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#traumatic injury character
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Today’s disabled character of the day is Mercedes from Love Me to Death, who has amnesia, poliosis, facial trauma, is an amputee, and has traumatic injuries
Requested by Anon
[Image Description: Drawing of a woman with scars and stitches all over her body, black hair with a strand of white/grey, and eyes with spirals in them. She looks unsure about something and is wearing a pastel yellow dress. Someone's right hand is reaching out to her.]
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vexedallay · 5 days
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They should not have let me, a writer who enjoys putting characters through trauma, take a first aid class.
In other news, did you know long falls have the tendency to cause injuries to the upper spine?
And totally unrelated to either of those statements, did you know Icarus took a long fall very soon after receiving heavy back trauma?
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iamskyereads · 8 months
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Initiation
Part Five of Compulsion
EZRA (PROSPECT) X OFC BEATRICE
18+ (MDNI) warnings for the whole series. See more info and story summaries and warnings here.
Summary: Splinters appear in Beatrice's association with Ezra and something is happening beneath Hephaestus' surface.
chapter warnings: coarse language, mild bloody nose, Ezra being a warning enemies to idiots to lovers, slow burn is heating up, intense kissing/making out, female nudity, references to dream sex, one reference to needles/medical tech, mild angst, death of background character, and an earthquake
word count: ~6.8k with the lovely @ezrasbirdie as the beta 👑
MASTERLIST // AO3
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// Previous. //
When she dreamed, she dreamed of hitching a bag to her shoulder and wandering into a field of thistles, wildflowers, and serenity, and finding a home of her own.
She dreamed of a cottage in a meadow with the windows wide open to let in the spring air and a kettle that whistled at teatime. When she set the bowl upon the windowsill at the same hour, a black cat would appear shortly there on, and with a shy glance it’d lap at the offerings.
The wind always rustled the dried lavender hanging from the ceiling and its sweet smell would permeate every room. There was a spider making its web in a sheltered corner that she never had the heart to sweep away while she dusted.
This time, a song began to play in those meadows. It came through the open windows and blended with the hush of the grasses and the rustling of leaves in the wind. It was a pleasant note that was sung in the air. A low hum that rose to a crescendo and then that dropped to a near hush. She abandoned the tea kettle and dusting and even the cat to follow the song out to the garden.
It made the forsythia dance, and it pleased the songbirds who warbled back.
She sought her song among the thistles and the sunflowers, the wildflowers and the serenity.
Beatrice, it sang out. Beatrice.
It comforted her, warmed her. Sung to an overwhelming, unsatiated desire to burrow underneath it, as the prairie dogs in the fields, or her neighborly cat on a patch of sunlight.
Beatrice.
It rang out silkily, and she longed for it to return when it finished. It rang to the tune of her favorite song, a best kept secret, or a hello from a dear friend. With an aching sigh, she searched for it.
Beatrice.
Beatrice.
“Beatrice, as cozy as this is, and as much as I have no desire to disturb you, I do have to piss like a racehorse,” said that voice.
The dream folded, the cottage and the forsythia cleared away upon the horizon and she felt light creep under her eyelids, as heavy as they were.
The voice continued with a flicker of amusement in it. “And you’re sleeping on my arm.”
Beatrice came face to face to face to a sloping nose, hovering not far from the tip of her own. Beneath this nose was a set of lips, soft as silk, cradled between the shadow of a mustache and the fine hairs of an uneven beard. Olive-toned skin, which showed signs of aging, weathered with crinkles around the eyes, and yet employed youthful exuberance with the grace of a dimple asymmetrically placed upon one smiling cheek. Finally, a pair of warm coffee-colored brown eyes—eyes that had seen her in an infinite number of ways.
Ezra!
“My arm, Beatrice,” he said, a touch amused.
She bolted upright, belatedly realizing she’d been using the fleshy part of his upper arm as a pillow. Under the darkness of sleep, she had crept closer to him and had folded herself all along his side next to him on that colorful circular rug.
“You’re awake!” All kinds of embarrassment flooded heat upon her cheeks.
“It would seem,” he said, fully alert. “Why Beatrice, you are hurt.”
“I’m not.” But something sticky fell from her nostril and dripped down towards her lips.
Ezra reached for her. Yet, it was with his dominant hand, which was no more than a stump, so it went nowhere. Cursing the while, he realized his mistake and had to switch. With his left hand, he wiped across the dips of her philtrum. The callused pad of his thumb touched close to her lips and came away stained red with blood.
It was like being naked before him, as she’d been in his dream. There was no sense in trying to cover herself up, explain, nor confess anything, for she searched his eyes, and they told her he knew everything.
“I’m fine, it’s nothing,” she insisted, trying to brush him off.
“You’re bleeding all over yourself!”
He was exaggerating—the nosebleed was no more than a few droplets. She’d had worse, but she was compelled to remain still while he lifted the bottom hem of his already dirty tank to clean the stray bits of blood off her face.
“I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about,” she said, while he fussed over her like a mother hen. Satisfied that her face was cleared of blood, he dropped the hem back down to his belly. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“A moment please, I am fit to burst,” he said.
Beatrice freed him from the IV and bandaged his arm. He made but a few pained winces as he got to his feet.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she asked, vigilant as always.
“A bit stiff,” he replied. “It is no hassle. I feel as if I’ve been lying down too long.” He stretched his spine, did a small twisting of it one way then the other, then went off for the bathroom.
Cee had not returned from her mission. So at the radio, Beatrice sent along a message of Ezra’s development, using the codename Cee supplied. All she received was static, a sign of interference, so she would have to try again in a bit.
Ezra was in the bathroom for a while. With water rationing effectively in place from the beginning of the strike, there was not enough for a full bath, but she heard all the same the telltale sounds of a shower running. He hummed loudly while in there, occasionally belting out a vocalization or two. The water soon shut off and she heard Ezra move to his bedroom.
Beatrice busied herself in the kitchen, saddled with too many unanswered questions. Though she had slept through the rest of the morning, and it was now nearly midday, she made the strongest pot of coffee from their supplies.
By the time the coffee pot was done, Ezra returned to the main room in high spirits. He had changed his clothes, now wearing loose fitting black pants and was pulling a teal-blue tee shirt over his head as he entered, his pale belly was on display for the briefest of seconds before his head appeared through the neck hole and he smiled broadly at Beatrice.
She was still in her exercise clothes from earlier that morning, a sports bra and high-waisted leggings.
“Do you feel okay?”
“You have already asked me that,” he said. His hair was wet, and as he passed close to her to retrieve a mug from the cabinet behind her shoulder, she smelled pine scented soap on him.
“Do you really not know?”
“Know what?”
“Ezra,” she said harshly, “you’ve been asleep for eighteen hours!”
“Is that why I feel so rested!” He teased her over the rim of the mug as he slurped a small bit of the hot liquid. “I am quite chipper,” he remarked, once swallowing down the coffee. “Where is Cee?”
“She went out hours ago with Georgie, I’m attempting to get her on the radio. But first, I’d like to run a cognitive exam,” Beatrice said definitively. “Would you sit?”
He did so, upon one of the unremarkable dining chairs while he slurped more of his hot coffee. Perfectly at ease. In fact, his lack of concern about it all only further proved to disturb Beatrice.
No, he was not nauseous, nor did he have a headache. There were no problems with balance. His only complaint was a little ache in his back, but the more he moved and stretched the better it felt. No double vision either.
“I am hungry. Is food part of your interrogation, Drifter?” His grin was too mischievous as he tapped his fingers upon the mug, the titanium alloy fingers providing a musical beat to each one.
“We couldn’t wake you. Ezra, you were—” She exhaled with a dispirited groan. “It was like you were in a coma. Cee was so worried. You were in limbo, and with your synapses overworked, you might never have returned to us.”
“And I’ve told you already, I am fine.”
Beatrice glared sharply, bedeviled by his attitude. “Will you follow my finger?”
She held up her pointer about half a meter from his face, directly in the midline of his vision. Slowly, she drew a straight line to the right, returned to center, then went left. She tracked the proficiency of his eyes movements.
“Going to tell me how you did it?” He asked while she worked, careful not to move his head and only follow her finger with his eyes. “How you walked into my dream?” With that, Ezra’s focus rolled off her finger and pinned resolutely upon her. “Well then?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she huffed. “Keep following my finger.” She lifted it skyward this time.
Ezra laughed in a way that could only be described as an uproarious guffaw. “Are you really going to deny this, Drifter?”
“There’s nothing to deny.”
“Drifter magic—it’s real.”
Beatrice doubled down. “I didn’t. Do. Anything. Now, follow my finger,” she said tightly.
“I will bite your finger,” yapped Ezra, all patience abandoned. “Girlie, tell me how you did it? I heard you. I saw you. Beatrice, you were in my head! How did you do it?”
“It was a dream,” she said weakly. “Follow my—”
“And you woke me up!” He grabbed her floating wrist with his metal hand. Not enough to pain her, though she gasped all the same. “How?’
“I—I don’t know. I’ve…” She rolled her shoulders back, tried to release herself. Only after a brief struggle, Ezra unclasped her wrist.
“You cannot deny that you and I experienced one and the same dream, and the strangeness of your presence there,” he eyed her, leeringly. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw?”
“Enough already.” She was growing hot all over.
“Besides.” His eyebrows waggled humorously. “You were the one intruding upon my sanctuary. Are the contents of my own wanton desires no longer sacrosanct?”
“I was not intruding!”
Too late. Ezra’s grin grew bigger than his ego, unperturbed by her rising temper.
“There are two things, Beatrice, that can never be bodily faked. One—” He held up one bionic finger to illustrate “—is an erection, the second—” another finger raised “—is a blush. Both of which are a direct consequence of the movement of blood in their vessels, brought on by a singular emotional stimulus—the sole reason in the case of the former, but not necessarily the case for the latter.”
“Oh Kevva, take me out of this,” Beatrice prayed, half seriously to herself.
Ezra was not deterred. “That singular emotional stimulus being deeply erotic in nature. And you, dear Drifter, are purported by my eyes to be turning a mighty pretty hue of crimson. One I do not get to witness often enough on this side of the galaxy. And—ho! That tells me you not only know what it is you saw in my dream, but you are admitting to the very presumption you insist on denying.”
“You’re insufferable,” Beatrice fumed. She abandoned further discussion of this topic by going to raise Cee on the radio once more.
“Count yourself flattered. I rather enjoyed our time together,” Ezra called after her, smarmy as ever. “Now, one might be embarrassed by what you saw, but I am not the kind of man to be embarrassed by things, least of all the contents of my dreams. I find shame to be a trifling thing; why waste time on it? I am a hot-blooded male with needs after all.”
Beatrice was successful this time on the radio and told the little birdie to make it on home for a surprise. She held her tongue though in adding that their patient was in such good spirits she might knock his head clean off.
The patient in question was staring at her across the way. More galvanized than ever.
“You’ve done it before?” He was too smart for his own good.
“No,” she berated, far too strained to convince him. “Stop it.”
“Can the others do it? Or just you?” He knocked his knuckles but once upon the table.
“Enough, I am begging you! It was an accident the first time. It’s better if we go on thinking that nothing hap—”
The coffee in her mug began to rattle. In fact, the whole room seemed to shake. Slowly at first, and then with increased intensity. The walls shook with violence and the floor grumbled and groaned.
“Is this more of your Drifter magic?” Ezra asked.
“No, this isn’t me! I swear!” Beatrice had to shout to be heard over the din of the growing noise. “What’s happening?!
“An earthquake!”
“There are no earthquakes on Hephaestus!”
The cabinets flew open, glasses and plates fell from their shelves, crashing to the floors.
“Move!” Ezra yelled, grabbing Beatrice around the hips.
The two of them dove for the cover of the table as the quaking continued. Ezra’s home rattled and roared around them, the whole place upended. Dust fell from the far corners of the room. The few books and other small items toppled from their shelves and the lights flickered. Ezra’s coffee mug was the first victim to tumble off the table, shattering and spilling its contents into a dark puddle.
The earthquake went on for several spell–binding seconds. The overhead lamp fell from its place in the ceiling next and crashed upon the tabletop, and its bulbs exploded on the instant of contact, spraying bits of glass everywhere.
Under the table, Ezra’s arms remained wrapped around Beatrice. Meditation mantras sprang forth from her lips, and she repeated the sage words she had learned in therapy to ground herself.
Just as quickly as it came on, the shuddering slowed down and eventually ceased. The ground, the house, and all its items, came to a perfect stillness.
The only survivor was the lone bulb hanging from a cable over the oven, it swung in an arc over the counters.
“Are you all right?” Ezra peppered Beatrice with question after question, even patting along her sides to check for injuries she may have sustained, equally amazed that they had come away unscathed. “Are you unharmed? Did you bang your head?”
“I’m fine,” breathed Beatrice, though she was so squarely perturbed by what had occurred she barely registered her speaking. “You?”
He cupped her chin gently, each puff of his breath wafting over her. The sense of their mortal peril and their imminent danger refused to lift. Their passion synchronized, adrenaline heightened, and they were both seized in that moment with a renewed sense of life.
They met in the middle, their lips connecting in a volatile kiss.
They molded further together, caught up in the heat of the moment. It was a brief, entangled fight for dominance. Noses glanced, lips brushed, and the first sweep of Ezra’s tongue into her mouth Beatrice made a soft yearning noise she’d never heard pass her lips before. She would have been embarrassed by it, but it drew an equal sigh of longing from him.
She clutched him as if she relied on him to keep her secure. The smooth grasp of metal banded across the back of her waist, gently coaxing her to lean further into his broad frame. All the while, their lips moved upon each other, breaking apart, then meeting again, grasping, coveting.
The strands of his hair were damp still when she formed a fist through them, and he groaned again, sweeping his tongue across the plush center of her lower lip. His warm hand, so broad upon the base of her neck, seemingly encompassed her, and the even warmer inferno in her belly that delighted in his solid, safe embrace under the table.
It was a sublime mix of textures and sensations she was aware of—silky lips, humid breath, coarse facial hair upon her chin. Pine and cedar smells sat under her nostrils, the taste of the bitter coffee and some freshness laced his breath. The soft cotton quality of the teal-blue shirt, and the strength and virility of his body.
They elongated each kiss, turning them into something else, something animal. Starved.
