic. What I like is that they have synergy (thanks Two Heroes) and they exploit this synergy. And I find the dynamic of frenemies to be absolutely hilarious. So they're those friends who are like "yeah, he's a stupid bitch", but if ANYONE ELSE insults them, They're like "THATS MY STUPID BITCH, GET YOUR OWN."

Shouto and Hitoshi!!!!! Sleep deprived but will still cut a bitch, individually or together, doesn't matter. But when they team up, run. They are the kings of snark and puns and Aizawa has had enough and its only been two days. Hitoshi ALSO loves cats, so Shouto attracting them has Hitoshi going "hmmmm perhaps I will keep you around after all", and Shouto is like "wait until Kouda gets here" and oh boy. They all have the time of their lives with the cats. Also, good quirk training for them both. Shouto can banter, but he will not speak or answer any of Hitoshi's questions so he doesnt brain wash him. And Hitoshi will capture Shouto with his capture weapon and leave Shouto literally hanging and feeling like it's his final exam all over again goddamnit war flashbacks.

BONUS: Shouto and Mei!!!!! Besides Tenya and Izuku, Shouto is Mei's favorite guinea pig!!! She goes absolutely nuts with his support items and she comes up with new things for him all the time. He is the perfect little person to test out all her fire proof babies and water proof babies and OoOh her ICE proof babies!!! ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A CAPE?? ITS FIRE AND ICR PROOF. IT CANCELS OUT AIR RESISTANCE. And at first hes like ahhh too loud, but then he gets used to her and hes like give me everything you got throw it at me. She has code names for her customers and she calls him Iced Venti Chai Latte. VERY GOOD.

I JUST WANT HIM TO BE FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE. STAN SHOUTO TODOROKI.

#shouto todoroki #izuku midoriya #katsuki bakugou #momo yaoyorozu #tenya iida #ochako uraraka #kyoka jirou #eijirou kirishima #denki kaminari #mina ashido #tooru hagakure #mezo shouji #fumikage tokoyami #tsuyu asui #koji kouda #hanta sero #yuga aoyama #mashirao ojirou #rikitou satou #hitoshi shinsou #platonic todobowl #bnha #mha #bnha rambles #class 1a #I LOVE MY KIDS #I LOVE MY SON #NONE OF THESE ARE ROMANTIC SO DONT TAG AS SHIPS #mei hatsume #i was a fool for forgetting mei but i fixed it

[bowieandqueen11]

Sunshine / Daryl Dixon Imagine

Reader: you said you were in a Daryl mood so can you write something about trying to convince him to shower (maybe using shit like i'll shower w you?) tysm if you do ily 🖤 

Hope this is okay love! I just really needed to write a drabble piece with him in it <3

The veranda of the old Alexandria mansion stretched the entire frontage of the house. You walked out into the early afternoon sunshine, pretending the last few years hadn’t happened, and instead that you could smell the freshness of the crackling white paint as you sunk down into one of the slightly patchy floral cushioned wicker chairs. Glancing around the neighbourhood, you revelled at the feeling of being able to see children play tag on the street, of people walking leisurely to their next job with intertwined hands. People looking healthy, well fed, clean.

People just looking happy was such a rare thing these days.

You clasp a warming mug of tea and look for the new flowers poking through the grass that had begun to shoot up this spring. Waving to Rick and Michonne as they strolled past with Judith, you turn back to your own trouble. 

He wore a sweat-stained vest and shorts, or at least that was all you could see from his seat on the steps. Placing down your cup on the oak, you start to stride over to him, leaning against one of the columns holding the porch roof up to watch him for a moment, sharpening his knife against his knee. His bare arms and legs were as ashy and pale, as his face, but he couldn’t seem to care less.

‘Hun, you are absolutely stinking.’

‘You better watch your mouth, sunshine. I’ma clean as a whistle.’

