#and he simply has to gauge the frequency better things happens | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kibanafuji · 5 years

Text

27/12/2019

sleepless nights, and then one more // ft. @obstatune

He’d let them see too much. A tired face he’d hoped they wouldn’t notice. But they did. He insisted it wasn’t too bad, but...

[nezu opened a new conversation with kibana]

[nezu >> kibana]: hey man [nezu >> kibana]: I mean this in the least weird way possible but I was actually really good at singin marnie to sleep if you think that might help, I’m actually pretty close by today

[kibana >> nezu]: gonna admit i did just picture full on screamo lullabies which would be interesting to say the least [kibana >> nezu]: ineffective but interesting

He thinks for a moment. The truth of the matter is that he didn't get any sleep. He's afraid it's gonna get worse, too.

[kibana >> nezu]: yeah alright [kibana >> nezu]: little sleepover, pay you back with breakfast, how's that sound?

[nezu >> kibana]: heh. I mean I probably could, if that’d help more. [nezu >> kibana]: sounds great. I’ll bring you some more salami too this time, slommy whore [nezu >> kibana]: I think they make vegan salami too. I’ll look. we can have a real rager with it

[kibana >> nezu]: omg your so woke king [kibana >> nezu]: slommy night with the lads

While he waits for Piers, Raihan is working on making himself look... slightly more presentable. He looked tired in that selfie but it's much worse in person. ... This is probably as good as he's gonna get. So long as he smiles, he won't look too... horrifically tired, hopefully. Oughta clean up a little too, while he's got time. He continues idly talking over Chattr, though eventually his messages begin to drop in frequency--- mind’s too tired to handle both.

[nezu >> kibana]: 😔👊🥖 [nezu >> kibana]: no salami emoji so we got bread [nezu >> kibana]: 🐉🥖🎤🥖

[kibana >> nezu]: just spent far too long trying to find this one mad lad meme and can't for the life of me find it wanted to send it like "let's recreate this but with salami"

[nezu >> kibana]: whatever it is I’m down [nezu >> kibana]: we could make the all women are queens video but with salami instead of light sabers

[kibana >> nezu]: i thought putting me to sleep meant letting me have a nap not euthanizing me via laughter-induced suffocation

[nezu >> kibana]: well you know what they say [nezu >> kibana]: if he breathe [nezu >> kibana]: ... [nezu >> kibana]: he’s a THOT

[kibana >> nezu]: by that logic if you die by suffocation do you get your virginity back?

[nezu >> kibana]: shit you know what I don’t actually know the logistics there

Piers is only a route over from Hammerlocke, so thankfully there’s no need to take a flying taxi to make it there. As promised, he has two varieties of salami in his bag, along with his ukulele and a blend of tea that always helps him get to sleep.

“Rai! I’m here!” He calls, but shoots off a quick text too, just in case.

[nezu >> kibana]: outside! And I picked up the slommy. in for a wild night I’m sure

Raihan is further inside, cleaning up his bedroom, but Flygon opens the door for him; it's done this before, even takes in packages for him sometimes. This is roughly when Raihan sees the DM, and mutters an "oh, shit."

Right, he guesses this will have to do-- his room isn't too bad, but it's messy by his standards... Whatever. He heads out to go open the door for Piers--

but Piers is already inside. And he hasn't put his "i'm not that tired" face on. He quickly remedies that, though, the moment his brain recognizes what his eyes took in. He's good at that, good at hiding. He just has to hope Piers didn't spot him before fixing it.

"'ey mate. Flygon let you in, eh?"

Piers smiles brightly as he sees Flygon open the door. “Heh. Didn’t bring Sylveon with me this time, so you can rest easy. Thank you, by the way.” He offers him a pat on the head.

It takes a minute or so for Raihan to make it in, but it’s immediately apparent how tired he actually must be, even from across the room. Piers pretends not to notice.

Raihan is like him. He doesn’t want anyone to worry about him. He’d probably outright reject Piers’ help if he knew he did worry.

“Ey! Yeah, hope that’s alright.” He pulls Raihan’s share of salami out, waving it. “And as promised!”

"Aww, hell yeah."

A grin stretches across his face but quickly transforms into a yawn that he hastily hides with his elbow.

"Right, gimme that, gonna deepthroat the shit out of i--" Raihan can't finish the last consonant before he starts laughing. There is one benefit to being sleepless: everything that is funny in the first place is infinitely funnier when you're delirious.

"Still couldn't find that picture, by th' way. Got Rotom lookin' for it, though I'm startin' to think I 'allucinated it." He waves Piers over to the kitchen, opening the fridge. Likely due to him simply being tired, he sounds more... Hammerlocked than usual. He's never been one to speak in any way that didn't come naturally, and his tone is exactly as it usually is, so it certainly still sounds like Raihan; but the difference is notable nonetheless. "Want somethin' t'drink?"

"Aww, changin' the subject because you can't deepthroat it?" Piers teases, handing off the salami before following Raihan into the kitchen. He's a lot better at hiding his concern than Raihan is at hiding the fact that someone should be concerned about him.

"Water's fine, if you've got that sort of thing in Hammerlocke." He says. "Otherwise, whatever game of thrones style norse mead you have in here'll do fine."

He looks back into the other room at Flygon, trying to gauge if Raihan's pokemon are worried too, or if this is something that happens often. "Whenever you're ready to sleep, too, we can do that. Don't feel like you need to wait up for me."

It's a testament to how out of it he is that he doesn't have much to say in response, just offering a few (genuine, but low energy) chuckles.

His Pokemon are worried, sure, but they seem too much like they know what to do-- be nice and quiet, leave Raihan mostly to himself, let him wind down, and hope he can get to sleep. At this point they even know to turn off any lights Raihan forgot about.

"Nah, was thirsty anyway..." He grabs two cups and since the fancy bastard has a fridge with a water dispenser and ice machine he's got two glasses of delicious, refreshing water in a jiffy. Hot water might make you sleepier, but god, there's no better drink to him than fresh cold water. He drank right out of a spring during winter once and it was heavenly.

He sets both cups down on the breakfast bar and hops up on a stool. He looks like he's about to say something but he's promptly cut off by another yawn.

"... Don't worry 'bout it, a lil longer isn't gonna hurt..."

Piers gratefully takes the glass, leaning up against the bar, well aware that Raihan’s stools are most likely specially made for someone who is 6’8. The last thing he really wants to do is flail around like an idiot trying to get up there.

“Not worried, really.” He lied. “Just puttin’ it out there. Don’t want you stayin’ up for my sake.”

He takes a sip. “I was serious about makin’ the thot video at some point. Maybe in the morning. Should do Uh...’numbers on the gram’ as the youth say.”

Snrk. "Gonna get liked an' 'retwittered' like crazy. Go totally 'infectious'. Definitely super hip with the teens, me. Know all the slang."

The stools do adjust, with the sole issue being that you've already got to be on it for you to lower the seat-- either that, or Raihan has to prop a leg up on it and hope it's enough weight that the lever on the underside will actually do anything. He doesn't plan on sticking around in the kitchen for very long anyway, so if Piers is fine with standing the dumb stools are staying where they are until he replaces them the second he gets the chance.

"Nah, just got a ritual, y'know? Like t'stick with it, even when I'm dead tired." The ritual is good, the routine is good. Pavlovian logic and a lot of melatonin are his main weapons against sleeplessness-- so long as he follows the steps, he'll get sleepy, and he'll hopefully fall asleep.

The ritual also helps him stay awake, when he finds himself not wanting to sleep. But not sleeping is easier than sleeping, no matter what he does.

He considers adding that he also needs a drink to take his sleep meds, but decides against it. Someone who doesn't regularly have sleep problems would get knocked out real quick with a dose of Benadryl, so getting to sleep would hardly be an issue. Takes more than that to down an insomniac dragon, though.

He downs the rest of his water, refills it, then with a short glance at Piers to follow along once he's ready, shuffles along towards the hallway leading to his room. He stops partway there, though, jerking a thumb at a door.

"Yer room for t'night, by the way." He opens it to let his guest take a peek-- a big cozy bed, what looks like a door to its own bathroom, even has a TV set up. "No game system in 'ere, you can 'ead out to the livin' room for that, if you want. Got cable, though!"

"Oh, that's what we call it! Perfect. I'll make sure to "retwitter" the video once it "gets contagious."" Piers laughs, only vaguely aware of the actual nuances of any social media platform besides Myspace.

Raihan looks exhausted, but Piers can't rush him, as worried as he is. Nothing keeps a person awake like feeling like they need to be asleep.

With a bit of relief, Piers follows.

He doesn't mention that the bedroom is bigger than the one he has at home, but he does smile. "That's perfect, thanks man. Hope I don't wake you up yellin' at the TV, though. Get kinda heated when I'm watchin' food network. Hopefully you've soundproofed the room. Heh."

Piers quickly thumbs through his bag and pulls out his ukulele again before setting the rest of his things inside the door. "I'll be quieter with this, though. No screamo lullabies, unless that's what you're into. I'd be happy to oblige if it was."