When they finally did break apart, both were at a loss for words, eyes drinking in each other, and simply dying for air.
“It didn’t—I don’t,” Beatrice started.
“Beatrice.” Her cheek fit perfectly into the cup of his palm.
“It didn’t mean anything,” she snarled, feeling as if she were forcing down bile.
A flash of real sentiment passed over his features. All sincerity diminished, and the barest shiver made his eyebrows fall, a large crease appeared in the center of his attractive brow. Sheer disappointment, even pain. Sullen, he did not respond.
Belatedly, she regretted the harsh sting of her tone. For once, her words—her rejection— actually hurt him.
With that, the door banged upon the wall with a loud thud, but they didn’t break apart until the stomping of clunky heavy-steel toed boots a size too large for their owner could be heard nearby.
“Ezra?” Cee’s shrill shout filled the room.
“Here.” Ezra went crawling out from under the table first, cautious around the broken shards of glass and the puddle of coffee. He swiped his kiss-swollen lips with the back of his hand and approached Cee gingerly. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? Did the earthquake scare you?”
Cee bounded across the untidy space, nearly knocking Ezra over with the force of her collision, and a small oof passed his lips. Her face sagged with palpable relief as she gave him an enormous bear hug around his middle.
“I’m okay, Cee, I’m all right,” Ezra said, stunned into gentle laughter. He returned the embrace, resorting to patting fondly upon the back of her shoulders. “No reason to go egregiously ill with worry, I’ve recovered. You have our dear Drifter to thank for that, and she will find I am fit for duty. There is no sense in being worried, banish it from your very thoughts.”
Cee did not release him, nuzzling her cheek into his broad chest.
“Going sentimental on me, are you?” Ezra teased and placed his scarred cheek upon the crown of Cee’s head, chuckling lightly all the same.
“Shut up,” Cee bellyached, though there was clearly no grudge anymore between them.
Beatrice watched this reunion of the teenager and her guardian—a no sweeter example of father and daughter—take place. Though, she was shaken at what had occurred between her and Ezra, and she was more so discomfited with the sense of being an intruder upon this private, domestic moment between Ezra and Cee amid such a state of chaos. As a church mouse, she set about the task of neatening the stray items that had been displaced in the earthquake, if only to give her hands something to occupy her mind.
Though, she was sensitive to being watched and rotated to find Ezra regarding her over Cee’s blond head with those formidable brown eyes.
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A gigantic crack in the earth had appeared, splitting open the main road that connected the campus to Adonis Square.
Baylor’s Biome wondered at this marvel. They called it an omen. Strange tidings were upon them. The rioter’s rage had distilled down into the very earth, they said, and the earth was taking its revenge.
Stranger still was the discovery of the Mycena somniantes growing above the surface, not in those gold-spotted mushroom caps as was normal, but entire mycelial strands. These were no garden delights, but massive monstrous branches spurred from the center of the earth. One such strand was as thick as the trunk of an ancient tree. It traveled all the way down the road towards Adonis Square and had, according to word on the street, shattered the Botanical Gardens, splitting the old glass domed building in two as if it were made of paper.
Mycelial this thick wasn’t likely to grow so close to the surface, which meant it had come from deep within.
As of its own free will? Or had something brought it here?
A larger concern among those still living with the geodesic dome was the structural integrity of their home, and the artificially created environment that allowed the workers to live in Hephaestus' otherwise inhospitable surface. So far it escaped a scratch, and the shelter proved a wonder of stable engineering, yet the worry persisted.
What if another earthquake returned with no warning, just as before? Only with far worse reaching consequences?
Luckily, no further deaths were recorded, but there were many injuries. Police, of course, had appeared in droves, ordering people back into their homes and not to congregate, as it was illegal to do so under the newly minted marshal laws.
The police worked all day to close off the streets where the chasm had appeared and cordoned off the streets where the thick golden colored mycelial root was making its new home upon the surface. Neighbors glared distrustfully at the troops parading upon the streets outside their homes. Their anger only increasing.
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Cee had been delayed all morning in the queue for the markets, waiting to receive food for the day. She received Beatrice’s radio call and had been returning when the earthquake struck.
They were among the messy remains of the living room, the smashed crockery upon the floors, and stained rags covering the spilled coffee. Beatrice was sweeping the shattered pieces of the glassware into a pile for disposal while Ezra learned all that had transpired while he’d been in the Drifter’s Sleep.
He was devastated to learn the news of the horrific means of Freddie’s death. It struck him as senseless.
Donning a pair of wire framed spectacles, he read directly from Cee’s journal the eulogy she had written and distributed, A Manifesto On The Death of Our Brother.
Cee was over his shoulder while he read, observing closely every hum he made, dissecting it as either approval or ambiguity, or starting expectantly at every pass of his hand over his jaw to scratch his beard, as if it might broker some insight into his reaction.
Ezra gave his final appraisal—he removed his glasses and with a rare, fond smile and agreeable nodding as if to say, you outdid yourself, kid.
Cee nearly burned the meal she was cooking for them, so distracted she was.
When the pot of rice boiled over, Ezra used his metal appendage to snatch the hot plate off the stovetop, and thus had to take over the kitchen duties after that. The two of them made circles around each other as they prepared the meal, joking that it was almost reduced to burnt casings on the bottom of the pan.
The leftovers—“whatever edible ones,” Ezra jested with Cee—of which they decided would be shared with their neighbors.
Something painful clenched in Beatrice’s chest at the domesticity she witnessed. The tenderness and attention they exhibited with one another—Ezra’s soft estimations on Cee’s writings; Cee’s astute observations about the strike, which had been irrevocably altered in the wake of Freddie’s death; Ezra’s pride in the retellings of her and Georgie tiptoeing into Medical to steal the supplies, and Cee’s glee in sharing all the suspenseful details.
The more Beatrice watched them the more she found, though they were no relation, they were deeply alike. She both hated and longed for what they had—the messy, complicated love and companionship of this peculiar duo.
All too aware that she herself was the grotesque third adjunct on which the whole operation balanced. An outsider; the misfit.
Yet, the key to the entire undertaking. 
It only amplified her wish for getting this whole business over and done with as speedily as possible and she reminded Ezra of this when Cee slipped out of the room for a moment.
“It’s best we don’t share the details of your miraculous recovery to Cee,” she reminded him. He was re-reading Cee’s writings, the glasses perched on his hawkish nose. With a well-placed tap, they slid down the wide bridge, and those dark eyes of his peered, perceptively, at her over the rims of his spectacles.
“It’s not my place to share,” replied Ezra, just a hint of sagacity. “Yet if Cee’s curiosity and cleverness get the best of her, I will not outright lie to my ward. Until such a moment, I will keep your secret.”
“After,” said Beatrice conclusively. “We will share it after. You can tell her whatever you want.”
“This is expressly your wish?”
“It is.”
“Beatrice!” It was Cee, returning to the main space. “Hungry?”
She admitted she was.
They were a few hours more from curfew. The afternoon was dragging on, the hours passing as water droplets falling from a leaky sink. Ezra and Cee spent the while largely trying to find some semblance of normalcy in simply sharing a meal all together for what would be their final time. They ate on plates that could be salvaged, and were not damaged by the earthquake.
While Cee remained friendly with Beatrice—inviting her opinion on such things as if earthquakes were a phenomenon on Hephaestus (they were not), and thus pegged her with more questions about it all (she had limited knowledge of Hephaestus geology, but yes she found it strange), or whether she thought it was great that Ezra was awake again (she meagerly confessed it was better than him being stuck in limbo)—Ezra persisted in being aloof and professional towards Beatrice. Only deigning to speak to her in short phrases (if at all) or commenting in shortened grunting, preferring rather to be completely engrossed rather with eating as much as he could, having been denied his last few meals.
Enough that Cee began to notice.
At the conclusion of the meal, Ezra spoke to the group. “We go tomorrow. We go down to the mines,” he said.
“Police will be occupied with the crowds for Freddie’s funeral,” he continued, in the tone of an officer commanding troops. “They will have all their focus here on the campus, so we shall pass untested. In the tunnels, there are pockets of breathable atmosphere. We can do our Drifts from there, long ones, in order to successfully locate the pearls. Cee—you, with Georgie, will drive the lorry with the digging equipment and make a headstart into the tunnels, and once we have a final location, I will meet you there. Check also that Georgie’s contact still has that transport ready to meet us at the shuttle bay upon the appointed hour. Tell them no later than the hour before curfew starts tomorrow eve.”
“Someone needs to watch over you,” Cee asserted. “And should you really be Drifting after what happened?”
“Do we really have a choice?” Ezra retorted with the first real lace of fire in his voice. “Is this all acceptable to the Drifter?”
He sought her across the square table, sitting in direct opposition to him. Beatrice only gave the slightest downward stroke of her chin in affirmation.
“Very well,” replied Ezra. “Afterwards, you are free to do as you please, you and I—” The rest became stuck in his throat. He swallowed back something heavy before proceeding. “You and I, Drifter,” he managed, staring with some intensity at the corner of her chair, rather than to face the steeliness in her blue and yellow eyes. “We shall part ways per our agreement. After all, I’m sure she has plenty more pressing, more meaningful things to attend to.”
It stung her.
“Hold on,” Cee interjected loftily. “I can talk to Georgie, I’m sure there’s an extra seat on our transport off-planet. Beatrice, you could leave with us. We could have you—”
Ezra vociferously objected. “That is a very noble endeavor, Cee, but it was Beatrice’s wish that we depart from Hephaestus with no further contact at the termination of her services. I doubt she desires to annul those terms,” he said. While he remained composed, it was his eyes that bled naked vulnerability, glancing briefly onto Beatrice, then flitting away and back to severity at Cee.
“Would you like a ride off this planet?” Cee asked Beatrice, point blank. “You could come with us for a bit, or we could arrange to drop you off somewhere.”
Again, it was Ezra who interrupted her. “I must object on behalf of the Drifter.”
“I’m sitting right here,” grouched Beatrice, while before her very eyes the entire gentle camaraderie between Cee and her guardian began to deteriorate.
“Floating around with us is not in her express interest.”
“I’m asking Beatrice,” Cee whined talking over him. “Stop being so fucking weird.”
“Kid, the swearing,” Beatrice urged, though it was drowned out by Ezra.
“You are lucky, young lady, that I have such a distaste for punishment, particularly when it does not fit the crime,” he said, brushing closely upon anger, to Cee. “However, I do not appreciate that tone with me. The terms have already been wholly agreed upon, of which you were a witness. Now stop this nonsense or I shall threaten to ground you and take away your privileges.”
“What! You can’t do that,” Cee lashed out.
“I can and I shall.”
“Beatrice is our friend now. This is so stupid, you can’t! You’re being unreasonable and rude—”
“Go to your room, you are being very unpleasant,” barked Ezra.
Cee banged her fist forcefully upon the table, sending the silverware and plates to clack loudly. Facing a second exile to her room in the span of two days made her livid. “Why?” She retorted peevishly, her cheeks beginning to glow reddish. “So you two can make out again? Like?! You think I haven’t noticed?!”
Beatrice finally felt the need to intervene, choosing the path of gentleness. “Okay. Cee, that’s—”
Ezra on the other hand, beat her to it, upon the opposite path. “Enough of this! I tire of your childish behavior. Consider yourself grounded and all radio privileges rescinded.”
Cee rose to her feet, and, with the last scraps of her dignity, she stalked off to her bedroom. The slam of the door reverberated around the small abode and rock music began to play loudly from her speakers from inside her bedroom.
“That was unnecessary,” said a caustic Beatrice to the troubled Ezra after a few beats in which he was scowling at the table.
“She was such a forlorn, quiet little thing when I found her,” he said with a hint of wistfulness that was quickly souring. “Smart, don’t get me wrong. Always smart, but now everything with her is turbulent.”
“It’s called being a moody teenager.” Beatrice started stacking up the empty plates upon the table. “Few friends, few outlets. Hopping from one planet to the next until she’s of age. She wrote that eulogy for you. She already lost her father, and she came pretty close to thinking she was about to lose another one.”
Ezra saw through to reason but remained prickly all the same. He sucked in air through his teeth. “Then it goes without saying, I was too harsh with her.”
“Yes, you were. You’re clearly pissed at me, so be mad at me.”
“Don’t think so highly of yourself, Drifter, you’ve barely made a passing mark on my mood.” There was real fire behind his eyes as he said this, none of his smirking, playful spirit.
“You are so full of shit,” she stormed over to the sink. Ezra followed shortly after, his footsteps, heavy with purpose.
“If you had not been so testy with me after that kiss, we would not be in this mess. I could have explained myself,” he said.
She spun to face him. “Explain what?”
They were close enough to be sharing the same air. His gaze dropped to her lips. Thoughtlessly, he swiped his tongue over his own, as if recreating the taste of her lingering there.
“As if you didn’t know. As if you haven’t seen it yourself. Very crafty, Drifter—playing coy with me. All you had to do was ask, I could hardly have refused you. Not when you make such a desirable offer. Because if it is steam you are looking to blow off, allow me to assist,” he husked.
She harrumphed, double-checked his sincerity.
“I would have volunteered, yes,” he went on. “Now I am not so sure, it seems I do not hold a candle to the expectation of your desires.”
“What do you know of my desires?” She shot back.
“I know you've thought about it—considered it even. Ever since you saw it.”
Her eyes widened at the starkness of his proposal. Come see the mess I’m making of you.
“Just because you have a sex dream about me, doesn’t mean I believe you actually want to have sex with me,” she said.
“Nonsense! We make a good team; you know it already.”
“Oh, you would have fucked me, like some charity case. I feel so honored,” she crowed sarcastically bitterly.
“Not charity! For the betterment of the partnership!”
“Yes, yes, the desire of unity.” She quoted his own enigmatic words back to him from their first meeting, only with a sardonically demure flutter of her lashes at him and then added a dramatically fake gag. “I remember.”
His teeth gleamed, sharp and vicious, as his grin widened. “Unity, precisely. Took the words straight from my mouth, Drifter,” he said fondly. “Starting to sound like me.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” muttered a straight-faced Beatrice, trying not to think about the way his mouth had moved against hers.
She shifted her weight to the other leg and popped her hip into the counter. She drew her fingers across the skin of her lips, seeing how enraptured Ezra was with this simple movement, for his eyes traced the path her fingers made, then returned, greeting her own and sparking with palpable heat.