‘Come on... the shower is incredible, Daryl! Hot water for the first time- well... for the first time I can remember! It has a panel with more than a hundred options you can choose regulating water temperature, pressure, soaps, shampoos, scents. When you step out on a mat, heaters come on that blow dry your body.’

‘Aright, now you’re just being silly.’

‘It really will help though. You look like a wild animal.’

‘Better than the tamed animals cooped up in here’, he murmurs, throwing his knife to the ground with a clatter.

Daryl looked sharply up as you took his hands into your own, holding them upright so you could stroke your thumbs against his palm, knowing they were his most sensitive part. They felt like sandpaper or perhaps stone, rough and unfinished. It suited him, you thought, looking into his deep eyes, cheeks reddening. His hands were warm in yours as he slowly brought them up to his lips, his nerves tingling at the harsh comfort of your contact. They were callused and raw, like he'd had a difficult life and worked twice as hard for everything he had. 

‘I’m still not washing.’

‘Hmm...I’ll shower with you, if you’re scared.’

The way his eyes widened and a deep beetroot settled over his cheeks made you stifle a laugh. He dropped your hands quickly, allowing the tufts of his hair to fall over his eyes, as if suddenly wanting to become invisible to the world.

The words tumbled from his lips like little pebbles into sand. They dropped too fast for you to catch them and landed softly in his lap where his left hand clasped his right. Each word seemed to flow seamlessly into the next and was spoken so softly that it caressed the ears without transferring any meaning. 

You wrap your arms around his waist, feeling him calm down instantly at your touch. The simple touch sent a wave of butterflies coursing through his veins, their fluttering wings easing the dread that had settled inside him, even if he had a hard time admitting it. 

‘Let’s go before Rick and Michonne use all the hot water up.’   

#twd #daryl dixon #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon fluff #daryl twd #daryl the walking dead #daryl imagine #twd imagine #norman reedus #norman reedus imagine #rick grimes #michonne #rick x michonne #the walking dead #the walking dead imagine #twd edit #twd x reader #twd fluff #twd fanfic #twd fanfiction #the walking dead fluff

[revengeoftheantichrist]