"Your surname secretly Ramsey or summat?" Raihan jokes. "Now that I think 'bout it, Gordon Ramsey'd be right at 'ome in Spikemuth, wouldn't 'e?"

He's definitely curious about screamo lullabies, but he's thinking too slowly right now to formulate a thought in time. He ends up just opening the door to his own room, and heading in--- and making a quick turn towards the bathroom, where he'd stored his sleep meds for tonight. Out of the way, so hopefully Piers won't take notice.

He'd already ripped the labels off of all the bottles that weren't prescription a long time ago. Just in case. He quickly and quietly swallows his nightly sleeping pill, and then quickly tucks a few tabs of melatonin under his tongue.

And then he washes his face and takes out his hair ties like that's all he was doing in there. He runs a hand over his hair sideways, to loosen up his dreads a little now that they aren't tied back, and walks back out to go take a seat on his bed. He's silent, hoping it'll be taken as him just zoning out due to sleep deprivation; in actuality, he's waiting for the sublinguals to dissolve.

"Somethin' like that." Piers says. "Fuck, he really would. I'd love to add someone like him to the band. Screamin' that much takes uh...lotta breath support. I could totally see it."

Piers doesn't look as Raihan heads into the bathroom, but he has some idea of what he's probably trying. Again, he knows not to address it.

Growing up, Marnie was a closed book. Piers learned quickly to nurture and protect the small bits of vulnerability willingly given to him without pressing. So if that's something Raihan wanted to talk about later, they would talk.

For now, he waits for Raihan to get out of the bathroom, quietly crossing his legs to sit on the floor and tune his ukulele.

"I have a list of songs I used to use, but if you had anything in mind, I could probably figure it out." He says, trying not to stare too much now that Raihan has his hair down. "And don't worry. I'm kind of a night owl myself, so I won't get sleepy on ya if this takes a bit."

"Nah, nothin' in p'ticular." The lack of enunciation is easily excused with him being tired-- honestly, it's actually influencing it more than the sublinguals anyway.

... He's really starting to feel like Piers is... noticing, though. That he can tell.

It's not the medication that he's worried about most. ... Honestly, if he happens to open his mouth too wide, he'd be downright enthusiastic to inform him he uses melatonin tablets, because those things melt into white goo, and even for a closed-off person like Raihan he'd rather confess to being an insomniac than look like he'd just taken a load in the mouth or something...

In any case, he'll have to hope he's wrong, and that he's just imagining it.

Right. He takes a moment, goes over things in his head. Did he forget anyth...

... Shit. He's only now realized Piers is sitting on the floor-- he forgot to get something for him to sit on.

... Too late now, though, he supposes. He feels bad about it, but... he does need sleep. And if he thinks too much, moves too much, he'll lose the chance.

... Oh, that's it. Something else felt off, unfinished-- because something had fallen off his bed, and was stuck between it and his nightstand. He puts the little plush Goomy back next to his pillow, where it belongs, and lays down on his side to face Piers.

Only as an afterthought does he toss a blanket over himself-- he'd prefer not to, he feels vaguely embarrassed about getting all tucked in and cozy so his mate can sing him to sleep when Raihan is supposed to be an adult (despite the fact he'd gladly do this for someone else and not see a problem with it), but... He's fucking freezing, and the weighted blanket helps him sleep, so he pulls it on. Casually, though.

"Mkay... Piers, use Sing... status move, but let's hope it's super effective anyway..."

Piers laughs. "All else fails, I'll go catch a Jigglypuff or somethin'. Shouldn't take too long."

He's plucking the strings softly now. For a few moments, it's just that. But then he starts to sing.

It's quite the opposite of how Raihan saw him sing before - his tone is airy and gentle, a sound that precious few have ever heard from him. Only Marnie. Marnie and Raihan.

The songs he wrote for Marnie are probably too much. Hell, they're too much even for her at times, and he has to tell her that he wrote them about someone else. So he sings a different one - a lullaby that doesn't ask anything of him. Doesn't ask him to lean on Piers, or to open up to him, or to let him keep him safe. He will if he wants to.

At one point, he fades out the instrument and sings by himself. Only for a verse. It's almost as though he got so lost that he forgot to keep playing. It's a choice, of course. But not necessarily one he planned before.

He wasn't expecting it to work so quickly.

But it does.

And quicker than he's experienced in years, he notices all the signs he's going to fall asleep soon, but without all the steps he usually needs to take-- no careful repositioning of his body, no focusing on thinking about one specific topic to keep his mind from becoming too busy and waking him up. No routine. A few minutes, rather than an hour or longer.

And yet, he's a little unhappy about it, if only for the fact that once he's asleep, he can't listen to him sing anymore.

His eyes are still slightly open, but a memory occludes his vision. The image is vague, but the feeling, it's nostalgic, warm-- he wants to remember clearer, he wants to see it.

If he closes his eyes, maybe it'll be...come... ... ... ... bunkbed, it's... the bunkbed...... he sees it now ... ... ...

Quiet, steady breathing, and nothing else.

(Sure would be a shame if that changed at some point.)

Piers sings a few more songs. Just as soft, just as gentle - making absolutely sure that Raihan is actually asleep. He's more than happy to keep going all night if he has to.

Once he's almost sure - he pauses, then sings one single line from Raihan's favorite song, Weenie Man. No laughter.

Confident that he was successful, Piers stands up and makes his way to the room he's staying in. He changes into the pajamas and slippers he brought with him, then tucks himself into bed and turns on the TV. Food Network. Cupcake wars.

He stays awake just long enough to root for the little vegan girl to win, then falls right to sleep.

Some hours later, the TV switches on by itself.

It isn't set to a channel, but the volume setting is rising without any input from the remote---

And then suddenly, it's playing a movie.

... Or, part of one.

Over and over and over again.

A character saying a single word.

"Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help-- Help--"

It keeps it up until Piers is awake, and as soon as he is, and as soon as he's conscious, it begins flicking between different moments in the film.

"Rye-- Hann-- needs-- Help-Help him-- Please-please..."

"Wh...hello?" Piers calls out in a daze, almost certain he's having a nightmare at this point. But he rubs his eyes, and the TV is skipping.

It takes a few seconds.

Then he recognizes Raihan's name. But why--

...Rotom. It has to be that.

What an absolutely brilliant Pokemon. But he'll think on that later. Now, he's stumbling out of bed, still half asleep, and before he can even catch his balance, he's running right to his room.

Piers swings the door open.

It's silent.

Silent, aside from the sound of breathing-- quiet, very quiet, yet erratic in its tempo.

Rotom flies into the lamp on the nightstand and it flickers on. The light reveals Raihan; he's upright... somewhat. He isn't lying down, but he's hunched over, head in his hands.

Body, trembling.

Fingers, twitching.

Jaw, agape.

And eyes that are wide, wide open, but might as well be blind.

That expression of sheer terror, of horrified realization, isn't one that the foot of his bed could possibly cause.

"Rai..."

Piers should think about what to do next. Weigh what must be happening with what would be appropriate to do in a situation like this. Especially because he's never seen this happen before.

Marnie had nightmares. This was something else.

He moves faster than his brain can tell him not to. Before he knows it, he's kneeling in front of the bed, placing himself directly into Raihan's line of sight. He's unsure what to do with his hands - touching Raihan suddenly could startle him to the point of trauma, so he settles on resting them on the bed next to him.

"I'm here." He says softly, expertly masking the alarm in his voice. "I'm here, Raihan."

Not another one... Not another one, he doesn't want to lose another one... He only has so many left that that don't turn into that...

There are tears pouring from his unblinking eyes.

Eyes. Eyes Staring at him. Don't look ■•》~♤ie

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh Don't look, please He doesn't want you to see him like this

...

Rotom is back in Raihan's phone. It's showing Piers a picture. Two, in fact. Instructions.

Rotom knows Raihan better than Piers ever will. Probably better than anyone ever will, save his other pokemon, possibly. So when it tells Piers what he needs to do, he only hesitates a bit.

He doesn't want to touch him without asking. But there isn't a way to ask. And Raihan is terrified.

So Piers swallows his inhibitions. All he can give Raihan is the best he can do. That's what he owes him. And if he's wrong, and Raihan hates him -

...

He takes one last look at Rotom, and then moves to the bed. He's shaking, too. But as instructed, at least he thinks, he gathers Raihan in his arms. Pulls him close. Reaches around to rub his shoulders.

"I'm not goin' anywhere." He says. "I'm here. I'm here."

Inhale... exhaleinhale in ha le exh ale

"..."

He's coming back. He's coming back now, back to the present, back to...

"... ■■■ie...?"

The first ■ letters don't make it out of his mouth-- and it's a good thing, too. He doesn't want her to see him like this.

Only those last two letters of her name make it out, perhaps aided by him suddenly snapping into

his room. Warmth. Embrace. P

ier

"... h...hhi...hhs...?" It's an attempt to say his name.

He's

...

God damn it.

He's got no hope of hiding. Every other time he's already hiding by the time this happens, but this time, he...