“You can attest to the level of my skills yourself. I heard no complaints when you kissed me.”
“You mean, when you kissed me.” She dug her index finger into his pectoral muscle and was greeted with a firm reminder of his broadness.
He flirtatiously bumped his knuckles to the underside of her chin, lightly propping her chin up so they could maintain eye contact. “We’ll agree to disagree on that matter. Perhaps you can enter my thoughts once more and see for yourself exactly what else I happen to excel at.”
“Tempting.”
“Is it now?”
Beatrice hummed through pursed lips. “But, as we’ve established, I cannot control it.”
“Allow me to recommend a method of relaxation,” he purred, puffing his chest up.
“Having your way with me in a dream is one thing,” she simpered. “But out here, I don’t think you could handle me, scoundrel.”
Ezra’s brows shot up, thoroughly piqued by her challenge. “Girlie, you are about to be sorely mistaken.”
The rejoinder was no sooner out of his crafty pink lips, when an effusively loud sound came from the other end of the room. It was a cross between a groan and a gag that met both their ears. Stunned, Ezra dropped his hand from Beatrice’s face.
Cee was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, a mildly disgusted expression on her young face. “Ew, I knew you were being gross,” she stated, emphatically. “But now Georgie owes me fifty credits.”
The music in her bedroom had stopped, and neither Ezra nor Beatrice had the guile to notice. Being too busy engrossed with whatever game they were playing.
Cee went to the sink to fill up her water bottle, causing Ezra and Beatrice to separate.
“Have you been talking to them on the radio?” Ezra asked, outraged. “It is a precise condition of your punishment that your radio privileges are revoked until further notice.”
Cee poked curiously through the pantry shelves for more food, finally grabbing a Bits Bar, one of those artificial chocolate ones, out of the cabinet.
“How about this instead,” she proffered. “Why don’t you ground me after the successful conclusion of our plans? When we have fled with our cache of pearls, and you still feel I deserve—” she even added air quotes “—a punishment for my behavior, I will take it without complaint.”
Beatrice and Ezra exchanged glances. It was a reasonable enough offer. There were bigger things to worry about than effectively punishing a teenager.
“Your way it is,” said an amenable Ezra. Succinct, for once.
Satisfied, Cee returned to her bedroom, with her Bits Bar and a full water bottle, muttering something under her breath that suspiciously sounded like a complaint about being the only grown up in the room.
After Cee’s door had been shut again, the two adults found themself standing a few paces apart, unsure how to proceed. They stood on the brink of a knife’s edge. Taut and tensile.
“I’m taking a shower,” stated Beatrice, if only to escape any more of Ezra’s insanity.
There was no borrowing Cee’s ensuite, given the return of music on the other sound of the door that shifted from rock to something resembling very shrill vocals. The door was resolutely shut once again, and she would likely stay there until sunup.
“Very well, you may use mine then,” Ezra recommended, though he was tense.
It was heaven standing under a spray of water. The Residence Hall had been strapped for water for weeks now and she’d had to suffice with sponge baths, and though Ezra’s shower was intermittently unpredictable in its temperature, dipping from hot to freezing in a span of seconds, it was better than nothing.
Overall, she clocked in at around seven minutes, doing all her washing up speedily, borrowing Ezra’s soaps. She only brought a few supplies of her own, to keep her skin moisturized, a comb, a spare pair of underwear, and fresh socks. It felt indulgent to be wearing leggings so often, these ones a touch thinner than her exercise pair, and the only top she had was a black tank with a built-in bra. Her sweatshirt served as a good enough extra layer.
It would have to do for now. She hadn’t put any effort into thinking towards the ‘After’.
As in—after Ezra and Cee left. After this was all over.
Stepping out of the ensuite bathroom, she found the bedroom door was open. Slinking over, naked except for the towel cinched tightly to her form, she went to shut it for further privacy in order to change her clothes.
Ezra was in the living room, exactly where she had left him, and he looked up as she appeared in the doorway. He had a wrench in his left hand and was using it to tighten a loose screw on the inner panel of the prosthetic arm. He was wearing those ridiculous wiry spectacles, the ones that made him appear more austere, erudite. 
A green light burst forth from within its inner machine, bathing his face in a soft, surreal glow, he gaped at her over the thin wiry frames.
The towel barely covered her ass as is and skimmed closely the tops of her thighs. It was secured rather tightly over her naked breasts, and her skin glistened with a post-shower glow. The long tresses of her hair, usually worn up and out of her face (the color of some quotidian brown that was already sporting a sparse miscellany of gray among it), cascaded over her shoulders, uncombed, and dripping fat water droplets.
She remained motionless, with one hand upon the doorframe, poised to shut it, but returned Ezra’s ogling stare. Finding no sense of shame at this junction, no inner battle ensuing in her head, not even an inkling of perversion. She unknotted the towel and let it fall gently, as a caress.
Removing the spectacles, Ezra drank in the vision of her naked body, his mouth falling open, slackened with surprise. But more so, with want—
And she wanted to feel wanted. Kevva, how it irked her.
He did not disappoint. Absorbed every ounce of her curves, the soft swells of her breasts, the pebbled skin of her nipples, even the droplets of water falling from her hair onto her shoulders, and the plump swell of her belly under her navel. Where her hourglass waist went, his eyes followed, salivating, to the path of her curvy hips and shapely legs, and towards the small patch of hair on her mound meeting at the apex of her thighs.
Satisfied she had given him enough, and would thus leave him wanting, she swung the door inward, until it closed with a soft, muted click.
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tagging:
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divinesouldariax · 1 year
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it doesnt have to hurt more to be love!
it doesnt have to hurt more to be love.
there’s been a lot of very good meta about ashton, taking hits, carrying his friends, carrying heavy things for their friends, doing things that hurt, that make it hurt worse, to protect his friends from pain. because he knows how to carry pain. because they’re used to it. because they know he can keep going. because, because, because it’s what he knows, it’s all he knows.
and it’s true. ashton loves them. ashton is willing to hurt more for them, and it’s because they love their friends.
but, but, but. he shouldnt have to. people with chronic pain shouldnt have to do things that make the pain worse. we might choose to, and that is definitely an act of love, but feeling like they dont have a choice, that taking on more pain, silently, suffering without ever asking for help or saying no, i can’t do that, it hurts too much...
because, listen. for most people, chronic pain is limiting. it says no, we’re not climbing those stairs today. no, we can’t lean down and pick something up off the floor. no, we’re staying in bed with a heating pad and telling our friends sorry, i can’t make it today after all. i know you were looking forward to hanging out, but i can’t do it. maybe there’s some people with chronic pain that never have days bad enough that it limits them, but i’ve never met one.
so when i see ashton, whose friends didn’t figure out that he has chronic pain until they literally felt it in his mind, keep their pain under wraps for over a month, never saying no to carrying something (a heavy statue, fcg up a ladder, orym after he fell, laudna’s dead body for miles), swinging his hammer to defend and protect, literally picking losing battles to see if anybody is watching...to me, that doesn’t read as “look at this strong, empowered person with chronic pain who never lets it limit them”.
to me, that says “this is a person who thinks that love cannot exist without a worsening of pain, who won’t let themself pause or say no or even tell anybody that it hurts because he is deeply, deeply afraid that refusing pain is the same thing as denying his friends love”.
and that’s fucking devastating.
it doesnt have to hurt more to be love.
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gem-in-the-horizon · 13 days
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i think i'm like the spiders georg of Horizons OCs
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grimark · 1 year
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the thing about golden kamuy is that if you took basically any of the characters and slotted them into another series they would be the most batshit insane character in that series. but you line them all up together and they’re just one of the boys.
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br1ghtestlight · 2 months
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my own fic is kind of a weird play on the bob's burgers angst fics where one of them dies or has a serious injury and the aftermath of that event but in a very non-serious way bcuz tina's injury. isnt actually serious or life-threatening. im more interested in using that injury to explore louise's relationship to tina and what she feels her role is in their relationship and how she views herself in general (and what happens when she fails to live up to that view of herself)
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Michael J. Caboose from Red Vs. Blue has brain damage.
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microfeelings · 7 months
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I just had a rant (with myself) about the character of Mama Jones in 2003 and how she was reduced to "haha, she babies her son and is basically looking for a babysitter for him lol" and how much I HATED that! She lost her husband to a very violent attack (implied), Casey was involved in this (also implied but for the life of me I cant get the timeline straight), the store her husband had got burned. This woman should have heeps of trauma that she most likely buried deep because SHE HAD TO RAISE CASEY ON HER OWN (I guess its implied theres an uncle or auntie bc of cousin sid, but theres no mention of them so I can only imagined they fucked right off), and she got reduced to that?? Come on 2003 you can do better. I KNOW you can do better
(Extra info on the notes bc its mostly ranting and it wouldnt make sense on the main post)
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cripplecharacters · 2 years
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Hello, I was wondering if a character can have PTSD from the event that caused their disability (in my character’s case a traumatic brain injury causing speech and mobility disability) without sending an overly negative message about becoming disabled? Would it make a difference if the character started out with other disabilities not caused by anything traumatic?
Hi! Thank you for asking. That is a topic that is an important one to handle tactfully.
In my opinion, that can totally be done. In fact, I would personally really like to see more stories about disabled characters wherein, if they became disabled through a traumatic event, their trauma and PTSD don’t revolve so much around the disability as they do around the actual traumatic experience. I think learning how to separate the trauma of the incident from the resulting disability is a super important thing, and not one I see talked about enough. @blindbeta has some great posts on the subject of separating trauma and disability that I’d recommend checking out.
Of course, losing your abilities can genuinely be really difficult, but too often, abled writers especially will write stories about characters becoming disabled through horrible traumatic accidents and revolving all of their trauma around the fact that they are now disabled, when in reality, sometimes the traumatic part isn’t as tightly tied to the disability as it is to how bad the incident felt when it was happening. When stories like this happen, it can really feel like the writer is using disability as a shortcut to trauma and angst, which is not cool. It’s offensive, and it’s also kind of lazy writing. There are plenty of better ways of writing about trauma and PTSD that don’t rely on using disability as a shortcut, as well as plenty of better ways of writing about characters becoming disabled through traumatic events that don’t just feel like they’re using disability as a convenient plot device.
I think the best way to go about this without accidentally sending the message that the character becoming disabled was the worst part of the event would be to focus more on the actual events of the traumatic incident, rather than focusing too heavily on talking negatively about the resulting disability when discussing the character’s trauma and PTSD. Focus on most of the same factors you would if the same event had happened but the character had not become disabled in the process. For instance, when a very close friend of mine became disabled in a traumatic event, most of her PTSD was not so concerned with the fact that she lost a lot of mobility as it was with the fact that even tiny mundane things could trigger her and remind her of how terrified she was and how much she witnessed during the event (shared anonymously with consent).
This doesn’t mean that you have to shy away from the topic of the disability altogether though. Acquiring a disability as a result of a traumatic event is a big thing, and it is natural for the character to grieve their loss and spend some time adjusting to their new circumstances and abilities. Becoming newly disabled is always an adjustment period that can be really difficult, especially if the character did not have any other disabilities beforehand. However, as with becoming disabled through most causes, the hardest parts aren’t always so much that your brain or body work differently now, but rather that you are now faced with confronting accessibility barriers that you never had to worry about before in a world that is not designed for disabled people. If society was really effectively accommodating and ableism wasn’t so rampant both individually and structurally, most disabled people would have a much easier time adjusting to becoming disabled. But as it stands, we live in a world that is often deeply inaccessible, and it can be really hard to suddenly have to learn how to cope with so much intense ableism as well.
To that end, I think it is perfectly reasonable for your character to still have a grief and adjustment period, particularly focused on confronting accessibility barriers and ableism. What you don’t want to do is end up portraying a character who is miserable and self loathing primarily because they can’t stop dwelling on the fact that their speech and mobility are different now, because those are the kinds of things that can end up reinforcing the idea that disability is automatically a bad thing and that disability is the worst possible outcome. But it is entirely reasonable and I would say even interesting to see a character grappling with serious societal assumptions and negative preconceptions about disability that they never had to face so directly before. Portraying those struggles and adjustments helps shift the understanding of the problem away from being inherently caused by the disability, but rather being caused largely by structural inequalities and negative stereotypes that create discrimination and ableism.
Here is a great post by Mod Faelan that covers more thoughts on how to write that character during those early adjustment phases.
I also think that yes, it could make a big difference if your character already had other disabilities before the traumatic incident that were not caused by anything traumatic. If they were already disabled in some way beforehand, they might already have a solid understanding that becoming disabled was not the worst part of the traumatic experience and have an easier time not tying the trauma to the disability.
This is also a situation where I highly suggest using a sensitivity reader who has personal experience with this kind of thing.
— Mod Lane
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cat-vase · 2 years
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the fact that for ONE, the “coffee shop everything is fine” au is “the ONE competition never happened” 😭😭
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hollowknightinsanity · 6 months
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(cw: descriptions of gore/injury)
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pk gets FUCKED up in rol
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iamskyereads · 9 months
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Incubation
Part Four of Compulsion
EZRA (PROSPECT) X OFC BEATRICE
18+ (MDNI) warnings for the whole series. See more info and story summaries and warnings here.
Summary: Drifting brings complications.
chapter warnings: medical conditions (coma), dream sex, explicit sexual content (p in v, fem receiving oral, spitting, dirty talk), Ezra being filthy, coarse language, mild descriptions of blood, alcohol mention, angst, panic attacks, death of background characters, needles/syringes and medical devices
word count: 8.6k. A necessary shoutout to @ezrasbirdie who read this while suffering a sunburn! 
A/N: See endnotes for a treat!
Masterlist // AO3
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// Previous. //
Know thyself, said the philosophers of old. Above all else, know thyself.
Know thy enemy, they taught her. Above all else, know thy enemy.
She sought refuge in forgetting—some memories were not meant to be preserved. Not the likes of what she’d seen.
And when she started to forget more and more, she fought hard to remember. To give herself certainties no matter what the doctors said, what the brain scans showed.
Are you still you when all the things made to build it begin to crumble?
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Beatrice hit the one hundred Drifts quicker than any in Baylor Corporation’s history.