From Eden

Warnings: Mentions of Pregnancy, Work-place harassment 

AO3  <<<Previous

Chapter 4

The staff on the upper level was being reshuffled today. This was an annual thing; it happened as the reproduction programme occasionally let greys change ranks, meaning certain positions had to filled and timetables changed. You didn’t have to worry about a lot, your position was permanent due to the speciality of your work. That’s what you thought anyway. “Y/N, my office please?�� your manager had called. What was it this time? You got up and followed him, shutting the door behind you and taking a seat. “Is everything alright sir?” He hesitated a little before replying, “you are getting a promotion of sorts.” You looked confused. “The king has issued an order. He wants a personal garden on the 9th floor. Your track record is fantastic, so you will oversee the project and team. He has set some requirements that you’ll have to design around. Other than that, you have free reign basically, do what you want with it,” he finished. You sat there in shock. A personal royal garden that you were responsible for. One fuck up could be your demise. “I really don’t know what to say. I’m assuming I can’t turn it down.” He shook his head, “He wants the team to move down there too, so get packing. This afternoon, yourself and Lucy can go down and have a look at the space you have to work with and start getting some designs and plans down. You have all the resources available to you.” “when will we be moving?” “Tomorrow.” With that you were dismissed. //// “Hey Luce, have you ever seen what the king looks like?” You were on your delivery run to the 9th floor, where you’d be let in to see your project area. “no, I haven’t. But Sam did once, I think. I think he said something about him looking like a better version Michelangelo’s David,” she replied. You would describe ‘Adam’ in the same way. “Sam? Sam who then had to lick his boots then had his eye gouged out for ‘staring too much’?” She nodded. You had reached the delivery entrance. “Good afternoon Ms Mead, looking sexy as ever today,” you greeted. Her stoic face broke out into a little grin at your comment. “You’re damn right I look sexy. Anyway, leave the produce here, one of the staff will collect it. I’m sure you were told about your new job, so ill give you a tour,” she led you both in, swiping her special key card. You were nervous for some reason. Your survival depended on this. You gasped at seeing the inside of the 9th floor. It was dark and regal. Golds, blacks and reds. Marble polished to perfection. Priceless art pieces everywhere. This truly was the abode of a dark king. “Michael’s bust elsewhere so you don’t have to worry about seeing him too much,” Ms Mead clarified. Michael. The king’s name was Michael. You liked the way it tasted on your tongue. Repeating it to yourself a few times. You smiled to yourself, deciding that it was your favourite name. “Here we are, this is the space. Its right in the centre of everything.” She pointed to the circular marble stone in the centre, “You must build around that, but it’s all in the briefing and floor plans you were sent. I’ll come collect you in about 30 minutes. Do not wander off on your own,” with that final warning she let you be. You got closer to the stone. It was carved with deep channels in the shape of a pentagram. It must have been an alter of sorts. You’d assumed rituals would happen in dark spaces, but it seemed like the king wanted a sort of natural meditation space. One of the requirements was that’s the alter had to be surrounded by pomegranate trees. How very Hades of him. The tress cultivated in Eden were ancient, from Iran. You wondered how the family that had tended to them for generations felt on the day the trees were taken from them. Thousands of years of love and care could be tasted in the sweetness of the fruit, in the vibrancy of the dye the fruit created. Who had planted that first seed? What had those trees seen? Whose blood fertilised the soil? You felt it your duty to nurture those trees. And now you would have to part form some of them, it upset you a little, but you didn’t think about it too long, you had a whole other garden to plan. Mead eventually came to escort you out, needing to prepare for tomorrow. You gave instructions on beginning to remove the marble and the other structural changes that would need to be made for ‘little Eden’. The king had watched you leave from the balcony, smirking. //// Being a grey meant you didn’t have many belongings, so the room took you and hour to pack. You felt a little sad seeing it in three boxes. It had been your refuge for 5 years. A safe haven away from everything that went on outside of it. But for the past two weeks, even this safe haven had been invaded by outside forces. You dreams unnerved you. It was as if Adam had become a part of your unconscious mind. All you dreamed about was him. The pair of you in a garden, surrounded by little ones. But there were also snakes, a voice warning you to not bite the fruit. Catholic school didn’t prepare you for biblical dream interpretation. You tried to forget about them during the day, but all this talk of repopulation made it difficult. There were so many confirmed pregnancies, you wondered if you had the capacity for them all. It all reached its peak in February, everyone wanted Halloween babies, but so far there had been no Halloween babies. Your thoughts were interrupted by Lucy coming to get you. You gave the room one final look before handing the keys to the guard. A snake slithering out just before you shut the door. //// Your room on the 9th floor was closest to the garden, but furthest from anyone else. In order to save space, everyone was doubled up. Except for you. You had your room to yourself. It was a little lonely. But most of your hours were spent in the meeting room, discussing and finalising plans. Your final design had been approved; it was your dream garden, except for the alter in the middle. Work had begun; the marble removed, the piping for the water features in place, drainage and irrigation systems were ready and the artificial sunlight and temperature regulators were placed. All you had to do was plant and maintain. It was easier said than done, especially when a certain inspector liked to bother you. “Good afternoon Y/N,” Michael hummed from above you. You glared up at him, literally knee deep in dirt. “What do you want now? Was spilling my juice not enough for you this morning?” He had walked past your table that morning, knocking your drink from the table making it spill all over you. “There’s plenty of other things I could spill on you.” You scoffed and rolled you eyes at him, going back to checking roots and planting things. This was going to be a pond, everything had to be done before it was filled with water and koi. After five minutes, Michael got bored of watching you work. You were far too meticulous. But then again, this garden was for you, that’s why he let you design it. He imagined laughter ringing through the trees in a few years time. He’d get there. No, You’d get there. He wanted your full attention on him, so decided to be childish, throwing little rock off you and winding you up. “Oi! Pack it in! what are you? 9?” you still didn’t look up to him. “Yeah, Inches,” he replied. “Whatever you say,” you mumbled. He threw a bigger rock at your forehead this time, making you stop and finally look up at him. He watched your jaw clench in anger, and he laughed at you. You trudged over to him, stopping right Infront of him. You didn’t say anything, but he reached his hand out to help you out. Instead you pulled him into the mud. You turned back around to what you were doing, leaving him face first in the dirt, chuckling to yourself. Michael slowly got up, wiping his face. He hadn’t been this dirty since his sojourn. Had you been anyone else, you would now be a pile of ash, or in the dungeons for him to torture later. Instead he tackled you into the dirt. The pair of you broke out into a little scuffle, rolling around in the dirt. “Get off me! You’re too heavy!” you whined. His blond hair was now stained brown, your own grey uniform having the same fate. “No, I think I’m quite comfortable here,” he replied. “I’ll bite you; I’ll bite a whole chunk out of your face do not test me.” He grinned,” just like the bitch you are then.” You blew a raspberry at him, using your full strength to push him off you and to stand up. “My shift is over I’m leaving,” you turned to go. “At least help me clean up,” he pouted. “There greys specifically for that, I’m sure the king will let you borrow one of his,” with that you marched off, leaving the king in the dirt. //// You tracked mud through the hallway, wanting desperately just to clean up. “Y/N you look like shit,” Lucy pointed out. “I know,” you slammed your door open and closed. You peeled your overalls off and hopped in the shower. Watching the water turn from brown to clear. You had felt ‘Adams’ ‘Nine Inches’ when you were wrestling. You started to wonder how he’d feel inside you, the thought making you ache. You ran your hands down your body, to your wet folds, relieving yourself of the tension. You should have been more careful of your surroundings, you would have noticed the king watching you, relieving himself of his own tension.