... He... ... ... This has all been too much for him Far too much

...

it's been a really long time since someone last held me after a nightmare...

...

Raihan moves his feeble, shaking arms, and he's suddenly, even suddenly to himself, clinging onto Piers-- Piers is shaking too, he's-- He wants to scream, but he doesn't want to and he can't want to-- A whimper, a very faint whimper, all he can manage--

"... nh..."

... pathetic.

Piers is really, really good at hiding what he feels. Even to himself.

He doesn't remember feeling after his mom's death. He remembers Marnie. He remembers existing to make life better for her. He remembers swallowing everything. Because if Piers doesn't hurt, he can't burden others with it.

But that was distant. The knowledge that she had passed was something he could separate from himself. This...

...This is breaking his heart.

Raihan clings to him, and he's sure he can feel the way Piers is starting to choke, too. Even then, he holds him tighter.

"Don't have to say n'yth..."

...His voice cracks. Piers takes a second.

He's an expert at this. Raihan needs stability, and Piers will let his lungs tear themselves to shreds before he denies him that.

"I've got you." He says. "You don't need to say anything."

But he wants to. He wants to, but he can't. It drives him fucking crazy. He can't stand it. He's so pathetic.

Rotom nudges his hand, knowing full well that there is a want-- but he can't get himself to let go, either, to take his phone and tell him what he wants to say.

He needs to calm down first.

Just... calm down. Calm down, ■■■ ■■■■'■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■... ■■■■. ■■ ■■ ■ ■■■■ ■■■■, ■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■.

... But even when he starts to calm down, it just makes the sorrow deeper.

Another memory has been corrupted by... the other memory. Another memory, finite, only eight years' worth, that he won't be able to think about anymore, without also seeing that awful red splattered pooling on white

"...n... hh--"

He inhales sharply and grips Piers tighter. Raihan's body is suddenly very, very tense. ... No... no, no... have to stop... thinking about it.

Anything else, think about... absolutely anything else.

Piers keeps holding him. Even closer.

There's a lot he can offer him, but not yet. Not until he's stable. Now, he just reaches up with one hand and gently rubs the back of Raihan's neck.

He starts synchronizing his own breath to Raihan's - for the most part, that is. A trick his Sylveon used on him the one time he had a panic attack in front of her. Once they're synched, he starts to gradually slow his own breath down, hoping Raihan's might follow.

"Would it help if I sang again?" He whispers, nuzzling his face into Raihan's shoulder without thinking about it.

... 2 minutes, 45 seconds.

... It's excruciating every time, but that's a lot... faster than normal.

It helps that it's Piers.

Piers, of all people, he... He doesn't want anyone to know, to know, to know, but Piers has a little sister too Strong-willed, focused... A sister he cares about who he'd do anything for, protect no matter what, never ever make a mistake like raihan did Maybe even if he knew if he found out then at least someone would finally yell at him for being such a fuck-up that would be nice

... He doesn't respond. But after a while, his grip has softened, too. And Rotom comes back, and this time, he takes his phone.

He doesn't let go of Piers entirely. Rotom knows what he wants to type, and corrects it for him.

It soon floats over to show Piers what he wanted to say-- what he kept trying and failing to say, and what he wants to say now that he's calmer.

Piers nods after reading Rotom's note, but doesn't fully let go, either. He wants to stay, wipe Raihan's tears away, keep him company so he doesn't slip into a nightmare again -

...But that's not what Raihan needs. He might want Piers around, but he wants his dignity more. (Not that Piers would ever think less of him for this, or think him pitiful or pathetic, but he understands. He gets it.)

"You have nothin' to be sorry for." Piers says softly. "I mean it. You're the strongest person I know. That hasn't changed. I promise."

He does pull back, just a bit. Then, just to make sure this wasn't an issue of Raihan wanting him to stay but being too embarrassed to ask -

"I can go, if you want some privacy. But I'll stay if that'd help. Gladly."

His hands don't move. They give way with Piers's movement, but they don't let him go completely.

"..."

He closes his eyes, tightly. Tears had still been flowing quite steadily until then, but as soon as his lashes part back open, he isn't crying anymore.

He's not strong at all. Not when it's his own emotions. But if he's too weak in front of people, they're going to think he can't be strong for them. That they can't rely on him.

That's not an option.

... And now he has to consider if he'd seem less strong if he did ask him to stay. Even if he didn't talk at all-- not about what just happened, that is. Would asking him to stay be

... Piers probably... already thinks Raihan's weak, doesn't he? After all, he... he came here, and... ... Why does that feel a little bit... relieving? ... Must be because he's so tired. He'll... he'll fix it later. He'll try, at least. For now, though... he feels like if he isn't just a little bit selfish right now, he isn't going to be able to keep himself together for the rest of this awful, awful period.

He doesn't say anything. But he moves his arm, and he takes the glass of water still on his nightstand. It's still cold. Rotom flies off somewhere momentarily while he slowly takes a drink. He's hoping once he's finished, he can... speak again.

He's careful not to move too suddenly. It's obvious that this is hard enough for Raihan without Piers assuming what he wants or needs.

He doesn't press, either. Just sits quietly as Raihan drinks.

...

He wants to stay. He wants to be there for him. To take care of him. If it were his choice, that's what he'd take. But it isn't.

Piers doesn't know exactly what happened. Or what Raihan feels. But he knows, at least vaguely, what it's like to feel like he needs to hide it. And how that can override almost anything else.

He's silent, patiently waiting for Raihan to get his bearings before he tells him what he needs.

It's refreshing, and it clears his head a little. ... He's pretty thirsty, actually. He wonders why for a moment, but then he remembers he did just cry his damn eyes out. Shouldn't be surprising he's a tad dehydrated.

He... he's still having a bit of trouble. Come on, Raihan, get it together...

Rotom is back. ... Oh. It's possessing his Switch so it could carry it ov It smacks him right in the face with it.

"Geh!?"

... He has spilled water all over himself.

"... You're a little shit," he says, affectionately, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he gives the floating device a gentle bop on what he thinks is probably where Rotom's head should be--

... Oh. He's got his voice back.

... He's also... covered in water, but more importantly, he can talk.

"... S... sorry. Again." His hand travels upwards, rubs the back of his neck... and then Rotom sets its vessel down in his hand before popping out of it again, and after a moment's thought, Raihan speaks up again. "... Wanna play Snipperclips?"

With that offer comes the same friendly smile he's always got. The same tone, too. His eyes are still a little puffy and red, and there are still tears drying on his cheeks... and he's acting like nothing even happened.

If it weren't for the remaining evidence, if he'd had the chance to clean himself up a bit, no one would be able to tell anything was wrong. Not unless they knew him too well, or were too perceptive.

His will is strong enough to compensate, though, and he knows how to avoid giving a real answer without having to lie, either. Fake the vulnerability, only say as much as he needs to so he doesn't seem like he's trying too hard to cover up how he really feels, like he never feels less than good, because people wouldn't want to be helped by someone like that, but also make any problems sound like they aren't severe enough to warrant someone getting worried about him-- hopefully, at least.

you can still lean on me, see? i can pull myself together well quickly, so... even though i look pathetic right now, and even though i was pathetic earlier... i'm only weak when it's just myself.

"AAAah!"

He's not sure if this is the appropriate response, but he laughs.

He really can't help it. The water gets on him, too - not like it got on Raihan, but enough that it jolts the last remaining sleepiness out of him in one quick move. It's dissolved a lot of the tension, too.

Not that he was uncomfortable, but Raihan seems more at ease, now. That's what matters.

...

The thing is, Piers is that perceptive. (Music alone doesn't draw Team Yell to his side so loyally. It's charisma. It's empathy. It's being good with people.)

Raihan isn't okay. And this probably isn't the first time this happened. But the side of him he let Piers see a moment ago has been rescinded, and he respects that. If he feels safe, maybe-

...But he owes Piers none of this. So he lets it slip from his hands like sand.

"Snipperclips! Never played it, I'll probably be pretty bad..." He says with a smile. "Sure you could show me the ropes, though. Or wipe the floor with me. That might be more fun, actually. I'm pretty good at being a professional ego boost."

"... Pffhaha. Nah, man, it's a puzzle game, got co-op 2 player," he responds, then after a pause, grins mischievously. "Well, most of the time, it's cooperative."

Oh, he fully plans on attacking Piers the moment they clear the level. That's half the fun of Snipperclips: spamming the snip button until you clip so much off of the other player that they disappear, completely without warning at the end of every stage. Since Piers has never played it, he's not going to complain about always being the smaller-shaped (and thus disadvantaged for the battle) piece until it's far too late.

Yes, it's a little mean, and he doesn't deserve it, especially not after what happened mere moments ago.

... But come on, how can he resist? He usually loses the snip battle because he's so satisfied at the end of completing a puzzle he forgets that Leon's about to come at him like a fucking rabid weasel and literally tear him to shreds.