She and the eleven other Drifters, including Shelby, took her out to celebrate the milestone at the local pub in Adonis Square. They got a few tables in the backroom and crowded a bunch of chairs around them, ordering food and drinks, and something called Blue Shots. Beatrice didn’t know what was in them, but they were potent wee monsters, and got her buzzed rather quickly.
She had dressed in a little black dress number that earned her a lot of compliments and wolf-whistles. She paired it with these black knee-high boots she bought at a flea market some years back. When the second round of a tray of twelve shot glasses, with that inky blue liquor in them, appeared at their table, Beatrice declined. She’d become a lightweight after her hospital stay, and thus sipped soda water the rest of the evening.
It didn’t stop her from having a good time. She was crowded in between Shelby, and another newbie Drifter named Marla, gossiping and swapping stories from their lives. Two others, Zach and Petey, started up an arm-wrestling match on the table at the opposite end. Some liquor and testosterone-fueled attempt to out-man each other over a petty argument no doubt.
Men, the women agreed, and rolled their eyes.
Petey beat Zach in three out of the three matches, then in two matches against Kendrick, and was being roasted for cheating when Beatrice rose from her seat and strutted over in her tall boots and short dress.
“I’ll have a go,” she said. They looked her over and stifled their chuckles, but Petey, ever up for a challenge, let her. 
“I’ll go easy on ya,” Petey said, placing his elbow on the table. He was strong, but lithe. He had solid blue eyes and a very square jaw. He had a wife, living in the Kamera system, with three kids and one more on the way. They occasionally visited him on Hephaestus and stayed in the Residence Hall. He was a few years younger than Beatrice, and all the cockier for his good looks.
“Don’t you dare.”
Accounts would vary as to how quickly the match went on for. Kendrick would say it was ages, and Petey was holding the line the whole time; Marla and Shelby agreed that Beatrice had him from the beginning. Other accounts spoke of the sweat dripping down poor Petey’s face, twisted in his exertion, growing redder and redder, while Beatrice—calm, cool, collected Beatrice—stared right into the eyes of her opponent without blinking. Reports even said she didn’t break a sweat.
It happened simply by accident. Beatrice was staring so intensely into Petey’s eyes that she found herself breaking through a barrier. She was no longer in possession of her own mind, but Petey’s as well.
You will lose. She willed it.
With that the back of Petey’s knuckles slammed on the synthetic wood tabletop, his mouth opened in perfect shock and Beatrice, with the whole room as her witness, was declared the true underdog winner. Petey gaped like a fish, first at his arm, angled awkwardly upon the table, and then at Beatrice, seemingly at a loss as to how it had happened.
One of the others pointed out that Beatrice’s nose was bleeding, and she dabbed a napkin to her face.
“You okay?” Shelby asked first, coming to Beatrice’s side in record time.
“Yeah,” said Beatrice, staring discomposed at the spots of blood upon the napkin.
“Tilt your head up, that’s a good girl.”
It was the drinks, she blamed. And the excitement of a night out. It soon stopped and they laughed it off. She and Shelby planned to go home earlier than the others.
A pair of brown eyes looked upon this strange scene from the front bar. The owner of those—vulnerable, fierce, and calculating—brown eyes, his chest rumbling with a small, amused husky chuckle, brought a glass of amber liquid to his lips. The glass was held loosely in a grip of three out of five fingers. Curious fingers, they were. Could draw as many stares as those that peered into the backroom where the rowdy party was happening, for they were made of pristinely polished, but deadly, titanium alloy.
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They make it out after the first five minutes.
Ezra was near weeping upon reviving. Almost immediately, with a fit of sudden passion, he banished Cee to the other room.
“Don’t I get to know what happened?” Cee fought back. “What about your treatise on candid disc—”
“I do not like repeating myself,” he thundered. “Room.”
“Ezra,” Beatrice warned, already stepping into the role as mediator when Cee scoffed and shuffled off to her bedroom. Loud music started up shortly from the other side of her closed door.
“How? How did it know?” Tears nearly burst from behind his eyes. Frightened beyond repair when they beheld Beatrice.
“How, what?”
“I have no waking memories of my mother. Not an ounce, and she was there, clear as I see you before me. How did this creature know what I do not?”
Beatrice was afraid of this—dredging up of lost memories often leads to panic attacks and spirals. Ezra was breathing irregularly. The machine beneath his shirt blinked a red light, meaning a spiking heart rate. The glow of it showed through the thinness of his undervest.
“Suppressed memories,” she said. “Calm down, Ezra. Just breathe deeply with me.”
His head was shaking vigorously. “No, no, no. It’s a lie—sent to trick us.”
“The Drift can’t lie. You may have never remembered her, but a deep part of you did.”
He beat his fist into the floor, a sharp hammer of metal striking vinyl. It left behind a scratch.
“Ezra.” Beatrice shot her hands forward. “Calm down. You’ll be okay. It’s just the stress hormones spiking.”
“Why? Why grant us this gift? It must want something in return—this monster whose true size we cannot even know other than by lame guesswork,” he sputtered in a panic. He drew his knees towards his chest making himself as small as possible and hung his head, humbled. Irrevocably changed.
Beatrice unhooked the adhesives stuck to her cranium, and crawled over to where Ezra was, muttering under his breath. His right arm hung as a dead silvered wing at his side. He was talking to himself so quickly Beatrice could barely catch the words, other than to recognize them as curses, as he slapped himself on the cheek over and over.
“Hey, hey.” She caught hold of his left hand so he would do no more violence to himself and held it in an embrace. With her other hand, she unpinned the electrodes upon his cranium, thus freeing him from the machinery. The eye mask hung loose, looped around his neck.
“It’s no more monstrous than you or me,” she told him, gently.
A flush remained high on his cheeks, and the back of his neck, and a crazed glint remained in those brown eyes. “What did you suffer?” He asked her.
“All that you feel in there, I feel too.”
“So you—you were…? You saw…” He tapped twice at his temple. In here.
“Yes.”
Shortly, after a few more deep breaths, his heart rate normalized. 
“Let me get Cee,” Beatrice offered. The loud music from behind the bedroom door remained.
“In a minute.” Ezra’s hand in her own squeezed, then released. “Gimme one more minute. I did not want her to see me like this. I fear,” he swallowed, “she will know that she will be better off without me.”
“Cee doesn’t think that.”
“How do you know?” He eyed Beatrice at length.
“Something she said.”
His rough breathing eased. “It’s a powerful thing.” he mentioned, gaze pinned upon an invisible target. “Could be addicting, holding all that in one’s head.”
The effect of the Drift was still on him, surfing through his mind. Present in its absence, as one feels the presence of absence upon standing in a hollowed out canyon and realizes they are in the graveyard of a once mighty river; as absence is present in the firing synapses of a damaged nerve.
“Does that not frighten you?” He posed.
“Does it you?”
He laughed. A musical chuckle that started deep in his belly and seemed to echo, made his throat flutter. “I thought,” he said, choking up. “I thought, I knew what fear was.”
He bared his neck upwards, closing his eyes with a sigh, exposing the thin circle of skin at the hollow of his throat. Beads of sweat pooled there. He appeared so deep in thought, so unmoving, there was no disturbing him. The throb of his jugular vein, the only proof of his life. A single tear fell out of the corner of his closed eye, stained the side of his cheek all the way to the side of his jaw where it disappeared in the patchwork of facial hair. Then it formed a droplet that made yet another spot on his already thoroughly dirtied undervest.
“Call her back in,” he said, sternly. “We go again. All day if we have to.” 
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In the early afternoon, they heard the first ear-shattering crack of a firecracker nearby. Peeking out the shade, the three spotted a plume of orange and red glowing in the daytime sky, that then faded to wafts of smoke.
Cee suspected the rioters were using the fireworks to confuse the police. Another crack sent the windows rattling. A confirmation of a few more bursts, some at a distance, some close by, confirmed that they were being set off at seemingly spontaneous locations all within the dome. Tanks rolled in the distance, disembodied shouts filled the air, and the ground quaked with the stampede of angered feet upon it, whether police or rioters they didn’t check.
Beatrice suggested muffling the sounds from the outdoors as much as possible. So for the next few minutes were spent stuffing towels under the cracks in the doors, and around the windows. The ongoing disturbances were worrying. Being woken out of the Drift before the effect of the sleep drugs wore off, could leave one with a crippling headache.
By the approach of curfew, Beatrice and Ezra had completed an astounding number of short Drifts.
“Once more,” Ezra broached, buzzing as an addict.
Beatrice rubbed out her eyes, feeling the dark edges grow under them. “No. We should stop.”
Cee was already prepping the materials. 
“Fine,” Beatrice relented. “One more, then we’re done.”
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She awoke in a groggy confusion.
It’d been the longest one of the day. Thirty whole minutes this time. She could hear the alarm gnawing at her eardrums. The drug that made them drowsy, distributed in larger and larger amounts as they progressed with their day—five cc’s, then eight, ten, twenty and finally thirty, in sync with the minutes of their Drifts—ticked up.
This last Drift had been long. Arduous. Never as difficult as the ones she completed with Shelby, for Shelby and Beatrice were as compatible as sisters. Something in her resisted Ezra, and so her mind worked doubly to close itself off. It meant she woke up, more exhausted than ever.
“Cee, the alarm,” she garbled, throwing off her eye mask to greet gray walls, the boxy furniture, and the ceiling painted a cheerless color. “Cee. Alarm.” Its annoying screech, at full volume, was ongoing.
There was commotion beside her, where she knew Ezra was. The singular sound of labored breathing of someone in a deep sleep and the choked whinging gasps, repeating itself over and over—”Ez. Wake up! Ez. Please. Ezra. Ezra. Ezra, please, wake up please wake up—up. C’mon, wake up.”
A shadow fell over Beatrice. A formless figure, and she blinked to pull it into shape. A halo of wispy blond hair, dark circles under blue eyes, and red, red cheeks, with a panic-stricken voice.
“Beatrice! Something’s wrong! You need to wake up. It’s Ezra. The readings—”
“What?” She couldn’t get it above a hoarse whisper. Her tongue felt heavy, mouth full of cotton.
Cee was talking lightning fast. “—are weird on his EEG. The waves slowed down. I think he went into a delta pattern, and I can’t get him to wake up! Beatrice, I need you. Help, please.”
Her mind fought to keep up, to get a grip on reality.
“Beatrice!” At the shriek of her name, she sat up, ripping off the adhesive electrodes and crawling over to Ezra’s prone form.
She felt him breathing on the back of her knuckles. His pulse was normal and the heart monitor showed no irregularities. According to the feed, he was in a delta pattern—the waves passed slower, in one to four Hertz. A highly relaxed, even meditative state, often associated with deep sleep.
“He should be able to wake up,” said Beatrice grumbled, gently shaking his shoulders as she’d seen Cee do. She checked his reflexes, all responsive so no paralysis; peeled back an eyelid to see his pupil dilation, nearly swallowed by the brown color of his iris. The deeper the sleep, the more they were constricted, and his were near pinpricks.
“What’s wrong?” Cee pleaded. She’d been short with Ezra all afternoon, turned taciturn ever since her exile, however brief, to her bedroom after their first Drift. Now, she was downright scared.
“I don’t know,” said Beatrice sadly.
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In the privacy of Ezra’s bedroom, it took three tries for Beatrice to get Shelby on the video call. Poor connectivity issues meant the call kept dropping. Beatrice breathed a little easier when Shelby’s round face, her mousy hair pulled back into its usual ponytail, came into view, looking more rattled than usual. She was rocking her three-year-old, having a meltdown, upon her hip.
“Look, Micah, it’s Auntie Beatrice. Say hi to Auntie Bea!” Shelby tried, in vain, to get the screaming child to look at the screen. For all of Shelby’s attempts, the kid, a veritable mini-me of Shelby’s round face, would not stop screaming. “Sorry, bad timing for us.”
Beatrice paced up and down the carpet at the foot of Ezra’s bed. “Shelb, Shelb, I need you to—”
Intuitive as ever, Shelby narrowed her eyes at Beatrice’s wan appearance on the shared screen. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I just need some advice.”
Shelby’s face took up the entire screen as she held the device closer to examine Beatrice. “Are you—have you been Drifting? You look exhausted. What the fu—fudge—is going on right now? Are you solo Drifting?”
“Shelb! I need help. Something’s happened.”
“Rissy!” Shelby shrieked, grabbing the attention of someone in another part of the house. “Oh, mark down this day everyone, Miss Know-It-All, Beatrice needs lil old me. Rissy, get in here! Rissy, come here take your brother. Swear to Kevva, take those things out of your ear when I am talking to you.”
A preteen came into view with large headphones. She took the wriggling baby in his tantrum, grumbling all the while. “Hi Bea,” Rissy said, glumly to the screen, and walked out again.
“Kevva alive, do you see how big she’s getting? She needs braces already. My little girl! Braces?” exclaimed Shelby when the room had gone quiet, and the babe’s cries became further and further away.
“Shelb!” Beatrice interjected.
“Ok, ok.” Shelby took a seat, temporarily free from her mothering duties and gave her full attention to her fellow Drifter. “Tell me everything. Cheating on me with another Drifter, huh?”
“His name is Ezra. He fell into a delta pattern while we were ending, and I can’t wake him.”
Shelby clicked her tongue, disapprovingly, her head shaking. “How many Drifts?”
“A few,” Beatrice said, mentally recounting. She sat at the edge of the bed, elbows perched on her knees. The tablet held in a white-knuckled grip. “Okay, a lot. We’ve been at it all day. It’s nearly curfew. I should have stopped earlier, but we pushed into a thirty minute, and—fuck! We’re on a deadline. Everything was happening so fast.”
“Reflexes?”
“Normal.”
“Pupil dilation?”
“Constricted, and he’s in REM.”
“Limbs moving?”
“No.”
“Swallowing, coughing?”
“No, I don’t—I don’t know. But he won’t wake up, it’s almost like he’s in some sort of, of, uh, uh.” Beatrice snapped her fingers, willing the word to come to her. “A coma.”
“Yes,” said Shelby, gravely. “I’ve seen it before. He’s in limbo, a Drifter’s Sleep. His neural synapses were overworked, and your friend is trying—”
“Not a friend,” Beatrice enunciated quite harshly. “Definitely not.”
“Well, whatever. He’s caught in a memory and can’t get out of it. Where he is, nobody can reach him.”