Next>>>

#my writing #michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #FE4

[martellthemandalor]

Assistance - Chapter 5

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader (No Y/N, reader is nicknamed)

Warnings: Swearing, I think that’s it

Rating: 15

Word Count: 2.9k+

Summary: You ask some questions and Mando gives you hand with your armour.

A/N: There’s some possible sexual tension in this if you squint, as ever I’d love feedback :) (also yeh the gif is really bad I’m still figuring them out lmao)

Masterlist!

The ambient temperature of the barn was soothingly cool, and the change of it felt like a balm against your flushed skin. Your legs were unsteady beneath you as you tried to feign your usual confident strides; however there didn’t seem much point in doing so as from the way the Mandalorian had studied your walk before, you were certain he could see through you right now. He had situated himself on one of the many piles of long red gratham stems that lined the walls of the barn, sitting so impossibly still with his visor trained on you. He watched as you collapsed against the pile opposite him, letting your bag slump against the ground next to you. You leant your head back and closed your eyes, running your hand down your face to massage at your neck as you tried to regulate your heartbeat. Despite the cooler climate of it, the atmosphere in the barn felt hot and heavy. 

You could feel him staring at you again and as much as you wanted to counter it with a fierce stare of your own, you just couldn’t conjure the energy for one. Instead you opted to open you bag and pull out your tool kit before unclasping your right cuff and beginning to tinker with it. The silence felt thick, only interrupted by the occasion sizzling spark of a live wire making contact with your probe.  The respite here did you give you time to think about what had happened today and thinking back you realised you only really had one question to ask. You looked up from your work and your gaze fell across his figure, splayed across the long stems piled beneath him, helmet leant against the wall, still so motionless that you wandered if he was even awake.

“Why were those bounty hunters after you?” Your voice rang across the barn, it startled you how loud it sounded in the quietness, but the Mandalorian didn’t move a muscle. You let the question hang for a few moments, before conceding that he probably was asleep and so ducked your eyes back to your task.