Raihan hops out of bed. First, let's pop the controllers off and stick the Switch in its little docket so they can play on the TV-- there we go. "'ere, pick what colour you want," he says, tossing the JoyCons in the general direction of the bed. They're a custom set, one controller being light blue and streaked with yellow and orange, and the other purple streaked with red and pink-- reminiscent of a sunrise and a sunset, respectively. Rotom flies towards the TV and disappears into the electronics again to get the console and game prepared for play.

A moment later, he also tosses a towel to Piers from the bathroom. Since he's already covered in water, it isn't much of a deal if he gets more water on himself, so he might as well wash his face again and make himself look less miserable.

Once he's done with that, he heads back out and walks to his dresser on the other side of the room. Wet clothes aren't very pleasant to sit around in, and he's soaked. So with very little thought about it, he pulls his shirt off. The motion flows in such a way he feels a bit of stiffness in his muscles, so he lets the action transition into a quick stretch, and the dragon tattooed on his back almost looks alive. The motion of his spine makes the dragon's body slither, the flex of his shoulderblades expands and collapses the wings; the artstyle isn't particularly realistic, but it doesn't have to be for it to look like an extension of his body.

He tosses his shirt in the laundry basket and starts rummaging around for a new one.

As Raihan gets up, Piers awkwardly looks around the room. It definitely wouldn't be weird to get settled on the bed, and it would actually probably be weird to dip down to the floor at this point, but it's not like Raihan actually invited him to sit there - then again, the bed is huge, and it's not like they didn't share a very close moment only a second before - then again, Raihan didn't ask -

...

Stop overthinking. Stop. Stop. Idiot.

So he turns, sitting up in Raihan's bed, facing the TV.

Yeah. That was definitely worth the stress.

Piers picks the purple controller, waving it a bit to get a feel for it. He's only ever played the wii. This feels nicer. "Heh. Got to get me one of these sometime. Didn't know they came in pink!"

The controller isn't even completely pink. Piers is just on edge.

...

Well.

Heh.

So, Piers notices the tattoo. It's gorgeous. It looks like it must've hurt like nothing else. It isn't surprising that he has it - but -

...Okay. He's going to call a spade a spade here. Raihan is hot. This is a secret to exactly zero people.

But Holy Shit, my guy. Holy shit.

Piers shakes his head. He's good at this, too. One moment of being completely floored by how attractive his friend is won't set him back too long. It happens.

“...That tattoo is sick." He says, hoping that the earnestness in his voice comes through as being genuinely interested in the artwork alone and not...well. The canvas it's painted into. "How uh...how long did that even take?"

"Oh, yeah, you can get 'em in all kinds of colours! Those ones're custom, though. I 'ave a few different pairs, sorta got into collectin' em. Or at least the ones that look particularly neat."

... Snrk. Yeah, he's got to wear this one.

He glances over his shoulder when Piers speaks up again, blinking twice.

"Oh, heh. Thanks," he smiles, running a hand over the back of his neck again. "Yeah, took a damn while. Not to mention I was 15, and... obviously, seein' as I don't have any others, my first tattoo. It's a tradition for us vault guardians to get one, though, so cool as it is--" He reaches behind himself and taps a finger near the tail of the dragon, where the tree branch blooms yellow, hanging above a field of purple flowers. "--that was the only part of the design I 'ad anything to do with."

Raihan tugs on the shirt he selected, and turns back ar--

Goku, lovingly embroidered over the right breast, stating "My Caprisun is MINE So eyes on your OWN WOMAN".

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd probably 'ave something similar even if it weren't part of the job. Definitely the wings, at least." He continues without commenting even a little bit on his choice of clothing, hopping up onto the bed and sitting cross-legged next to Piers. "But I'd like to get another, maybe somewhere a little more visible. ... And design the whole thing myself this time, too. Been thinkin' about what, though, and where. I got a few ideas, but... all the designs I've got in mind are pretty meaningful to me. Don't want to be haphazard about the placement, or the design, or in choosin' an artist."

Piers wonders if it would make him completely out of his mind to go ahead and get custom joycons and no switch. If he's going to be hanging out with Raihan more...

...That's assuming, again. Eh.

“Makes sense, mate. Don't think I could've handled somethin' like that at 15, though." He says. "Love to hear more about the vault sometime! Only know uh...well, what's made public. I know it's significant. And for a better reason than that fuck-ugly mural that used to stand in Stow-On-Side."

...Raihan is.

...

...He's really, really good at hiding. It's almost like what he saw didn't happen.

And Piers tells himself he's more than ready to move on with him. He's done it with Marnie before. And with himself, more often. But there is something in the room that hangs over them like a heavy fog. He keeps breathing it. Raihan isn't okay. Raihan isn't okay.

Shut up.

Let him wait until he's ready.

...

But...he won't be. Probably. Piers knows this.

Because Piers never was. And that's something he's only distantly, detachedly aware of. Like seeing someone in a dream, with a different face, and knowing them anyway. Seeing his own pain but feeling none of it. By choice.

By choice. Not for himself. For other people.

Shut up.

Two instincts are fighting tooth and claw inside of him. Both equally fed, both equally violent. Let him be, the time isn't now, and the person isn't you and please, please, please let me take care of you.

"Ay, I can give you the number of the girl who did mine." Piers says despite himself. "She might know a few other artists, even if that's not the style you're goin' for. I'm sure anythin' would look good on you, though. Especially that shirt."

The physical pain of the tattoo was little compared to how it felt when his sister was taken from him.

He chooses not to respond to the first remark.

"I'd love to!" ... pff. "If we were housing a slab of pavement with a child's chalk drawing on it that they drew in 1993 and treating it like it's actually got incredibly important historical value, I'd be destroying the vault, not guarding it."

Raihan isn't okay, but he doesn't need to be okay to convince someone he is-- or at least convince them to leave it be. Ignore the Donphan in the room until it gives up and leaves. It just takes patience. He has plenty.

"That'd be wicked," he grins. "Thanks, mate. ... You just put an idea in my 'ead about getting a tattoo of Goku and his Capri Sun."

The vault is locked shut.

#﹙IC.﹚#﹙DISCORD LOGS.﹚#obstatune #﹙182.﹚#very VERY long post under the cut

1 note · View note

gimmesumsuga · 6 years

Text

Sweeter than Sweet (61)

Pairings: Jimin x reader, Yoongi x reader, Jimin x Yoongi, Namjoon x reader, Taehyung x reader + others as the story progresses

Warnings: Nil of note

Word count: 4.2K

Previous / Next

Gif not mine - please contact me should this belong to you so I can properly credit

Fingers and lips are the tools by which you're lured from the sweet embrace of sleep; running through your hair and brushing against your neck. You were dreaming before you started to wake, you're sure of it, but you have no recollection of its theme or happenings now that you begin to stir. It was a happy one, though; that's something you're certain of regardless of knowing where you were or whom you were with. You can remember the warmth you'd felt and the sense of safety that'd come with it, and it’s with a certain sleepy reluctance that you open up your eyes, greeted by the sight of Jimin’s plain white walls.

Exhaling softly, you allow them to close for just a moment more.

“Did you have to wake me up?” you groggily moan, turning your head to rub your face into the pillow. It’s refreshing against your skin, like a cool caressing breeze, and Jimin’s scent lingers there amongst the fibres even though he’s nowhere to be seen on his side of the bed. His absence isn’t unusual; he frequently rises before you and Yoongi, making it back to bed just in time for you to wake, freshly showered and full of energy after his daily workout.

Yoongi had simply glowered the first time Jimin had tried to wake him to come along, and the younger vampire had soon gotten the message that his elder was not in the least bit interested in joining him in his strive for physical perfection.

Waking up between your lovers has very quickly become your favourite time of day, so perhaps you shouldn’t begrudge Yoongi for coaxing you back to the land of the living as gently as he is. Who wouldn’t love being pressed between two equally gorgeous men, both of whom are just as eager to kiss and touch you as the other?

“I was having such a nice dream,” you sigh, rolling over under the covers and seeking out his lips with your eyes still closed, shuffling your body closer. You note how hesitant his answering kiss is when your mouths first meet but think nothing much of it, too busy enjoying the petal softness of his lips as they begin to respond to the ministrations of yours to fixate on whether you might be putting him off with a particularly nasty case of morning breath.

His arm settles over your waist, the sheets rustling pleasantly as he draws you closer to him, only the bed sheets to separate the two of you. You’re surprised that he’s already up and dressed so early on in the night; it’s usually you who’s having to entice Yoongi to awake rather than the other way around. Still, you have a feeling he might not be wearing his clothes for long - not if the way he’s rolling his pelvis against yours is anything to go by, or the tongue that’s delving hungrily into your mouth.

“Are you always this excitable first thing of the morning, little one?”

Your eyes snap open at the sound of Namjoon’s silky smooth voice, your heart halting in your chest as you try and fail to jerk yourself backwards and away from him. He’s holding you too tightly - too possessively - and as he takes in the alarm on your face an amused smile spreads across his, dimpling each of Namjoon’s cheeks.

“You can’t keep doing this, Namjoon,” you huff after a moment’s worth of pointless, half-hearted struggle, falling still but crossing your arms across your chest in an attempt to put a physical barrier between the two of you.