“But I need him awake, Shelb,” she pleaded, desperately. “We need to.”
“Forcing him to wake will cause more damage.”
Beatrice hung her head, beating herself up. “Knew I was forgetting something. This is my fault.”
“Hey, it’s not, Bea.”
“I allowed this to happen. I should have known! We could have stopped hours ago, when it was going so well.” She drew in some deep, refortifying breaths. “What do we do?”
“Wait it out,” Shelby suggested. “Keep him hydrated with IV saline solution. Only he can help himself now.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
The small show of Beatrice’s vulnerability shocked Shelby. “What’s with you?”
“N-nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Bea. I’m the only one that’s been in your head.”
“There’s this kid.” Beatrice rubbed at her brow line, debating how much she could tell her trusted confidante. “This kid relies on him. I need him back.”
“Why are you even Drifting? What is going on? I thought the mines were shut.”
“I can’t answer that right now,” sighed Beatrice. She hated having to keep secrets from her friend. “It’s a long story.”
“Are you okay? Are you safe?”
“Yeah, I’m—” she chuckled, despite the heaviness in her heart. “Yes. I’m safe. We’re safe. I’m fine.”
“And Hephaestus, the riots?”
“What do you expect, it’s shit here. Today, they’ve been throwing fireworks all day. They’ve been going off nearly every hour.”
As if on cue, the sound of crackles and whistles from a few miles away could be heard. Then, the corresponding thunder of exploding firecrackers.
Shelby sighed, glanced to check none of her children were eavesdropping. “Bea, there’s no news on it in the Ephrate. Intergalactic stations don’t report anything. Word is Baylor’s behind it, that they’re muzzling news of the riots to keep folks from knowing the truth. No one even has any idea what’s happening on Hephaestus right now.”
Beatrice sat, puzzled. “But there must be some word getting out?”
“Honey, I watch the news every night with the hubby. Not a single thing.”
The realization was too evil to comprehend—Baylor Corporation really censoring the news of the riots? Was it possible? Was the whole galaxy ignorant of the increasingly brutal crackdowns on workers, and the clashes between police and miners?
Was anyone paying attention?
Words failed Beatrice. Disbelief and shock turned swiftly to anger and hurt, it hardened into a ball of ice at the center of her chest.
An entire galaxy out there, and no one was listening.
No wonder the miners were so angry in their isolation. They were screaming into a void. With no news of the riots and the strike being shared, Baylor Co. was still winning in the court of popular opinion.
“There’s talk,” Shelby continued in more hushed tones, “of sending us back to work. They’re finding external cheap hires to do the mining, ones who would cross the picket lines to dig. Baylor wants us Drifting again. I guess they want this over quickly. You’re sure you’re safe?”
“For now,” said Beatrice. It sounded hollow.
“You look drained. Rest will you,” said Shelby, sympathetically. “No secrets in the Drift, Bea.”
Beatrice scowled, all the more petulant that Shelby was right. “I know.”
The call ended shortly after, with the two friends quietly saying their goodbyes. When the screen went blank, Beatrice threw her tablet with some force onto Ezra’s bed. It bounced but landed on the pillows with no damage. With a loaded sigh, she went back out into the main room.
Cee was cradling Ezra’s head and stuffing a pillow underneath to make him more comfortable upon the floor. She’d spread a blanket over him too. He appeared perfectly peaceful. Cozy, even. It’d be sweet the way Cee was looking after him, if it wasn’t for such a harrowing situation.
“Any changes?” Beatrice asked.
“He coughed.”
That was something.
“He’s in a Drifter’s Sleep, they call it. His synapses have been overworked and he’s gotten stuck in limbo.”
“But he was fine before!” Cee’s lower lip trembled. Her pale face was puffy, she’d been crying while Beatrice was in the other room. She drew her arm across her nose, wiping at her already wet nose and cheeks. “Why isn’t he waking?”
“Kid, this is not your fault,” Beatrice said, comforting with her hands on Cee’s shoulders. It overwhelmed Beatrice seeing the girl get all teary-eyed and flustered, and almost brought Beatrice to tears herself. “Don’t think for one second that you’re to blame for this. Okay? This is not your fault, you hear me.”
At Cee’s nod and more drying of her wet face with her long sleeve, Beatrice continued. “It came on quickly. We shouldn’t have pushed for that last one, I’m sorry. We just have to wait to see if he wakes up himself.”
Beatrice correctly observed that neither needed the reminder that this would only further delay them. The hunt for the pearls went unmentioned.
“Meanwhile, we need to steal supplies from Medical.” Beatrice found some scrap paper in the kitchen and wrote up an itemized list.
“How can I help?” asked Cee, coming to her side.
“Isotonic rehydration pouches, needles for an IV. I can’t ask you—”
“I can do it.”
“Curfew is about to start.”
Cee only became more determined. She pocketed Beatrice’s list, energized at having a purpose. “I can do it. Plus, I’ve got a Georgie.”
“What’s a georgie?”
The teenager was already pulling on a navy hoodie sweatshirt, so oversized, it must have belonged to Ezra at some point.
“Cee, it’s too dangerous,” Beatrice objected.
“We need you here, Drifter. Nobody glances twice at me and I’m smaller so I can sneak into places you can’t. I’ve done it before.” She was slipping boots on and tied her blond hair into a bun. She drew the navy-colored hood up over her hair, she still looked small and scared with her tear-stained cheeks, despite the ferocity burning in her blue-eyed gaze. “Ezra would understand.”
Beatrice placed her hands reassuringly on the kid’s shoulders. “Just return quickly.”
Cee clipped to the waistband of her jeans a small handheld radio and indicated its twin on the kitchen counter. “Radio me if there are any changes to Ezra. It’s already dialed to the channel. No names, use call sign Birdie.”
She left without another word.
The minutes ticked by, punctuated every so often by a firecracker being set off. Through the small hole in the blinds, Beatrice watched flashes of color light up the quickly darkening sky.
Ezra did not wake. He didn’t even move. Beatrice kept hovering her knuckles over his face, sending up a prayer every time a puff of air from his nose or mouth hit her skin. The electroencephalogram, or EEG, measuring their brain waves, displayed Ezra’s brain waves as slow and measured—the long plateaus and low valleys of a deep sleep state.
Watching them made Beatrice sleepy. Her own exhaustion had slipped in under the door and crawled through the cracks. A glance in Ezra’s bathroom mirror showed her the dark circles under her eyes.
The Drifts had tired her out more than usual, Shelby was right, she needed her own rest. A quick nap before Cee returned felt ideal. It was getting harder and harder to keep her eyes open. So, Beatrice settled upon the couch so she could be right there if he happened to wake up, which was unlikely given Shelby’s timeline.
Besides, Cee should be back before the curfew bells. That was at least in another twenty minutes. She’d hear them. She always heard them. 
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Beatrice didn’t recognize this place.
She didn’t recognize the pencil-thin tree trunks, nor the air clogged with dust and spores that moved in golds and silvers, pinks and greens, through the air. She didn’t know the names of the tall grasses that came up to her knees, nor of the wild ferns that had been in bloom for eons, nor was the dusty hue of the sunlight through the trees from her own catalog of memories.
They belonged to Ezra.
A lot of his memories were from here. Them being the most recent, and the darkest.
As she walked through the green forest, impervious to the toxic dust floating through the air—her presence both spectral and corporal, hugging the boundary of real and surreal—she came upon a black tent tethered into the ground. She had to unzip its flap to open.
It was a small entrance, sealed from the outside world and its toxic dust and spores. She heard noises on the other side of the inner flap, noises of a creature in pain, and so passed through.
The confines of the inner chamber were packed to the brim with harvesting supplies and gadgetry, there were air filters, a charging station for throwers, boxes stacked precariously filled with food and supplies, and an environmental suit lay crumpled upon the floor. Strange decorations had been hung from the canvas tarp of the tent—flags or bits of paper in varying shades of red, ruby, and scarlet, but whether prayer signs or merely crafts, Beatrice couldn’t tell. Their purpose, obscured.
A bunk bed dominated the far wall, the upper bed empty, save what appeared to be a glass dome helmet on the top. It was the occupant on the lower bunk that was making the pained noises.
Not a creature after all. A human male.
Ezra.
Beatrice recognized the flat plane of the back of his head, and the dark curls were sticking together with sweat. If Beatrice were the blushing type, she would be, for he was naked from the waist up, his back, strong and golden in the soft light of the lamp upon the floor. Most remarkable of all, he had two flesh and blood and bone and sinew arms. No prosthetic replacement to be found.
He was holding his left one above him, using the cheaply manufactured scaffolding of the bunk to steady himself as he moved. His thick fingers wrapped around the rigging, and his arm was bulbous with his muscles, the biceps visibly bulging, the tendons in the forearm snapping under the glistening skin. His right arm snaked down to his front.
The tent creaked as he moved with his whole body, hunched under the roof of the bunk bed. Moving in a slow thrusting motion.
Sounds became clearer as Beatrice, lost in the mechanics and the display of his masculine naked figure, stepped closer. The grunting she had mistaken for pain were actually the ones of pleasure.
“Aww girlie,” Ezra said. “Gimme another one. Hear how wet you are?”
The blankets held at his hips moved as if of their own accord, and a quiet gasp left Beatrice’s mouth at the appearance of another leg belonging to a second individual. A soft, wrecked groan came from the lover he was fucking. The leg rose higher up his hip, its twin appearing on the other side of Ezra’s hip, locked in tightly, and the cries of pleasure rose higher.
Beatrice stood frozen, completely glued to the spot.
As of the tiniest of pinpricks, Ezra became alerted to her presence. His head whipped around, sweat dripping from his golden neck. There was that flash of white driven into the roots among his dark hair. He did not stop his thrusting, nor cover himself for the sake of modesty.
“Drifter,” he all but exclaimed. A grin spread its way from ear to ear. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
The hair on his forehead was damp with sweat, more glistened on his neck—the evidence of the longevity of their lovemaking. A pinkish flush covered the top of his chest and the apple of his cheeks made the scar stand out. His eyes were blacker than black.
Beatrice couldn’t even move her faculties to answer.
With a low groan from the lover, Ezra stopped thrusting. He released himself from between the open legs and kneed backwards on the small bed. The blanket fully fell away, revealing the pale globes of his bottom and the firm backs of his thighs. His own thick cock was hard and leaking, pointing towards his navel. Beatrice’s mouth was left watering at seeing its thick size, and that it was coated in slick. White cum around the base, tangling the small mass of hair.
The lover on the bed came into better focus. Beatrice caught the canvas of skin, the tiny mark of a belly button and two heaving, ample breasts. There was a mole under the left one.
It made her start.
She knew that mole. She knew those heaving breasts. The belly button, and even the soft curve of the abdomen—the one she had tried so hard for years to make into muscle and yet stubbornly remained despite her best efforts.
Beatrice was staring at an exact replica of herself laid across Ezra’s bed.
Her hair, usually twisted into an updo, was splayed like a halo on the sheets, her own body was slick with sweat, and the air heavy with the odor of their sex. Beatrice watched her own replicated body writhe and moan upon the bed.
Ezra drew that Beatrice's legs open wide, enough for this Beatrice to see the stain of their filthy lovemaking. The patch of her pubic hair upon her mound, the plump lips of her own pussy. A sheen of sweat and slick at her inner thighs. The opening of her still fluttering cunt, where moments before had swallowed his cock, and the ripe little opening of that other hole.
Ezra bent his head over the juncture of this replica’s thighs and spat. A thick trickle of drool landed on her clit and slid down her seam. Ezra licked her, gathering the spit and juices upon his tongue and moaned delightedly and raunchily around the taste. To Beatrice’s utter horror, the sensation of Ezra’s tongue mirrored on her own body—the one standing tongue-tied and useless.
“Who knew you could be so sweet, Drifter,” he drawled. He settled his left forearm across that Beatrice's navel, holding her bucking hips down to the bed as he composed his wide shoulders between her thighs. He drew his hips in a tight figure-eight, grinding his own erection into the thin mattress.
“Come see the mess I’m making of you,” said a cheeky Ezra.
With a debauched groan he began to sloppily eat her out, using every advantage and good fortune of his skillful tongue and lips. The Beatrice upon the bed wailed. Mesmerized, this Beatrice watched the replica of her own fingers carding through Ezra’s thick hair, spurring him on.
A plane of blank, lightless space yawned between where she stood in that stifling tent and the view of Ezra and herself entangled upon the dirty sheets in that harvester’s tent. The floor disappeared, and with it, Beatrice felt herself falling into an endless pit…
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Beatrice snapped her eyes open, her breath coming out in a startled gasp.
She was already sitting up in panic mode, heart racing, before her senses filtered in. Small sounds and sights clued her into her surroundings—there was Ezra upon the floor, in the same position she and Cee had left him. The pillow under his head.
There was the sofa she was sleeping on. She was in the living space in a module home. On Hephaestus. It was silent outside and the singular bulb was on over the oven in the kitchen.
Something wet was dripping down her face, and she brought her hand up to swipe it away. It came away red with blood. She went tripping to the kitchen for a towel to hold upon her bleeding nose.
And where was Cee?
Beatrice listened intently for sounds of the riot outside. It was silent. No more fireworks. Not even the curfew bells. There was a clock in the kitchen too and it told her an hour well beyond the start of curfew. It was way later than she thought.
The nosebleed wasn’t too bad. It stopped quickly and she went to check on Ezra upon the floor. Same soft breathing pattern. His EEG readings were in the same delta wave pattern. He hadn’t moved either, he remained sleeping on his back, his arms limp at his sides.
Beatrice moved about the house, too anxious to stay in one spot, turning lights on and checking out the blinds for signs of the kid in her hoodie. The streets were empty. Curfew in full effect. She’d slept through the bells then. 
No fireworks either.
The temperature had dropped, and she rubbed her arms with the cold, dug into her back for the extra layer she had brought, but the sweatshirt did not provide any comfort.
The dream she’d had disturbed her. The foreignness of it. The shock of seeing her naked self so exposed, so utterly ravaged at the hands of Ezra. The way he had manipulated her body, held her legs aloft for them to witness how puffy and wanting he’d made her, her own essence dripping out of her for Ezra to gather into his obliging mouth.
What had he said to her? 
You’re not supposed to be here.