“I broke guild rules,” His even tone cut through the peace, making you look up from your work.

“Yeh no shit laserbrain, I figured that bit out” You retorted, waving your probe at him.

“I was sent to fetch for a quarry for an imperial warlord,” You prickled upon hearing that, jaw tensing on impulse. Kriffing imp. “I did the job, I brought it back to him, I took my payment and left. I knew it was wrong but he was offering beskar that had been collected in the purge, my clan would do anything to have that back. It was only after payment that I realised I couldn’t leave the quarry with the imp, so I took him back, destroying their safe house in the process.” He lifted his head from where it had been laying against the dusty brown wall to look properly at you. A smirk had twisted itself onto your lips, eyes glinting with mischievous delight.

“Anything that involves destroying an imp safe house and, presumably, killing some bucket heads is a victory in my eyes. Are they after you then? Or do you still have the quarry with you?”

“The quarry is under my protection.”

“Well then you’re an idiot,” you scoffed, “the guild will keep sending hunters until what’s owed is given over, surely you know that?” You shook your head at him in disbelief that this druk for brains still had the quarry with him.

He cocked his head to the side slightly. “They will. And I’ll keep fighting and running. The kid is all that matters now.”

“Mother of moons Mandalorian, the imp wanted a child? Whatever for?”

“The kid’s special.” There was a beat, like he wanted to say more, but all he gave was silence.

“That’s it?” You asked, taken aback at such an abrupt response.

“That’s all anyone needs to know.” His head dropped back against the wall. You had so many more questions now, however the soft thud of the beskar hitting the wall told you the conversation was over. Mandalorian’s are known for how they take in foundlings, nonetheless you found it hard to believe that the tin can sitting opposite you had taken one in for himself, let alone one with a bounty on its head. You furrowed your brows, shaking your head as your work drew you back in, enveloping you once again.

“How do you know about Mandalorian creed?” He asked suddenly. You looked up to see him sat up, feet planted firmly on the ground, his posture a dramatic shift from the relaxed way he had been lounging what surely must have been mere moments before, his helmet on a slight tilt as he regarded you. You slightly furrowed your brow at him, scoffing.

“The Mandalorian’s are the fiercest warriors in the universe, how could I not know?”

“Yes, most people know us, but you know us.” He leant forward ever so slightly, helmet straightening on his shoulders. Even from across the cracked floor of the barn you could feel his presence bearing down onto you. You were the one to tilt your head this time, your brows forming a harder line across your face as you furrowed them further.

“I don’t understand,”

“You never asked my name, you don’t ask personal questions, you actively told me you wouldn’t look when I had to drink, you told the people here we would eat in the barn and even then you sat outside to make sure no one came in while I was eating. Others ask questions, they want to know. You already know. Why.” All this time of answering the same questions, people pressing him for answers he simply couldn’t give, he had grown used to the exhaustion of it all. In reality you were a breath of fresh air, yet it was eating away at him that you hadn’t asked the questions yet. For him it was part of the routine and without the usual interrogation it felt like there was something missing from the exchanges the two of you shared. 

You blinked at him a couple of times, before letting your eye wander from the T shaped visor to the cobwebbed beams of the roof above. You swallowed thickly and returned your gaze to statue of beskar.

“I studied,” your eyes fluttered shut at the admission, shoulders sinking somewhat as they did. “As a child I had heard about an ancient creed of fighters, whose battles are legend and whose weapons are a part of their religion. Story’s like that stuck in my impressionable mind, so when I was old enough to travel and discovered the city over had an info stack, it was the first place I went. The Mandalorian’s were all I was interested in studying, you have such great tales and legends and wars, your weaponry is unparalleled and your armour? It’s something else,” The mere idea of that was enough to make your face light up, nose crinkling slightly as you looked up at him.  “I’d just turned 18 when all the information was wiped from the info stack. The empire had banned all knowledge of Mandalorian’s; they were eradicating your history. It’s more important than ever that the creed is respected and your clans live on. That’s why I don’t ask questions. That’s why I respect your creed to never remove your helmet.” The assuredness of your voice was punctuated by you flicking the interface of your cuff shut with a flick of your wrist, the snap of the metal pieces connecting echoing through the dry air. 