“Doing what?” he grins, fingers rubbing circles in the small of your back above the sheets. God, you wish you weren’t naked underneath; it’s hard enough not to feel vulnerable whenever Namjoon’s more predatory persona makes an appearance, nevermind when you’re completely exposed.

“Sneaking up on me, catching me unawares like this.” You look between each of his eyes, the brown of his irises so dark they’re almost black and so deep that they threaten to swallow you whole. “It’s not fair,” you add quietly, voice wavering, and when Namjoon hears the way you falter his expression softens slightly, the smirk on his face melting away.

A second or two passes in which you’re all too aware of the restless beating of your heart where it's thudding lying beneath your palm.

“You’re right,” he agrees, leaning back slightly and allowing you space to breathe, though the shock you feel at Namjoon willingly admitting he’s wrong makes it difficult to do so. “The next time we kiss, it'll be you who comes to me.”

“Next time? You might be waiting a while,” you laugh, relaxing slightly. Namjoon may still be touching you - his large hand gliding slowly up and down the curve of your spine - but now that you know he no longer intends to take it any further it just feels… nice. Comforting, almost.

Namjoon doesn��t react as you’d necessarily thought he would to your rebuffal. He simply smiles and rubs a little more firmly at the small of your back, shifting his head where it lays atop of Yoongi’s pillow.

“It’ll happen, little one,” he says casually, exhaling a sigh as he gets comfortable, “I have no doubt.” Namjoon tucks his free hand behind his head and rolls onto his back, his body no longer touching to yours as he crosses one ankle over the other. He hasn’t even removed his shoes before lying himself on top of the sheets, so little respect does he have for bed the three of your share.

You wish you could ignore the instant longing you feel for his touch from the moment it’s removed, and you wish that Namjoon didn’t look so absolutely certain of himself as well. It’s like he already knows something you don’t, something that fills him with the confidence he so effortlessly exudes as he lies there looking at you. Perhaps he’s able to read the internal struggle you go through whenever you’re in his presence better than you’d thought, or maybe it’s because you succumb to his temptation almost every single time you're tested. Hell, you’d probably be confident too if you were him.

“A little bird tells me that Yoongi’s taken to sleeping elsewhere this past week,” Namjoon comments after a minute or so of silence, gauging your reaction as the words leave his mouth. No point in beating around the bush; everyone else in the house knows about the three of you.

They’d found out the very day after it’ll all happened, actually, when you, Jimin and Yoongi had joined the others in Taehyung’s room to play an online game that’d required far more coordination than you were capable of. No one had batted an eyelid when you’d sat on Jimin’s lap following your first turn, but they’d certainly noticed when you’d curled up on Yoongi after the second. You wish you could’ve taken a picture of Jungkook’s face - it certainly would’ve been one worth keeping hold of. His mouth had gaped slightly, wide open eyes looking to Jimin to gauge his reaction and then mouthing an extended ‘oh’ when the younger boy had walked over and kissed you right then and there whilst you were cradled in the other boys' arms.

Taehyung hadn’t been all that shocked, really, and observed it all with nothing more than a smile. Hobi, of course, had already been well aware of what was going on, so there were no surprises there, either, though he did let out a mock gasp just to join in, much to Yoongi’s chagrin. Jin’s reaction was somewhere between the Jungkook’s and Taehyung’s - not quite shock but a little more than surprise. His eyebrows had lifted as he’d watched you, his confusion plain for all to see, but he’d also smiled when he’d seen the unrestrained happiness written across Yoongi’s face after you’d kissed him.

No one had actually said anything - it didn’t really require words to be understood, given your past history with the others - and mercifully, they hadn’t yet decided to tease you about it much either. Yet.

You realise Namjoon is still waiting for a reply, watching patiently whilst one long-fingered hand taps rhythmically against his firm chest.

“He’s been staying here. With Jimin and me,” you answer calmly, distracting yourself from Namjoon’s piercing eyes by adjusting the lay of the sheets across your chest, pulling them higher to obscure even the slightest hint of cleavage.

“I gathered,” Namjoon laughs, and when you look back at him you find him staring at the ceiling, a thoughtful look upon his face. “I have to admit, even I didn’t quite see that coming. Yoongi, yes, but Jimin? That caught me by surprise.” You stare at him, caught off guard by how much it sounds as though he knows.

Despite the physical contact between the two of them - which has been increasing in frequency as time has gone on - it’s been very much a private affair. The only time they’ve exchanged touches, whether it be kisses or something more, has been during your presence only, the two of them staying very much apart when in front of the rest of the group. Maybe Namjoon has just presumed, and rightly so.

“Speaking of; where are they?” Namjoon lets his head flop to the side, the longer part of his fringe falling across his eyes and he smirks at you.

“Occupied enough that you needn’t worry about us being disturbed.” You roll your eyes, tightening the folded arms across your chest.

“That’s not why I’m asking.”

“Of course.” One of Namjoon’s eyes presses into a wink whilst the hand that was rested on his chest slips itself between your face and the pillow, his thumb brushing softly against your cheek. His touch makes you shiver, your eyes pressing closed as you try to calm the frantic beating of your heart. “I like watching you sleep,” he mumbles quietly after a short but poignant pause, “You look so peaceful… so serene. I can’t remember the last time I slept as soundly as you seem to.” Your cheeks flush with heat in response to Namjoon’s quiet utterings and the fascination with which he seems to regard you.

How can he flit so recklessly back and forth between these two sides of him? How are you ever supposed to keep up or know where you stand when he is so ever-changing?

“Do you often make a habit of watching me?” you joke feebly, a little breathless as he continues to caress your face.

“I would,” he replies without falter, smiling cutely as your blush deepens further, not a trace of the monster he proclaims to be in sight. Not right now, anyway.

You’re not sure what to say after that. You allow him to continue his innocent touches for a time, even going so far as to close your eyes to better enjoy the feel of his fingers on your skin.

“I was thinking,” you murmur sleepily, and Namjoon ‘hmm’s’ to show he’s listening, “They’re looking for new staff at one of the bars in town. Maybe I could start working again?” You peel back your eyelids, eyes meeting Namjoon’s only a foot or so away. He’s rolled onto his side again now, and as he tucks his arm against his chest you get a waft of his aftershave; strong and heady. “You know… contribute a little. Make myself useful.”

“You needn’t worry about anything like that, little one. I’ll always provide anything you might need.” You give him a withering look and Namjoon chuckles, briefly closing his eyes. “It’s a matter of pride then, is it?” When you nod his expression turns thoughtful, his eyebrows bending in a way you find oddly attractive. He moistens his lips before continuing to speak, his hand underneath your cheek falling still. “You’d need to be careful - and I’d insist on one of us dropping you off and collecting you at the end of each shift.”

“I’m more than capable of catching a taxi, you know.”

“It’s my job to keep this family safe,” he explains patiently, “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

Family? Namjoon considers you as… family? God, how things have changed from that first real conversation you and he ever had ever shared as little more than strangers. A pet - that’s all he’d said you’d ever be - and look where you are now, lay in bed together, your faces almost touching as he begins to stroke your cheek once again, softly laughing at the surprised look you’ve failed to hide.

You’ve been left rather speechless by this new and unexpected revelation, and your mouth falls open long before your brain has a chance to kick back into gear and structure a reply.

“I guess I can live with that,” you say finally, glancing away from the warmth in his eyes. It’s too hard to look at, too unfamiliar. It stirs too much.

“You guess?” he amusedly chortles, “Not in the mood to fight me today?” You smile despite the nervous tension in your chest, risking a look back up at him.

“You like it too much when I do.” Namjoon’s smile only grows wider at your gentle teasing, the deep dimples in his cheeks providing the most tempting of targets for you to poke your fingertip into. It’s a close call, but you manage to resist the urge to do so.

“I’ve always enjoyed a challenge.”

There’s a weight to the air that surrounds the two of you as you lie there looking at one other in the seconds that follow. It’s like you’re caught in your own little bubble which is slowly shrinking, compressing, trying to bring you closer together by some invisible force. It’s difficult when he’s looking at you the way he is - when his eyes hovering on your lips as they are - but somehow you succeed in withstanding Namjoon’s inexplicably strong pull with merely a smile, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of his earlier prediction turning out to be true so quickly after it’s been said.

Beaten, Namjoon sits himself up on the bed, straightening out his shirt, and it’s only then that you realise Nova was lying against his other side the whole time, previously hidden from your view.

“I’ll let you get up,” he says as he gently misplaces her to the end of the bed and then climbs off himself, giving her a final parting stroke of the head which she nuzzles into.

“Ok. Sure.” You sit up as well, drawing the sheets tight around your figure to ensure nothing shows and patting the back of your hair. You must look a mess but Namjoon seems to disagree, his eyes drifting over your body hungrily. For a second you think he might change his mind and try to stay - attempt to seduce you now like he’s tried to do so many times before - but then he drops his eyes to the floor and rubs the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and when he looks back up some of that heat and want you’d seen is suddenly gone, repressed deep down.