Her musings didn’t last long, for soon Beatrice heard the sliding of the mechanized lock upon the front door and this time two hooded figures entered the space. The first one, Beatrice nearly shouted with glee, turned and lowered her hoodie to reveal the blond hair and expressive eyes of Cee, smiling like she had conquered Hephaestus. The second figure revealed a young person, much the same age as Cee, with tons of freckles on a smooth oval face and red-orange hair in long tight curls that fell past their shoulders. They had a wooden expression, plaintive brown eyes, and full lips pressed flatly together.
“Georgie, I presume,” said Beatrice, both elated and mildly angry at the unplanned delay.
“Beatrice, this is Georgie,” Cee confirmed.
Georgie, looked between Cee and Beatrice, with stupefaction, and said in a deep voice. “Is this her? Is this the Drifter? So cool. Not gonna, like, read my mind, are ya?”
Cee swatted Georgie across the arm. “No, silly, Drifter’s can’t do that.” But her eyes widened when they turned to Beatrice, seeking confirmation of the possibility of this mystical power. “Can they?”
“Just what we need, another teenager,” complained Beatrice.
Georgie’s face hardened. “I’m eighteen,” they said, at the same moment Cee also protested—“They’re an adult.”
“Huh-uh,” breathed Beatrice, unconvinced.
“Georgie works at Baylor’s I.T. department,” continued Cee, rather proudly. “Or used to.”
“Yeah, fuck those capitalists,” butt in Georgie.
“Watch your language,” declared Beatrice.
“They’re kinda like the whiz kid,” Cee added.
“You’re the hacker then.”
“I occasionally dabble in a few shortcuts, when Cee asks me,” said Georgie. The two traded small, admiring smiles, and then it hit Beatrice.
Oh.
Besotted teenagers. Perfect.
“Alright, this is no slumber party. Did you get what I asked? Why’d you take so long?” She berated Cee, self-aware that she was starting to sound like Shelby when she took on a particular tone with her children.
But Cee went stiff. “There’s been a development,” she said quietly.
“What?”
Cee gulped, mournfully looking at her friend for support. Georgie, in kind, slung their arm around Cee’s slighter shoulders in a companionable hug. 
“One of our own was killed today,” Cee said somberly. “A miner striking at the picket line was run over by a police tank this morning. The whole village is furious. They were throwing rocks at the police and then started shooting off the fireworks. His name was Freddie, this crotchety old digger. Ezra knew him in the tunnels, their shifts overlapped sometimes. It’s just so awful.”
“The police are liars,” said Georgie, rubbing comforting circles upon Cee’s back. “They kept saying Freddie was pushed, but the tanks shouldn’t have come so close to their picketing.”
“I was going to write something up, you know, and Georgie and I can distribute it. The funeral’s in two days. If Ezra were awake, he could…” Cee trailed off, further morose about no visible change in his condition. “Well, I thought he could speak a few words on the radio to anyone listening. He has the voice for it.”
“I think the strikers should hear from their Original Rebel. It’d be a great morale boost,” Beatrice appealed. “Now, those supplies, did you get them?”
Hurriedly, remembering her duties, Cee stripped off the backpack. “We had to avoid some of our usual routes. Too many police. Plus, Georgie had to reset the video feed in medical. When the power went out and the generators kicked in, it restarted their backup security, which we shut down last time we snuck in there.”
They got everything, from the rehydration pouches to the needles. They also stocked up on some pain meds and that therapeutic lotion Ezra likes for his arm.
That night they sat around the dinner table. Georgie and Cee, head’s bent in conference, while Cee hand wrote a first draft in a small journal, formulating a response to the tragic death of the miner named Freddie.
Beatrice saw that Ezra was properly hydrating, setting up the IV line in his left arm and adjusted the cushioned mat and the pillow beneath him. There was consideration for moving him to his own bed for prudence and comfort’s sake, and with Georgie, they could manage it, but Cee didn’t want him moved in case they injured him. If he didn’t wake up by tomorrow, they’d have to decide on how to proceed. She did, however, carefully unclasp the metal arm, saying that he usually slept without it anyway, and the prosthetic was placed in his room for the battery to charge.
“Do you think he can hear us?” She asked listlessly as they ate the dinner Beatrice had cooked out of the well-stocked kitchen.
Beatrice had found frozen peas in the freezer and added them to a pasta dish with melted butter and cheese. It was surprisingly tasty.
“I like to think maybe he can hear us,” continued Cee, pushing her uneaten peas around her plate with her fork. “Coma patients have been known to be aware of their surroundings.”
Beatrice didn’t have the heart to point out that technically Ezra’s condition wasn’t like other coma patients. Instead, she pointed her own fork rather menacingly at Cee. “Eat all those vegetables, kid. What’s Ezra gonna say, hm?”
“What’s it like in the Drift?” Cee asked Beatrice, all starry-eyed.
Beatrice thought for a long moment about how to best describe it. “You ever had a lucid dream—where you become aware that you’re dreaming? And you gain control, making it up as it goes along?”
Cee, and Georgie equally absorbed with this topic, nodded along.
“It’s kind of like that.”
“And Ezra? You can read each other’s minds.”
Beatrice chuckled. “I swear, where do folks come up with this stuff? You are tethered in the Drift, but that’s—”
“Like soulmates,” Georgie piped up, interrupting Beatrice.
“Sure,” Beatrice obliged. “Like being known in every infinite, intimate way.”
“Sounds so cool,” said Cee.
Georgie agreed. “So, the Drift is like a computer network, gathering data, but the data is the shit from our own brains?”
“Hey, language,” Beatrice snapped heartily.
“You plug yourself in, you essentially are like a flash drive, uploading to the wider network. It recognizes that the presence of Drifters is a foreign object and so to protect itself, it would have to set up a means of self-defense, like attacking a virus,” continued Georgie thoughtfully.
“That must be the compulsion,” Cee jumped in. “Right, Beatrice?”
Two hungry pairs of eager eyes turned onto the Drifter, seeking answers.
“What do you know about that?” Beatrice wondered.
Cee shrugged. “A little. There are stories.”
“Yeah, everyone knows the stories,” said Georgie around a mouthful of her dinner.
“They're just that,” supplied Beatrice, calmly. “Nobody knows for sure why the compulsion happens.”
“Does The Drift ever impart knowledge onto you? Like can it download itself onto a Drifter?”
Beatrice chewed thoughtfully on her next bite of pasta and peas but did not reply to Georgie’s hypothetical.
“It’s a hyper-advanced consciousness,” the young computer whiz kid went on. “Trying to communicate with us would be as ridiculous as us trying to communicate with, say, the bacteria in our toilet bowl.”
“Gross,” chimed in Cee.
“Perhaps it’s trying to share in ways we haven’t evolved to understand. So it’d have to choose the right vessel?”
“She can choose. The Mycena somniantes is a female.”
“Wicked,” chuckled Georgie. “Maybe she’d have to inject you with her own data, in order for the two species to communicate, they’d have to share common circuitry.”
Beatrice pictured the black hole in her brain scan. The Mycena somniantes was ubiquitous in inhospitable environments—could it trigger growth in damaged nerves? Birthing with new wirings, new connections. Silken neuron threads are similar to the roots growing in the soil. Her brain healing itself each time she entered the Drift.
A chimera, in possession of both human and alien means of communication. Drifting could be biologically derived. It would make Baylor Corporation tech obsolete.
“The Drift is none of those things and it’s all of those things,” said Beatrice finally. “It’s a kind of flow dream state that requires abstract thinking, calculation, and intuition. But the experience of it is ineffable—I’ve tried to write about it, but it’s impossible. Words pale in comparison. The waking mind cannot even fathom it. It’s as subjective as our best dreams and worst nightmares. The Drift is…whatever you want it to be.”
Beatrice heaved a long drawn-out sigh and the group fell into a contemplative and solemn silence. Only the idle scraping of forks on their plates as they finished their meal.
“Now nobody gets seconds until those plates are cleared,” she said, switching to lightheartedness.
Shortly, second helpings led to more conversation. Luckily it ambled into Cee’s written draft, which was hailed by Georgie as both a polemic manifesto and a stout-hearted eulogy. It served Beatrice not for them to draw any more conclusions about the Drift or the Mycena.
Once the dinner dishes were done, there was nothing left to do but prepare for bed. Cee let Beatrice take Ezra’s bed, since it wasn’t being used, and gave up her own room to Georgie. Cee insisted she wanted to sleep on the couch to stay close to Ezra should he wake up in the night, although the chances of that were slim.
Before Beatrice closed the door to the bedroom, she glimpsed Cee reading aloud to Ezra from her journal, talking through each point as if he could hear her. A Manifesto on the Death of Our Brother, it was titled, and it was proving to be Cee’s best work yet.
Sleep didn’t come so easily to Beatrice, despite her mounting exhaustion. Everything was rather muddled and incomprehensible. She had strange dreams of Mycena growing like threads out of her ears, connecting her forever to the earthen grounds of Hephaestus while fireworks bloomed over the city, spreading ash like poisonous spores.
She did not find Ezra in her dreams.
But the unfamiliarity of being in Ezra’s room drove her crazy. Ezra’s bed. Ezra’s pillow. Ezra’s sheets. She kicked those off, too hot to sleep. She tossed and turned, her nose seeking the scent she found upon the pillowcase, exactly where he would lay his cheek. Intimacy, as if she were searching for a lover.
She found there the scent of cedar and pine forests. Dewdrops on leaves. Beds of moss and human sweat.
Just before dawn, she heard noises out in the main room and crept to investigate.
Cee and Georgie were whispering by the door, pulling on their boots. She could see that Ezra was in the same position, the IV solution refracting the dim morning light in its liquid depths, and the tubing that ran all the way down to the into his arm resembled the outline of a ruthless snake, coiled to strike.
Hour thirteen of his Drifter’s Sleep, and no changes to report.
Beatrice flicked on the overhead lights, throwing Cee and Georgie into panic mode. “What the hell?” She barked. “Are you going out at this hour?”
“We’re going to post my eulogy on the Foreman’s door,” Cee retorted, holding up a piece of paper, with her final words copied from her journal. “And we’re making copies to spread around the strikers.”
“Before they lift the curfew?”
“It’s more effective if nobody sees us do it. Ezra would want this. He’s always encouraged my writings!”
Beatrice, hands on hips in her hot-tempered state, glared between the two teenagers, neither of whom looked rather guilty at being caught, then her eyes fell instead on the sleeping Ezra. His dark hair was swept off his face, and he looked rather pale and vulnerable under the severity of the overhead lights.
A dark and mysterious sleeping beauty.
Beatrice wished for him to wake in that moment, so that he could handle this situation. She wasn’t built with maternal instincts. What would he say to Cee in this instance?
Beatrice’s arms fell limply to her sides, and she exhaled wearily, all her fight lost. “Wear a jacket while you go make trouble,” she advised.
Cee’s smile was bright. “Back later.”
“Don’t get caught,” Beatrice yelled after them.
“Haven’t yet!” Cee yelled back, throwing on that oversized navy hoodie once more and she, now with Georgie, hurried out the door.
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Beatrice watched, enamored as a drip of saline solution fell down the pouch, and led by gravity, fell into the narrow clear tubings that ended in Ezra’s arm. She replaced the bandages on his arm and checked that the needle was still snug in his vein delivering vital fluids. He felt warm to her touch, but displayed no signs of fever or disturbance, not even a wrinkle produced itself on his brow line. Only the occasional twitching of eyes under the eyelids, the indication of his REM sleep.
Hour fourteen of Drifter’s Sleep.
Cee and Georgie would not return yet, and neither had Beatrice’s desire for returning to Ezra’s bed.
So, she did what she always did with an anxious mind, she exercised. She set about it outdoors, in the small backyard plot. It was just big enough for what she needed, doing high-rep count circuits using her body weight, and repeated a few rounds to get her heart rate up.
She witnessed the advancement of a mournful dawn, and with it the signaling of the end of curfew. No fireworks this morning. Baylor’s Biome was grieving.
Sweating, stripped down to a sports bra and leggings (grateful she had thought to bring along a few extra items of clothing in her bag) she returned to the kitchen and drank some water and ate a protein bar. The workout had helped her digest the troubles in the night. She felt renewed with a singular clarity of purpose.
It had taken like a splinter in the palm of her hand. The only way to extract it was to do so cleanly and precisely, instead of gnawing around its edges.
She lay beside the sleeping Ezra on that colorful rug. Despite the warring ideologies of the ethics, and a looming frustration that it might not work at all, the moment she rested her head upon the soft part of her arm, her eyelids became heavier and heavier, and she let herself succumb to sleep with only one thing on her mind, and she would not be so tongue-tied this time.
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It was the same place as before. The same old growth green forest on that forsaken moon. The poisoned air falling around her. There was the tent, which she entered with no hesitation, and the cramped inner space the same as before.
“Ezra,” she called into the room. Her voice held an odd, distorted shape in this place. An aberration.
“Back again.” He appeared from the shadows, as if spawned from them. “I wondered when you might return, Drifter.”
He was alone this time.
In his dreams, Ezra had both his arms. 
“Recognize this place, do you? I’ve been marooned here,” he said. He wore black shirtsleeves and gray boxers, both items had seen better days. He was lounging upon the lower bunk. “There are no more transfers off. My ride is dead, and my hopes dashed as ever, along with my partner. I shall die here, I think.”
His eyes bore an unnatural glassy quality and as he spoke his foot hanging off the bed kicked an item, and it was sent rolling audibly across the short space. It came to a halt upon the toe of Beatrice’s boot. An empty whiskey bottle.
“Come to gloat, Drifter,” he slurred, slouching further upon the bed. Content to remain drunk and unbothered.
“Ezra, you’re not stuck here.”
“Oh, but I am. ‘Less you have a fully operational pod hidden under your—” He released a squeaking hiccough “—under your bra there. All the more impressive if you do, darlin’.”
“You’re dreaming. This place is no more harmful to you than a memory.”
“Salacious indulgence, dear one.” He adjusted the crotch of his boxers, then spread his hand upon his thigh. It stood as an invitation. His head lolled far over onto his shoulder, watching her all cockeyed. “If this was a dream, you would not be wearing so many clothes.”