The Mandalorian leant back slightly, arms bracing against his armoured thighs. He could see the glint in your eye when you spoke of his clan, the way you waved your probe at him talking with your hands in way he hadn’t seen before now. You truly cared about this.

“Thank you,” he affirmed simply, adopting a softer tone through his vocoder.  You nodded back him, pressing your lips into a small smile of acknowledgement.

“So then,” You started, eyes scanning across the bails of gratham scattered around you, eventually falling on the pile of blanket the pair of you had carried out from the house, “seeing as you’re the one sleeping in the helmet, I think it’s only fair you get pick of the bail.” Standing up, you gathered an armful of blankets and threw them at the man of beskar. He caught them without looking, gloves closing expertly around the soft fabric. You watched as he looked down at them, hand splaying over the bundle, then back up at you.

“I’m fine on this one,” He informed you, before rising to spread the blankets across the bail. You’d already spied a particularly comfy looking pile. The long plants hadn’t been carefully stacked into a rigid formation yet, and when you arranged your own selection of blankets on top of them it resembled some sort of nest. You nodded your head indignantly at the makeshift bed you had created, then glanced over to find your assistant already lying on top of his own bedding. He hadn’t taken off the heavy beskar, and you found yourself wandering how comfortable he could actually be sleeping like that. You shook away the thought, turning your attention to removing the durasteel of your own armour. Bringing your left arm across your chest you winced as the muscle of your bicep spasmed in pain.

“Kriffing mother of moons,” you hissed bringing your hand to tentatively palm at the armour covered area, but you found nudging the metal only made spikes of pain bloom across your upper arm. You were stupid to think you’d gotten out of that fight unscathed; the blow that hit your bicep must have left a bruise and a damn big one at that. Rolling your shoulder you attempted to ease the tenseness of the muscle, hoping it would make it easier to stretch across- nope. 

You groaned quietly, running your right hand through your hair resting it at the nape of your neck, the low sound rippling from you and disturbing the soft quiet of the barn. Your breastplate had been designed to release right side first and it made the magnetic claps feel alien under your fumbling fingers as you tried to undo them with just one hand. Strings of curses hissed through your teeth and you swung your head back to look up at the high beams of the ceiling when your fingers had slipped over the first clasp again, hands tensing into fists as you fought back the urge to kick something.

The Mandalorian’s attention had been drawn by your audible struggle, watching as your hand repeatedly slipped over the obtuse metallic fastenings that descended the side of your torso. After what had happened this morning he knew that you weren’t likely to accept any help, yet at the same time he could see your frustration simmering hotter and hotter and he didn’t want to see the outcome of you detonating.

“Want some help with that?” He asked, swinging his legs over the stiff bale beneath him and sitting up, watching your erratic movements becoming steadily more exaggerated.

“No,” You hissed, throwing him a warning look. One, two, three more times your digits harshly skimmed the harsh metal. You growled, cradling your aching fingers, watching as the fingertips flushed a darker shade. Taking deep breaths you slowly pivoted to face your beskar clad assistant. “Yes,” You conceded through gritted teeth. You could imagine the shit eating grin he was wearing under the helmet, even if his body language betrayed no sign of gloating as he got up moved towards you.