“See you soon.” You’re sure you hear some sort of underlying promise in his words, sure that you see the corner of his mouth lift into a smirk just before he turns his back and leaves the room.

You hadn’t realised how tense you’d been until Namjoon’s departure. As soon as the door closes behind him your posture seems to wilt, released from the imaginary strings that’d kept your body feeling so tight. It’s odd that you’d still respond that way physically when mentally you’re far more at ease with Namjoon than you used to be; no longer frightened of him, per se, just aware of his physical presence more so than others. He has a strong aura, so it makes that you might respond to that on some baser level. It’s instinct; predator and prey.

You shower and dress fairly quickly, intent on finding Jimin and Yoongi wherever they may be hiding. Presumably, Namjoon would’ve told you if he’d sent them both out on assignment, so they must be around somewhere.

Jin’s sat at the kitchen table when you peek inside on your way through the hallway, frowning hard at his laptop as he distractedly tells you he’d last seen them heading towards Yoongi’s room. You don’t stop to ask what seems to have upset him; you get the feeling Jin wouldn’t have told you right now anyway, far too occupied in briskly typing away at the keys. Whatever it is, you hope everything’s ok.

Yoongi and Jimin aren’t in the older boy’s room when you peek in there, either, but you continue down the corridor regardless knowing that Jin wouldn’t feed you misinformation no matter how preoccupied he may be.

Lo and behold, as soon as you push open the doors to the gym the sound of music meets your ears, originating from the studio at the back. You can just about hear the sounds of voices, too, over the almost excessively loud volume, and they’re voices you know well. You push the door open just a crack, just enough to spy through, curious to see what the two of them get up to when you’re not around, and you can’t say you’re disappointed by what you find.

Yoongi’s sat against the mirrored wall to your left, his laptop resting atop of his crossed legs, and it’s that from which the music originates, blaring out through an attached portable speaker. It’s not a tune you recognise - not from ‘popular music’ anyway - but there’s something identifiably ‘Yoongi’ about it. You don’t know how to describe how or why, but somehow you just know it’s his. He’s nodding his head along to the beat, his eyes fixed on Jimin’s form as the younger boy dances in front of the mirrors. The style of his movement is different today, less fluid than when you’ve seen him dance before; rigid and jarring, his joints locking in place as he moves in time to the music.

“Can’t believe you still remember this choreo,” you hear Yoongi tease and you catch a flash of Jimin’s smile in his reflection.

“I can, with the number of times hyung made me practice it,” Jimin replies, slightly out of breath as he springs back up from where he’d dropped knees to slide diagonally across the floor. You can barely keep up with his footwork as his ankles twist this way and that, his arms performing similarly complex motions at the very same time. “Good, right?” he adds with a cocky smile and Yoongi scoffs, shaking his head but smiling back all the same.

Suddenly, with the press of a button, the tempo of the music begins to increase. It speeds up and up and up with every subsequent push, and the faster it gets the more Jimin laughs as he tries to keep up and nail every move. He’s actually doing a pretty good job of it for a while until he finally gets himself all twisted up, almost falling down in a twisted tangle of feet but just about managing to save himself before his ass hits the floor.

Yoongi’s in hysterics; no shame in laughing as hard as he can at the other boy as he rights himself back to standing and runs a hand through his hair.

“Struggling to keep up, baby J?” Baby J? What the hell kind of name is that? Some sort of bizarro stage name they came up with whilst they were playing make-believe idols? Jeez, and you’d thought Suga was bad.

You see Jimin fix Yoongi with a look in the mirror, and it’s both stern and seductive enough to bring Yoongi’s laughter to a sputtering stop. The younger boy slinks over to his elder and Yoongi swallows on his approach, leaning backwards slightly whilst Jimin squats down and shifts the laptop off of his lap, the music coming to a complete and abrupt stop.

“I think I’ve outgrown that name a little now, don’t you?” Jimin asks softly, looking straight into Yoongi’s eyes.

You don’t hear Yoongi’s reply, so quietly does he utter it. All you see is Jimin tip forward to place a palm on the wall either side of Yoongi’s head, trapping him there as he climbs astride the older male’s lap, pinning him in place with a smile. Yoongi hardly seems to mind; his hands soon straying from where they’d landed on Jimin’s hips to crawl up under the hem of his shirt as the younger moves in for a kiss so deep that it looks as though he might try to swallow Yoongi whole.

It’d be tempting just to hang back and see how far this might go if it weren’t for how much you wish you were in between the both of them.

“So this is what you get up to when I’m not around, huh?” you call to grab their attention as you enter the room, a wide smile upon your face. Despite not having anticipated your arrival Jimin and Yoongi are in no hurry to break apart when they hear you voice, drawing their kisses to a close with such a slow pace that it almost seems indulgent.

“Good morning, kitten,” Jimin greets once he’s finally relinquished Yoongi’s lips with a wet ‘pop’, licking his lips as he turns his head away. “Sleep well?” You walk over to the both of them and sink to your knees next to Yoongi with a nod before kissing them both in turn; Yoongi first and Jimin second. They taste like each other - Yoongi’s lips still shining with the remnants of Jimin’s saliva.

“Too well, apparently. You should’ve woken me up.”

“It was bad enough that he got me, ” Yoongi grumbles, though the look on his face is more affectionate than grumpy as he flicks his eyes in Jimin’s direction. The younger boy is still sat on top of him, carding his hands through Yoongi’s hair to push it back from his forehead over and over again. “Thought we’d spare you the trauma.”

“Very kind,” you reply sarcastically, placing a hand on Jimin’s thigh and squeezing at the firmly flexed muscle you can feel beneath his sweatpants. He’s always so ripped after he’s been working out or dancing, and it reduces you to a molten puddle of raging hormones whenever you see or feel it. “I would’ve liked to come to watch, though. It’s been too long since I saw you dance.”

Jimin’s just opening his mouth to reply when Hobi suddenly comes hurtling into the room making some strange zoomy sound effects to accompany his arrival, and though his eyes may immediately fall on the two boys’ intimate embrace his expression barely seems to register it as anything unusual, skimming over them to look at you with an exaggerated sigh.

“Don’t you ever check your phone?” he asks exasperatedly, and out of the corner of your eye you see Jimin slide off of Yoongi’s lap to sit beside him instead - though his hand still lingers on the other boy's knee.

“Not often, no,” you admit with a confused look, “Why?”

“Sam’s been trying to get hold of you - she wants numbers for how many of us are going out on Saturday night,” he explains, sighing again when you look blankly, “For her birthday, remember? You’re all coming, right?”

Crap, how the hell did you manage to forget that? Admittedly, there's been a lot that's happened since she last mentioned it, but even that is hardly a good excuse to almost forget your best friend's birthday.

You look to Jimin and Yoongi, and whilst Jimin looks pretty open to the idea, shrugging and nodding his head, Yoongi is rubbing his neck and looking back at you unsurely.

“You fancy it?” you ask, directing the question to Yoongi rather than Jimin and trying to keep your tone soft in an attempt to let him know it’s by no means an obligation that he has to. You know it’d be a big thing for him. It’s a lot to ask for him to be in such a crowded place for such a length of time, but a big part of you still hopes he’ll say yes. It wouldn’t feel right without him there if all the rest of the group is. “We don’t have to stay all night.”

“We’ll be right there, hyung,” Jimin adds quietly, placing a gentle kiss against Yoongi’s cheek and squeezing his knee regardless of Hobi’s presence, and that, along with your pleading eyes, seems to make up Yoongi’s mind.

He sighs, removing his hand from his neck and looking past your shoulder up to Hobi with a resigned expression.

“Sure,” he agrees, and Hobi jumps up into the air with a loud ‘woop!’ in celebration, dancing as soon as his feet return to the floor, swaying his arms and rocking his hips from side to side, much to Jimin’s amusement. Yoongi gives you a look that you’re fairly certain translates as ‘what the hell are you getting me into?’ and then shakes his head with a reluctant smile. “How bad could it be?”

743 notes · View notes

ricardolalama-blog1 · 5 years

Text

The Importance Of Paterson Chiropractic Care For Car Accident Victims

Originally posted on https://drricardolalama.com/the-importance-of-paterson-chiropractic-care-for-car-accident-victims/

Chiropractic is a health care profession where its practitioners, who are called Chiropractors or Chiropractic Physicians, focus on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system and the effects these disorders have on one’s general well being. Paterson Chiropractic Care is a Chiropractic service provided for the community of Paterson, New Jersey and is used most often to help in the treatment of neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but definitely not limited to neck pain, lower back pain, sciatica and headaches, especially after a car accident.

Why Car Accident Victims in Paterson, NJ Should Get Paterson Chiropractic Care

One of the main reasons why car accident victims seek the services of a chiropractor is because they are in pain. Most of the times, the pain is caused by the nature of their injury, whether minor or grave. The other reason why someone would want to see a chiropractor is to get help with managing their posture. Most of the time, a bad posture effects the spine and it may cause pain sooner or later. In both scenarios, a chiropractor will help the patient to reduce the pain they are suffering from. The chiropractor may also suggest ways of ensuring that the patient gets enough exercise to remedy their pain and retain the functionality of the affected area.