“You’re in a deep sleep. None of this is real. You need to wake up and come back. Cee—she…”
Ezra blinked up at her, his mouth forming a small ‘o.’ “Cee?” he asked, then it solidified. “Cee. Yes, I know that name. Cee. Cee—where is she? Where—? What have you done, Drifter?” He growled threateningly.
“She’s worried for you. So wake up,” said Beatrice more forcefully. “Wake up Ezra!”
A crack of lightning split the canvas tent into two. The whole space flooded with white light swallowing both Beatrice and Ezra in it. And it all went quiet.
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NEXT >>>
Commissioned art by the amazing @daddydindjarin 😍😍😍 She brought my vision to life!!! I love him so much. Thank you sweet one! xoxo
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tags:
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@littlemisspascal @shirks-all-responsibilities @pedrostories @purple-elm @prolix-yuy @lowlights @ezrasbirdie @haylzcyon @mothandpidgeon @mvtthewmurdvck @jedifarmerr @pazizz
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destinedtobeloved · 1 year
Text
Doctors orders, don’t be broken hearted. (time will still be ours, time will still be ours.)
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Maverick had suffered a brain injury from the ejection. Something about the impact and the speed they were moving- he couldn’t remember, to be completely frank. He couldn’t remember anything from the accident, really. They hadn’t told him about Goose yet.
Iceman struggles with extreme guilt, as he finds himself struggling to tell Maverick what had happened to his brother. Multiple times the situation rolls around where Tom is expected to tell him, but he shrinks in on himself each and every time, and he can’t handle to imagine the downfall.
Maverick finds out from a doctor over the phone that Goose is dead.
But one thing he does know, is that this is not the end.
ICEMAV
Warnings: Hospitals, medical inaccuracies, no beta we die like Goose, gramerly does all the work lol, men crying, arguments, extream guilt, TBI, canonical character death (it’s Goose, sorry folks.) more in tags :)
Some note rambling!!
I know absolutely nothing about medical conditions such as TBI so google has been my research source (I’m so sorry) and I’m 100% sure that these medical inaccuracies will be frequent. My bad lol
I am so sorry for making Tom the bad guy here, because we all know Ice would never do this, so it was majorly used as a plot point and nothing more. He’s my sweet baby boy and would do no such thing!
This has been in the works for months and I have finally gotten around to finish it!! There was like 400 different alternate endings/scenes to this that I changed out, so that’s definitely another reason why this fic was as difficult to publish as it was. But, it’s here now, so I’m happy all the same for it to be out of my notes app!!
Like I said in my last note rambling session, after my last work in progress fic is published (which should be very soon) the fluff will comense!! I’m so so so so exited to bring to life my lil Icemav-w-a-baby-verse because oh my god is it a fluff monster!! I’ve been writing so much angst I think this will be a good breath of fresh air.
anywho, enjoy!
“It’s going to be okay, kid.” Viper patted him on the back then walked out of that horrific base hospital bathroom and left Maverick to think.
Maverick had suffered a brain injury from the ejection.
Something about the impact and the speed they were moving- he couldn’t remember, to be completely frank. He couldn’t remember anything from the accident, really. They hadn’t told him about Goose yet.
He remembered what he had done that morning, at the latest. He remembered waking up on his bed, Goose not too far away while he went to get coffee to make the effects of the beer he had drank the night before to subside. He and Goose had gone to the mess to get breakfast, Maverick eating oatmeal with chunks of banana like he had every morning, and Goose had a piece of toast and some coffee since Maverick drank the rest of the pot before he was able to snatch some just minutes earlier. He remembered going to the locker room with Goose at his side and getting dressed in their flight suits, joking and laughing together while they walked to the tarmac. He remembered taxiing to the runway, too, but that’s when the vision cuts off and begins to become blurry.
Viper had came in and started apologizing and telling him it was all okay, and Maverick just stood there in confusion. He tried to listen through the nausea and blinding headaches. He nodded when necessary, and kept his eyes on Viper while he spoke. He wasn’t really sure what had happened but he took it all in. Nobody had told Viper about the true extent to his injury either- how could someone tell him that his best friends son, who he loved dearly, who he had promised himself to take care of, had a brain injury? That his most beloved Top Gun student wouldn’t be able to fly any longer? The last part wasn’t true, though. The doctors said that if he proved a speady recovery period and went to rehab, he might be able to fly again, slowly but surely. The chances were low, but they were there.
After standing there at the sink, he felt another wave of nausea roll in, and he ran to the toilet, not long before his boney knees hit the cold tile while bile rose in his throat, violently tearing up the top of his mouth.
He held onto the porcelain surface of the toilet with white knuckles and tried not to pass out after all of this. Non stop vomiting. Great, he thought, though, his headache made it difficult to think, and maybe even to open his eyes at this point.
But he powered through it, throwing up whatever left he had in his stomach and clenching his eyes shut, praying that he could have the strength to get up when he was done.
Maverick mustered up all the power he could to get up off the cold floor. He released his hands from the white seat and put his hands behind him to push himself up to his feet. He stood there wobbly and dizzy for a few seconds before he felt a little bit more like himself.
His trembling feet carried him back down the hallway to his room slowly, and he breathed in the sent deeply.
He never really liked hospitals. He hadn’t had much experience with them at all- but a part of him held a resentment towards them. Neither of his parents got to make it to the hospital when they had left him. They had died before it was even needed.
It was that, and the strange sterile alcohol smell that wafted uncomfortably up his nose that made his face retort.
But as he sat back down the the bed, he wasn’t sure that he cared about all the horrible things in that hospital room. His mind was drifting to Goose and the Top Gun trophy that they would soon win. If he and Goose were cleared for flying- that means they would have a straight shot to the finish. Hop 31 was one of their last hops, anyway.
Unfortunately for Iceman though, he did not suffer a brain injury, meaning he remembered everything about the accident.
Ice remembers the screams of Goose and the rushed words of fear from Maverick that almost made his ears bleed. The sight of the jet crashing into the water while two figures floated somewhere far, far away, one fighting to land safe and the other limp as a rag doll, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get it out of his mind. He circled the wreckage for what seemed like hours, making sure the pair stayed afloat, though he couldn’t see their body’s from that high up in the air.
Ice had offered to take care of Maverick in recovery- he’d have to be the one to know he was safe after what he had saw just hours before.
He and Slider had been the first people to show up the hospital after the accident- not even Carol was there stalking the corridors like they thought she would be at the time.
“You don’t understand Slider- Goose is his whole life, and Maverick is mine, and if Goose is gone- I don’t know how he’ll cope- how any of us will. We don’t even know his condition and I’m just helplessly standing here and I can’t take it wondering aimlessly here and doing nothing to help-“
“Ice,” Slider cuts him off swiftly. “Tom, Maverick will be okay. We don’t know anything yet but I know that you will be the first to know. Maverick is a stubborn sonovabitch and I’m not sure he has the mental capacity to die. I’ll be here with you the whole time, okay?”
Ices shoulders slump a bit and he eventually sits down next to Slider and waits- it’s his only option.
And hours later- a woman with nice blond hair, slightly curled up at the bottom, comes out holding a clip board looking around the room.
“Pete Mitchell?”
Ice immediately stands to his feet and looks at the girl with wide eyes.
“You can follow me to his room, sir.”
Ice nods and follows her like a hungry puppy.
“I want to confer with you on Lt. Mitchells condition.”
Ice swallows the lump in his throat and rasps, “what about him?”
“Due to the speed of the jet when ejection the pressure on him ended up causing a brain injury. Due to other doctors going and checking up on him, we think it’s only affected his knowledge of the accident and some other minor side effects like exhaustion, headaches, vomiting, things like that. If he shows a speedy recovery, he might be able to fly again. But we are certain he won’t be able to fly the rest of the hops at Top Gun.”
She pauses before continuing.
“His RIO Nick Bradshaw died on impact. I’m truly sorry.”
She stops when they meet a white door and she cracks it open before offering a sad smile and waking away, leaving Ice to venture in.
He can’t imagine a Maverick without a Goose. The worst of it being that Maverick doesn’t even know. He probably has no idea why people are giving him sad looks, or saying they are sorry, because Maverick has no idea.
After what seems like hours of staring blankly at the door, trying to comprehend the loss of Goose and his own boyfriends condition, he builds up the courage to push through it, and due to his sudden burst of courage, he is eventually greeted with a smiling Pete Mitchell sat on a bed in the middle of the room, looking smaller then ever, sporting the bruises and bandages wrapped around his head and arms.
“Tom!” Pete wails the second he gets his eyes on him, and for a minute, Ice can’t tell if anything is even wrong. Maybe it’s all just some dumb, cruel, belated April fools joke that obviously nobody knew to warn him about. Something in his gut tells him that’s not the case.
“Honey.” Ice says warmly, the fondness taking over at Pete’s child-like excitement.
Tom takes a couple steps forward, and lands at the side of his bed, reaching out for Mavericks hand, which he graciously takes, and Mavericks hold is dangerously tight, making it seem like he’s relying on Ice like he’s his life support.
Ice turns his head for just a minute, keeping his hand interlocked with Mavs, and he grabs the chair behind him and sits down so he can stare at him some more.
“How are you feeling? Are you okay? Do you need anything?” He felt like he was ranting- but nobody could blame him for being worried.
Maverick laughed at that and it made his face look more youthful he was even sure was possible.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, angel. To be honest, I’m not really sure what happened, and based on Vipers apology I don’t think I want to know.”
Ice looks at him fearfully. It feared Ice to know that he held something so grievously world shattering that Maverick did not- something so large it felt like it took up all of the air in the room.
But In place of that fear also held sadness- sadness for the fact that Maverick didn’t even know. The fact that Maverick still thinks that all is well and Goose is okay weighs him down like a heavy stone, and he can’t stand to break it to Maverick.
Because as he stares at the man in front of him, he sees that boyish grin on his face and the way love is practically showing through his eyes. He looks happy and weightless and he can’t stand to even imagine the breakdown while he speaks of Gooses demise.
He stays quiet.
“In a few days they are going to release you, you know. Your staying with me afterwards.”
Mavericks face lights up, his lips immediately curling up into a smile as bright as the sun.
“They really let you do that, angel?”
Ice chuckles and kisses his hand sweetly.
“Of course they did, dipshit.”
Maverick giggles and then eases his free hand to rub at his forehead, trying to soothe his headache blooming in his brain.
“Are you okay, Pete?”
Ice is the real worrywart here. Ice-cold my ass, Maverick thinks. But even now, he doesn’t have the energy to laugh much more. His earlier sickness and his pounding headache made
him tired.
“Just my head, angel.”
Ices face retorts and at the moment, he felt like a scared mother- because Mav has a brain injury and he’s not sure what is normal, and he’s not sure if he’ll recover, and he doesn’t know if…
Too many thoughts.
“I can ask the doctors if you can have some more medicine, if that would help-“
“No, no.”
Maverick waves him his hand.
“They said it’s normal, I think. Along with my sickness. They don’t know how long it’ll take to go away, but I can survive.”
“Sickness?” Ice questions. Each second he seems to get more and more worried for this man, and he’s not sure if his heart can take it.
“Yeah. I was just throwin’ up an stuff earlier, but it’s all good, I’m all good.”
Maverick smiled as if it’d make his argument more convincing.
Even in these circumstances, Maverick is being a selfless little shit, and it makes Ice want to pull out his hair.
He’s injured, and even now, he won’t admit he’s not okay? Why won’t he admit that he’s feeling bad? Why won’t he-
Too much thinking, once again.
“Well, tell me if you need anything, okay? In the meantime, you should get some rest, it’ll help. I’ll sit here with you, you know.”
Maverick hums sleepily in response and closes his eyes as if weights were pulling them down just at hearing the word “rest”.
Iceman laughs, forgetting about their situation at the moment, and reaches his hand to card through Mavs scruffy hair that still smells strongly of salt water, and presses a kiss to his forehead before settling back into the uncomfortable hospital chair and staring at the man he so loves.
He would be okay, right?
He tries not to think about Mavericks devastation after he truly figures out what happened to Goose. He just wouldn’t be able to take it.
But god, as Maverick sits there in the bed, the headache just wouldn’t go away. All he wanted was to fall into a peaceful sleep and forget about all of this, but with the headache it seemed impossible.
It just keeps getting worse and worse, and Maverick turns away from Ice and screws his eyes shut further in pain.
He tried to think of peace and that weightless feeling he gets when he’s in his jet to get him to fall asleep.
He stays still in his place in bed while Ice watches over him for at least a couple of hours before he finally falls into sleeps comforting hands.
-
Maverick rouses with a groan, his headache coming back into view after his painless sleep. He wonders if he’ll always wake up like this.
“Mornin’ sleepy head, you look as beautiful as ever, my love,” Ice says warmly, and it makes Maverick’s heart beat a little faster while he tries to suppress his blush. It’s always times like these when he’s caught off guard that fluster him.
“Hmn,”
Maverick mumbles, turning his head to look at Ice, who has presumably been up for at least an hour before him.
“I wonder what Goose is doing right now. I wonder if Goose remembers about our trip,”It was a random thought, but a thought all the same. Goose had been brought up not once while he was in the hospital.
Iceman’s smile quickly warps into a frown.
Iceman’s eyes fill with tears as he looks at him- Maverick looks so carefree and happy- he can’t stand to say anything to him.
“Oh yeah?” He asks, and his voice betrays him when it falters.
“Yeah. Me and Goose were going to go on a vacation after we graduated- probably go gamble in Vegas or something before we get sent back to our carriers. I’ve never had time to blow my money on stuff like that, but Goose promised me that time would be ours.”
Iceman doesn’t respond, but he stands up from his chair and walks over to the other side of Mavericks hospital bed, and crawls up next to him, laying his head on his shoulder, his eyes clenched shut, trying to get the tears to go away.
Maverick looks over at him, and his face shows nothing but confusion.
“Im so sorry, Maverick, I’m so sorry.” He whispers, and reaches over to awkwardly hug him in their remaining position.
Maverick, of course, has some idea of what has happened to Goose, but he stays silent.
-
Maverick wakes up again, and looks over to the clock which reads 0200 in large blinking red numbers.
Despite the darkness in his room, the open door brings those fluorescent white lights back into view, and he watches as various doctors and nurses scurry down the hallway even in these early hours of the morning.