He stood in front of you, his confidence seemingly faulting, unsure of how to proceed. You lifted your arm slightly, bracing your hand on the back of your neck and angled your side towards him so he could see what he was doing. He hoped his vocoder didn’t pick up on the way he swallowed thickly as he started fumbling with the metallic clasps. The only time he was ever this close to anyone was during fights, but here he was close by choice. It made his brain run in overdrive that you were even letting him this close, letting him help you remove the very items that keep you protected, especially since you’d known him less than 24 hours. Granted you had jumped into a battle that he was possibly, and only possibly, outmatched for and helped him without a second thought. This however was a whole different level of, dare he think it, trust? After a minute of his gloves sliding over the first fastening and muttering various expletives, he noticed you stifling a laugh.

“It’s hard to do undo them with gloves, why do you think mine are fingerless?” You chimed. Right as you did however, the first fastening popped open. He looked up at you, visor inches from your own face.

“You were saying?” He retorted, the victory in his voice evident even through the vocoder of the helmet. You rolled your eyes in response, and by the time they returned to look at him his focus had returned to your armour. “Besides, I thought they were a fashion choice,” He joked quietly. He wasn’t exactly used to making jokes and he was surprised when you laughed properly this time, a rich sound he hadn’t heard you make yet.

“You’re making jokes now?” You marvelled, tentatively giving his armoured shoulder a soft tap. The next clasp popped free with a click, making the Mandalorian nod his head. You watched your reflection in the beskar silver warp and shift at the movement.

“While I’m winning against these fucking fastenings? Yes.”

Once again the familiar silence fell between the two of you. You didn’t mind, between his laser focus on your armour and your own focus on steadying your heart after working yourself up over undoing the damn thing, it was very comfortable. His pace picked up slowly as he got into a method for undoing them and so descended the length of your torso with ease. The both of you relaxed a little into the intimacy of it. Both of you also ignoring when his shoulder would brush against your raised arm or how at the final clasp his hand was resting half on your hip as he worked the fastening open.

“Switch,” He murmured as the final clasp opened, his gentle tone not suiting his cold beskar exterior. You nodded lightly as you shifted position, but as you went to raise your arm the familiar pain in your bicep returned. Your face contorted as you dropped it back down to your side. The Mandalorian took a small step back from you, visor focused on your upper arm. Then without saying a word he disengaged the magnetic seal of the armour plate covering your bicep and removed it, before doing the same with your shoulder plate. You watched his hands as they deftly worked removing these pieces; you figured his armour must use magnetic seals to, given how quickly he disengaged yours.

“Try now.” You moved your arm, the pain was still there, except it was considerably less intense than it had been with the durasteel pressuring it. Resting your hand on the base of your neck again, you gave the Mandalorian a nod to continue. He hesitated a moment, then closed the gap between your bodies and got back to work. There were fewer clasps on this side than the other, so when the shaped metal suddenly started to fall away from your body it took you both by surprise. The Mandalorian was faster than you in catching it, you watched as he carefully removed it from your figure and placed it softly by the side of your nest, next to the other discarded plates. 

You got back to removing the rest of your armour, starting with the cuff that circled your left forearm. What you didn’t expect was for him to come up behind you and start removing the armour from your right arm. He worked wordlessly, and while you initially flinched at the sudden contact, you made no effort to stop him from helping. Your torso and arms felt practically buoyant without the usual weight of your armour resting on you. The Mandalorian paused, you could feel his hesitation radiating from behind you. Then you felt his hand graze your hip as he reached to disengage your thigh plates.

“I can handle it from here,” the words almost fell over themselves as they let your mouth, your body curving away as you stepped from his touch. His own hand instinctively shot back, landing in a fist by his side. 

You both circled away from each other, moving around like clockwork, him towards his bail and you towards your nest as you discarded your thigh plates. He stole glances at you, cursing himself for doing so. You thought of the brief contact at your hip and cursed yourself for doing so.

That was out of necessity, you both told yourselves, it can’t happen again.

You curled into your bed, cocooning yourself in blankets as you felt your eyes grow heavier. The dim light of the barn faded away and you finally let sleep claim you.

Next Chapter

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