How to Select a Good Chiropractor

When looking for a good Paterson chiropractor to help you get your health back, patients should take several important things into consideration. It is one thing to use chiropractic treatment to alleviate pain, and another to go to an unqualified chiropractor who will cause you more pain and stress. One of the misconceptions which most patients have is that since chiropractic is an alternative medical practice, or complementary medicine, the practitioners need not be certified. This is a common misconception that has cost people both money and health risks. For starters, you should consider doing a background check on your chiropractor before you engage their services. One of the ways of ensuring that you get the best Paterson chiropractor is by asking for recommendations from your doctor or healthcare provider. Chances are that they might know someone who will be suitable for the job. If your doctor cannot recommend a good chiropractor, you should consider using recommendations by friends or family members who have used one before.

Nowadays, with the internet being a part of our daily lives, it is easy to verify information regarding your chiropractor simply by the click of a button. When verifying chiropractic services online, make sure that you go through reviews of previous patients to make sure that the chiropractor is reliable. It is also important to check their official website and browse their services to see whether they will be beneficial to your unique needs. An online search is also important as it can give you more information on the educational background, clinical experience and qualifications of your chiropractor. Always counter check the chiropractor’s details with those of accredited councils and associations.

For instance, you should check whether the college they attended for their chiropractic training is accredited and approved by the Council on Chiropractic Education. Once you narrow down your search, you must organize a meeting with your prospective chiropractor. This is not only necessary to verify their existence, but also an opportunity for you to gauge their qualifications and service provision. Since the treatment you will undergo is a physical one, you may also want to assess the kind of rapport you may have with your doctor, as well as the compatibility of their style of spinal adjustments. Some people feel comfortable being worked on by a chiropractor of the same gender or of the opposite gender. If this is a preference for you, make sure that you communicate it to your potential chiropractor when you meet them in person.

Another thing to look out for during your initial meeting is whether the chiropractic office is comfortable. Some people wouldn’t mind having their treatment done at the chiropractor’s office in an open-room setting, while other people would prefer a more private treatment area such as curtains that separate treatment tables or a private room to themselves. If this is an option, it is important to discuss it with your chiropractor beforehand.

Another important thing to consider when choosing a chiropractor is their payment options. This is important because it will give you a feel of what to expect and the kind of budget to work with. While shopping around, you may even decide to settle on a chiropractor who is affordable. There is a misconception that the more expensive the chiropractor, the better their services. This may not necessarily be true. However, a very cheap chiropractor should raise red flags for you.

After verifying the qualifications and certifications of your prospective chiropractor, you should consider how they make you feel. A chiropractic treatment plan may be for a temporary period or for the long-term. When choosing a chiropractor, you should therefore consider whether you are comfortable working with them for a long time to come. Questions which you should ask yourself include whether they are friendly, courteous, helpful and available to answer your questions regarding your treatment plan. It is always advisable that you follow your gut instinct when choosing a professional to work with. If something does not feel right, you have the option of choosing someone else.

A final tip is to choose a chiropractor or chiropractic clinic that is near you. If you reside in Paterson, New Jersey, or its surrounding cities like Clifton and Passaic, for instance, you could narrow down your search to a chiropractic service provider close to you. Depending on the kind of pain you suffer from and the frequency of your treatment, choosing a professional who is closer to you would be convenient and less stressful for you. The closer the clinic, the easier for you to liaise with your chiropractor on time and locations for your diagnosis and treatment. It will not only save you time spent on the road, but also money.

About Paterson Chiropractic Care Health Provider Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC

If you reside in Paterson, New Jersey, or its surrounding cities like Clifton and Passaic, and you are looking for a qualified and experienced chiropractor, you are in luck. One of the best chiropractors in the area is Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC. Dr. Lalama’s area of specialization is general chiropractic. With over 18 years of experience as a practitioner, he is definitely your best bet. Not only is he a qualified chiropractor but he is also licensed by the state of New Jersey to practice chiropractic medicine. One of the reasons why people prefer Dr. Lalama’s services is that he is highly qualified and professional. The clinic he is associated with, MPower Chiropractic Wellness Center, which is located in Paterson, New Jersey, is easily accessible by anyone within the state. Dr. Lalama is also known for his personalized treatment plans. Just like any other professional, he designs a treatment plan that addresses the unique needs of his patients.

Treating Car Accident Injuries in Paterson, Clifton And Passaic, New Jersey

According to statistics, most spinal injuries are caused by accidents, especially car accidents. New Jersey is one of the states that have recorded a high number of car accidents in the recent past. It is no wonder that the team at Dr. Ricardo Lalama’s associated chiropractic practice mainly deals with such cases. Being a car accident victim or any other form of personal injury can be devastating for most people. Depending on the nature of the patient’s injury, they may end up with minor injuries or more serious ones. Seeking medical attention is important even if you do not consider your injuries that serious. Only a doctor can certify whether you are clear of any risk or internal bleeding.

The services of a chiropractor come in handy after an injury. Dr. Lalama has dealt with issues ranging from minor joint pain to back pain and soft tissue injury. He has also helped clients suffering from whiplash as well as issues of imbalance and poor posture as a result of injuries sustained after a car accident.

Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC’s Free Auto Accident Report

Before the team of experts at MPower Chiropractic Wellness Center diagnoses a patient who was involved in a car accident, the patient will be asked to fill out an auto accident intake form. This form is crucial because it helps the experts understand the nature of the injuries suffered by the patient. Usually, patients do not provide full details of their auto accident after it happens. The auto accident intake form asks detailed questions to help resolve as much of this problem.

Dr. Lalama has also come up with a comprehensive car accident report which you can get by clicking on the image above on the ‘Send Me The FREE Auto Accident Report’ section and submitting some of your detailed information like your name, email address and phone number. The report details some of the car accident injuries suffered by victims, and how these can be treated. This report is helpful for those victims who may not know how to act or what to immediately do after an auto accident. With this knowledge, some of the complications suffered by victims after a car accident can be dealt with before they get serious.

Watch this video below to find out how you, or anyone you know that has recently been involved in a car accident, can get your hands on Dr. Ricardo Lalama’s FREE Auto Accident Report. In the report, you’ll Discover The SHOCKING TRUTH About Car Accident Injuries And What You Must Know If You’ve Been In An Auto Accident! Just note that your future self will thank you for it 🙂

Click Here To Get Your FREE Car Accident Report!

What to Expect from Dr. Ricardo Lalama’s Paterson Chiropractic Care

When you book an appointment with Dr. Lalama for the first time, the team will arrange for your first consultation. The consultation is usually designed to get as much information about your injuries as possible. The initial consultation will also involve obtaining the patient’s case history. The doctor will ask you questions relating to your diet, family, past treatment plans you have been on, as well as the type of medication you have been taking. The consultation will usually be followed by a physical examination of the patient. In order to carry out the physical exam, the doctor may make use of a variety of techniques. One of them is the static and motion palpation method. The technique is normally used to determine whether the spinal segments are restricted or hypo-mobile. Apart from this method, the team may also use other diagnostic techniques, if necessary, such as an x-ray to check whether the positioning of your vertebrae is altered.

Chiropractor in Paterson, NJ Treatment Options

Here at MPower Chiropractic Wellness Center, the doctors have diagnosed a wide range of neuromuscular issues, ranging from lower back pain to neck pain. After reaching the proper diagnosis, a Doctor of Chiropractic will discuss it with you and help you come up with a treatment plan that will effectively deal with the pain. The treatment plan may involve frequent in-office adjustments and/or passive treatments that you can perform at the comfort of your own home.

An adjustment or manipulation usually involves a high velocity thrust exerted to a specific part of the spine. This pressure may end up creating an audible sound, signifying the release of gases in your spinal joints. Some patients will experience a cracking sound, but this may not usually be the case. In order to release the cracking sound, otherwise known as joint cavitation, the chiropractor should ensure that the patient relaxes. They can do that by applying ice pack on the spot, or through electrical stimulation. A bit of soft tissue massage and/or trigger point therapy on the area may also enable the patient to relax before the chiropractor can attempt another thrust to release the vertebrae. The frequency and number of adjustments recommended for any patient usually varies depending on the healing time and the nature of the injury.

youtube

#paterson chiropractor #paterson chiropractic #chiropractor in paterson nj #chiropractic services #chiropractic #passaic chiropractor #passaic chiropractic

1 note · View note

drricardolalama1 · 6 years

Text

The Importance of Paterson Chiropractic Care for Car Accident Victims.

Why Car Accident Victims in Paterson, NJ Should Get Paterson Chiropractic Care

One of the main reasons why car accident victims seek the services of a chiropractor is because they are in pain. Most of the times, the pain

Immediately Visit Dr Ricardo Lalama, DC A Paterson Chiropractor for Neck Pain Due To Auto Accidents

is caused by the nature of their injury, whether minor or grave. The other reason why someone would want to see a chiropractor is to get help with managing their posture. Most of the time, a bad posture effects the spine and it may cause pain sooner or later. In both scenarios, a chiropractor will help the patient to reduce the pain they are suffering from. The chiropractor may also suggest ways of ensuring that the patient gets enough exercise to remedy their pain and retain the functionality of the affected area.