He pulls himself up off the bed, his bare feet hitting the cold tile. He’s lucky he’s no longer wearing those paper hospital gowns, because if he was, he would feel painfully naked standing there in view of the world.
Now he sports long grey sweatpants that track underneath his feet, and a white t shirt that hangs off his shoulders slightly. He guesses that his time in the hospital has caused him to loose weight, even in this comforting care.
He walks slowly out to the doorway, holding his hand out for balance, knowing the pain still lingered in his head, and he was still painfully tired, no matter how much rest he got.
“Excuse me? Ma’am?” Maverick asks one of the doctors in blue scrubs walking by, and she stops abruptly, waiting for him to speak with a patient smile on her face. “Would you happen to know where Nicholas Bradshaw is? We came in here the same day- he’s my RIO, I-I’m a pilot, and we got into a accident, and I haven’t heard anything since I came in here yesterday night.”
“Sir, it’s late, you should go back to sleep. I promise to you whoever is here with you will tell you soon.” She reaches a hand out to hold onto his shoulders, spinning him around back to face the doorframe. “Here, let me help you back to your bed, you must be tired.”
Maverick, still barefoot on the tile, nods, his lips curling into a smile because of her kindness.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She smiles back.
After he slips back into his bed with the help of the doctor, he thinks of Goose as he falls asleep.
-
The next two days go over comfortably. Maverick still has his headache- he’s still vomiting, he still feels as weak as ever, but Ice is there now, so things are okay. He could say that much.
He’s still forgotten to ask Ice about Goose.
“We’re going home today, Mav.”
Mavericks eyes go wide and he smiles his bright big smile at him.
“Cant wait, angel, I hate the hospital. Makes me feel more sick,”
“I know, but you’ll finally be home soon enough.”
And Ice was right. Later that afternoon Ice helps Maverick up off his bed and he gathers his things, finally making their descent to the lobby where he would be offered discharge papers to fill out.
While Ice fills out the papers, he makes Maverick sit down a couple of feet away from him.
The one thing nobody could have warned Maverick about his injury is the weakness. He felt unable to move at times, even if he was getting proper nutrition and water intake like he should be due to Ices babying. But when he tried to walk to the bathroom to hurl up his lunch the day he was sent to the hospital, he felt like weights were attached to his feet unevenly, making it hard to walk straight,-or even at all.
But he’s Maverick. Of course he pushed through it. Always has, always will.
Ice has already put his things into his rusty truck and walks back to Maverick, before helping him up with a hand, and once he’s up, he snakes a arm around his waist to get him to stand up straight and walk without falling over.
“You sure you don’t need a wheelchair? It would be easier- be less tiring for you, honey.”
Maverick laughs and digs his head into the crook of Iceman’s neck, leaning more of his weight into him, while Iceman hardly falters.
“No, angel, I can still walk, you idiot. And I could never pass up an opportunity to love up on you in public, could I?”
They continue to walk until they reach the elevator that reaches down till the car garage. They step into the elevator, but now Maverick leans against the grainy walls of it instead of Iceman so he can catch a quick brake, but it doesn’t last long, because the second the elevator door opens again, and they are greeted with the dimly lit interior of the stuffy garage, Iceman pulls Maverick back to his side to lean against him, and Maverick laughs.
“So much about a wheelchair, huh?”
“Oh hush,” Iceman tsk’s.
And in their silent walk back, the only thing surrounding them are cars and the dim warm lights pointed around, he thinks about all that has changed.
Goose is dead, Carol is in mourning, their course at Top Gun has been postponed, and Mavericks mind is twisted into oblivion.
They find Iceman’s truck and Ice grips onto Maverick’s hips, helping him Into the front passenger seat of the vehicle.
“Take me out to dinner first, Kazansky.” Maverick smirks.
“I’m just trying to help, Maverick, you know that,” Iceman says as he buckles his seatbelt, reaching over Mavericks chest, but his voice is only warm and soft, no resentment shown through like Maverick had worried.
“I know, angel, thank you,”
Iceman stands straight up again outside the truck door, but nussels his face into Mavericks hair and kisses his cheek before moving back to his own seat.
He turns the key into the ignition after he finally takes his seat, and begins to drive out of the car garage, the bright July sun shining through the windows onto the dashboard.
Iceman laughs when he sees Mavericks lips curl into a smile, leaning back into the leather seat and resting his head on the plastic of the window, closing his eyes in pleasure, basking in the sun like a cat.
With his hand still on the steering wheel, he reaches into his center consol to pull out two pairs of aviators- a dark grey pair, and a gold pair.
He puts on his own grey sunglasses with ease, his eyes staying glued to the road until he reaches to his side, his seatbelt restricting his movements while he opens up the golden pair and slips them onto Mavericks head, being mindful of poking him in the eyes.
And with the look of complete happiness Maverick is giving him, Iceman shrinks in on himself once again, feeling guilty as ever.
It’s a constant thought in his mind now- how will Maverick ever know?
Maverick could ask him right now, and Iceman would be speechless.
He prays that the inevitable downfall of Maverick and his mental state will be softer then he thinks it will be.
-
Iceman doesn’t talk about Goose for the next three days after they get home.
Maverick is clingy as ever, acting as Iceman’s shadow, but he doesn’t mind it.
Their training is postponed for the next week because of the accident, so Iceman gets to bask in his partner’s presence until Maverick has to go to therapy.
It was a decision made between the two of them the first night they spent back at home since the accident. Maverick questioned why, thinking that he could hold his own for long enough, but Iceman proved that the benefits could outweigh Mavericks personal opinion.
The phone rings on the wall while Iceman is making lunch, and he jumps up to grab it before Maverick has to move from his place at the table flipping through a motorcycle catalogue. Maverick shoots him a thankful smile before turning back to his magazine, looking back at different bikes he could only ever afford in his dresses.
“Kazansky residence,” He says.
“This is Miramar emergency hospital, we were hoping to speak to a Peter Mitchell?”
“Oh- yeah, yeah, of course,” he lays the phone on his shoulder, covering up the receiver. “Maverick, honey, it’s the hospital, they want to talk to you.”
Maverick looks up at him and nods his head, standing up, leaving his catalog unattended. Iceman offers him the phone as goes back to making lunch, the spatula already in his hand by the time Maverick first speaks.
“Pete Mitchell speaking,”
“Hi, this is Miramar emergency hospital, we wanted to ask about your pain medication?”
“Oh! It’s been working well, I guess. I’m still feeling dizzy and tired, and it doesn’t cover up all of my headaches, but I know I’d feel a whole lot worse without it, ma’am.”
“We have a new medication we could give to you, or we could just up the dosage of your current medication to help cover up any lingering discomfort, if any of those options seem appealing to you?”
Maverick shifts from one foot to another, mindlessly answering through the phone, trying to be polite. His momma always said to be a gentleman.
“Maybe up the dosage? I would hate to have to get used to another medication again,” he laughs a fake laugh, pretending as if his condition is nothing but a big joke.
“Very well, thank you for your time, sir-“ Its obvious the receptionist goes to put the phone down, hanging up with him, but Maverick speaks again before she does.
He looks over his shoulder at Iceman who is unaware of his glance, and he tucks the phone further into his shoulder, no longer holding it with his hands, but rather holding it with his ear and arm. He fidgets with his hands and speaks softer.
“I was wondering if I could have any information on one of your patients? Nick Bradshaw? He came in the same time I did- we were both involved with the training accident on July 29th. I haven’t heard anything since, and I was wondering if you have gotten any new information on him?”
“I could look for you, sir, just one moment,” And he hears the clicking of keyboard keys on the other side of the speaker. The clicking stops and he notices the breathing on the other line get silent, no sound filtering through.
He can tell that she opens and closes her mouth a few times because of the weird clicking noises, obviously trying to come up with the right words to say.
“I- uh- um-“ she stutters.
“I’m truly so sorry- Nick Bradshaw died on July 29th, which what seems to be the day you came in. I’m so sorry- god bless-“ and she hangs up, leaving Maverick speechless.
Iceman turns around to look at Maverick after hearing the beep of a dead phone line, and he watches the color drain out of his face, leaving him a pale white.
Iceman’s face twists in confusion.
“You okay? Are you dizzy?”
Maverick blinks a couple of times, trying to get the blurriness clouding his vision to subside, and then he looks at Ice, putting on another smile.
“Sorry darlin’, yeah, I just got dizzy, don’t want to worry you,” he smiles a smile that doesn’t quiet reach his eyes, and then he hangs the phone back up on the wall where it had once rung 5 minutes ago, but his movements are shaky, slow, and delayed.
They eat in total silence, and even trying to stomach the grilled cheese that Ice had made seemed like a chore. He busies himself instead with watching Iceman eat- memorizing every movement of his jaw, every crumb that falls, every clink of silverware that makes the room a little less silent.
He try’s to ignore the betrayal swirling within him- not to mention the crushing sadness.
It couldn’t be true.
Tom gives him no more then a raised eyebrow, then continues eating.
“You barley ate, honey, why so?”
He gulps down air, letting his lungs expand.
“Too nauseous to eat- i’d just throw it up. Sorry for waisting it,”
He wasn’t completely lying, feeling as if bile was already running up his throat at the taste of the receptionists words In his mouth.
The night continues on nonetheless. Iceman hugs and kisses Maverick whenever he has the chance, they cuddle and watch tv, they go outside and sit in the sun, but with all of the days events, Maverick is not truly there. He feels like he’s watching from the sidelines while someone who isn’t him experiences this type of love.
How could he possibly experience love if Goose never would ever again?
Maybe the receptionist was wrong. Maybe Goose was okay and in a coma or something, just waiting to wake up and hug him once again. Maybe there was another Goose at the hospital and it just got messed up, and she happened to say the wrong thing. He couldn’t be gone. He can’t be. He’s Goose. Goose was always a fighter.
They lay in bed that night, the lights turned off and a red glow coming from the alarm clock on the side table. Maverick lays his head on Iceman’s chest and listens to his breathing and feels the way his head moves up and down with the movement of his lungs.
“What are you thinking about, Peter?” Iceman asks softly, noticing his recent quietness.
“Is he really dead, Ice?”
Ices heart lurches deep into his stomach and he goes still. His chest no longer rises and falls. He holds his breath.
“What?” He asks, his voice coming in breathy and cracky.
“All I want is to be angry at you, for you know, for not telling me, but I’m not. I’m just sad, Tommy.” And now that Iceman thinks about it- he does sound sad. He sounds sad, and scared, and more then anything, he sounds hurt.
“Maverick- I didn’t want to hurt you, baby, I- I- I didn’t know how to tell you and I didn’t want to see you crumble, I thought that if I just forgot about it it would disappear- but-but it didn’t and I- Pete, I didn’t want to upset you- I knew how much you were hurting already- I didn’t want you to be upset,-“ he’s rambling, and he’s heavily stuttering, feeling as if no words are coming out right.
Instead of holding his breath like he had once done, he’s hyperventilating in return, sucking in more air then needed to get his lungs to work. His mouth is working on its own accord as he try’s to make this whole thing right- even if he knows he will never be able to undo this. Not in the next lifetime, at least.
“And you didn’t think that when I inevitably found out that I’d be upset?” Maverick asks, and he try’s to sound angry, but he fails himself in that department. He looks up from his position laying on Iceman and he meets his eyes.
He gets up off of Iceman’s chest to looks him dead in the eyes once more while Ice sits up to face him, too.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Maverick. This is possibly the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life - but I swear to you all I wanted was for you to be okay! And I fucked it up- badly- and I-“ he’s talking with his hands, which Maverick would find quiet funny any other day, but due to the circumstances, he lets it go.
“That’s why you were crying the night before, Tom. You knew he was gone and you let me believe it was okay. My brain might be screwed up but I am not naïve.”
Iceman sits up straighter and leans over to the nightstand, turning on the light, leaving Maverick to watch him with careful eyes.
Iceman looks to Maverick again where tears are now gathering and some spiling down his face slowly.
“Maverick- baby- baby, look at me.”
He holds Mavericks face in his hands at makes sure they keep eye contact, even if Maverick is looking around nervously.
“You don’t have to forgive me for what I did- actually, I don’t want you to forgive me for what I did- nothing I could ever say or do will make up for what happened, okay? It’s not an excuse, but I just wanted the best for you, honey.”
Mavericks bottom lip is trembling now. “I’m not mad at you, Ice. I love you.” He sounds desperate- desperate to let Ice know that this isn’t the end. He reaches his hands up to grasp at Ices collar, bringing him in closer.
“Just let me help you, baby. Let me be the one you talk to when days are tough. Please, just let me be there. Let me be the one,”
“You are Ice! You are!” He pleads and he starts to cry again, closing his eyes, clenching them shut while he struggles to breath through his nose anymore, his hands still on Iceman’s neck.
He doesn’t want this to be the end. It just can’t be the end.
Though he feels hurt, and betrayed, and sad, and every other horrible feeling on the planet, Iceman always has, and will always be, the love of his life, and this moment will not change it, not if he has anything to say about it.
The guilt Ice feels is evident, and now Maverick is the one who feels guilty. He should have just left it. Should have just let Tom or Carol tell him when they where ready. Who is he kidding?He’s Maverick, and it’s painfuly obvious that he would never be able to escape it. Maverick, the one always known to never let anything be, to always do it his way, not wait around.
He wishes desperately to get rid of that last quality with all of his heart. He doesn’t want to be known as impatient or selfish or any of the above.
But he knows one thing, he will always wait for his Tommy.
Maverick releases his hands from his shirt and wraps them around his back instead, pulling him into a hug that neither of them knew they needed.
Iceman leans his head into Mavericks shoulder, breathing in his sent, and he lets it enchant him. He smells like axe body spray (very 80’s, I know.) and the lingering smell of smoke and a random deodorant he wears.
For the first time ever, his partner is far too reasonable.
Masterlist!
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honestly jonathan harris has untapped fanfiction potential. like there’s so much you can do with him because he has the least canon material (at least in tgws) and yet none of us are latching into it.
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upwards-descent · 25 days
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I must know your thoughts on Minsc and Boo, they're kinda easy to miss but. They're so funny
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My bf and I are at the same place in act 3 but splitting quests so we don't watch the same cutscenes a million times-- I've just gunned for Auntie Ethel and Cunt-- Cazzador while my bf bolted for Minsc & Boo and GOD I love this man ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
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