How to Select a Good Chiropractor

About Paterson Chiropractic Care Health Provider Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC

If you reside in Paterson, New Jersey, or its surrounding cities like Clifton and Passaic, and you are looking for a qualified and experienced

Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC

chiropractor, you are in luck. One of the best chiropractors in the area is Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC. Dr. Lalama’s area of specialization is

general chiropractic. With over 18 years of experience as a practitioner, he is definitely your best bet. Not only is he a qualified chiropractor but he is also licensed by the state of New

Jersey to practice chiropractic medicine. One of the reasons why people prefer Dr. Lalama’s services is that he is highly qualified and professional. The clinic he is associated with, MPower Chiropractic Wellness Center, which is located in Paterson, New Jersey, is easily accessible by anyone within the state. Dr. Lalama is also known for his personalized treatment plans. Just like any other professional, he designs a treatment plan that addresses the unique needs of his patients.

Treating Car Accident Injuries in Paterson, Clifton And Passaic, New Jersey

Dr. Ricardo Lalama, DC’s Free Auto Accident Report

Dr. Lalama has also come up with a comprehensive car accident report which you can get by clicking on the image above on the ‘Send Me The FREE Auto Accident Report’ section and submitting some of your detailed information like your name and email address. The report details some of the car accident injuries suffered by victims, and how these can be treated. This report is helpful for those victims who may not know how to act or what to immediately do after an auto accident. With this knowledge, some of the complications suffered by victims after a car accident can be dealt with before they get serious.

youtube

Click Here To Get Your FREE Car Accident Report!

What to Expect from Dr. Ricardo Lalama’s Paterson Chiropractic Care

Chiropractor in Paterson, NJ Treatment Options

Contact Us Today! If you or anyone you know are a car accident victim and you are looking for ways to restore your body’s functionality, Dr. Ricardo Lalama will be more than ready to help you. The clinic is located at 680 Broadway Suite 511, Paterson, New Jersey 07514 (Located Inside Barnert Medical Arts Complex). You can also call and book your appointment at 862-571-1792.. If you have any questions feel free to visit or call the team. We look forward to helping you heal!

source https://drricardolalama.com/the-importance-of-paterson-chiropractic-care-for-car-accident-victims/

1 note · View note

shoottomiss · 6 years

Text

Kim Possible Respect

Because I’ve been on a bit of a Kim Possible stint recently, I wanted to compile a post of things that the “girl who can do anything” has done, and why she may very well be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, cartoon heroines of all time. Much of this is taken from a respect thread from Skullanders on ComicVine, so thanks to him.

Like, disregarding cartoon physics or logic. We’re just here to appreciate how cool she is. Ready? It’s a bit long, but most of the feats have a gif or clip linked within them. We good? Okay, let’s go!

Intelligence: May not be as smart as her parents or brothers, but still quite intelligent.

-Aced an algebra test after cramming all studying on a dangerous riverboat ride in the Congo

-Flew a spacecraft back to earth after seeing a monkey astronaut do it once

-Got like 90% of the country’s college invitation letters coming up on graduation

Strength: Someone been eating their wheaties.

-Strong enough to lift large mooks over her body and throw them great distances and take on syntho-drones and muscle enhanced henchman head-to-head, sending them flying with a kick or a punch, or taking on a multitude no sweat

-Kicked a metal door straight out of its secure socket

-Threw a human ninja high enough to reach Dr. Drakken’s hovercraft

Skill: She is, the most interesting young woman in the world.

-Accurate enough to hit a railroad track changer with a rock and then proceed to kick it back in order to avoid being run over by a train.

-Able to hit a gravitation ray with a number plate accurately enough to redirect it.

-Knows 16 styles of Kung Fu (couldn’t find a clip or gif of that being said, but it is quoted in the episode Hidden Talent), and also apparently wrestled a shark (according to Ron in the episode Crush)

--Here she is doing Mantis style, which she claimed only to “dabble in”

-Has held her own against Monkey Fist often, who knows Tai Shing Pek Kwar

--again

-Practically fights Shego, a superhuman, to standstills or better on a daily basis. Bear in mind that Shego fires energy blasts and can tear through concrete like a hot knife through butter.

-Were the last two not enough? Well, now she fights both of them at the same time.

-Able to fight off Team Impossible, an world-renowned team that does dangerous missions like Kim does for a living.

-Actually pretty good at sword-fighting.

Speed and Agility: Come on, step it up.

-Has applied her cheerleading skills to her fighting and maneuverability, only increasing her skill in those areas.

-Her first mission ever, she had to navigate through a lethal laser field. Did she do it? IF SHE DIDN’T DO IT, I WOULDN’T BE SITTIN’ HERE DISCUSSIN’ IT WIT YA NOW WOOD AYE?!

-Dodges frikkin consecutive laser fire on many of her missions

--Like seriously, she does not give a damn about your lasers. She’ll have a convo on her kimmunicator, that’s how much she doesn’t care.

-Add to the list: exploding golfballs, Shego’s energy blasts (multiple from Shego clones), and incredibly fast mechanical arms.

-Ran from stampeding rhinos before flipping back onto them. These are obviously white rhinos, which can run at 31 mph.

Durability: Ouch. Yeouch. Gnuershk. Wait... forget that last one.

-Blasted away by an exploding golf ball, and was A-OK.

-...I don’t... I don’t even know how to describe this. She has great resilience though, I’ll tell ya.

-Flies into a steel beam while grappling, but is up fighting later like it never even happened.

-Knocked out when fighting Ron in a controlled Battle Suit, but considering it took the Battle Suit, a strength and speed enhancing garment (which we’ll get into more in a sec) to do that, as well as the fact that she was keeping up with him earlier (and probably worried about injuring Ron), it’s still impressive in that regard.

The Battle Suit: Gotta say, she pulls off the 80′s Tron look.

-Can project forcefields (strong enough to block attacks by a ultra strong alien named Warmonga), make a lacrosse-like cup to catch and redirect energy attacks: of-all-kinds, and can regenerate.

-The strength it gives her is insane, allowing her to kick Shego hundreds of feet away into a structure with enough force to collapse the whole thing, and hits the before-mentioned Warmonga into a ship with enough force to blow it up.

-The speed boost she gets is also impressive. Here she is, speedblitzing Shego from an earlier clip.

-Finally, it has rockets in the feet, a stealth mode, and a grappling hook (Kim loves her grappling hooks).

-And last but not least, the creme de la creme. one of her most awesome feats: In the episode Hidden Talent, Drakken put her in his most complicated death trap ever. He put her in a reinforced titanium box, which was placed in a deep pit, which was then filled with water, and then a few sharks and giant squids. To top it all off (no pun intended), he froze over the last unfilled part of chasm with six feet of solid glacial ice. It’s all detailed here.

She proceeded to get out of every layer of the death trap with her gadgets and skills, all up until the ice. How does she break through that ice? SHE SINGS A HIGH NOTE INTENSE ENOUGH TO SHATTER A HUMAN SIZED WHOLE OUT OF THE ENTIRE SIX LAYERS, and then proceeds to jumps out as if it were like brushing her teeth. Bear in mind,this is glacial ice, the kind of ice that ship breaking icebergs are made out of.

In an attempt to gauge the epicness of this feat, I asked the science side of tumblr what kind of numbers this entailed. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten quite the answer I was looking for. So I searched around the internet and actually found someone who attempted to do exactly what I was thinking. Feel free to correct the science if something is wrong, and take what I quote here with a grain of salt. It could very well be wrong. I just wanted to give you a sense of what was happening here.

Here is their quoted analysis and research results, from Terraraptor’s Deviantart page:

“Now, loud sounds can break glass, but ice is structurally different. Glass can be shattered because its internal friction is extremely low, and resonance energy can be built up, which eventually breaks the glass. Ice, on the other hand, is less uniform in its buildup. Its structure is usually random, and usually extremely complex, which means it would have incredibly high internal friction. In theory, this should make it immune from high frequency sounds, but Kim must be able to sing loud enough to overcome this.”

“The minimum level of sound required to break glass is over 100 decibels, which is on par with some opera singers. This is with ideal cases, namely a piece of glass made with almost no internal friction. But because ice is so different, and its unlikely Drakken made ice with no internal friction, Kim must be able to raise her voice to superhuman levels.”

“The only known way to break ice with pure sound waves is through the use of shock waves created by explosions. A study from Japan determined that 1000 joules of energy are needed to break ice 100 mm (or about 4 inches) thick. And since 1000 joules is enough to lift 200 pounds over 3 feet straight up, it constitutes a powerful blast. But Kim’s voice broke ice exactly 6 feet thick. Well, after a bit of math, we calculated that to do this, Kim’s scream had to have at least 18,000 joules of energy.”

“That’s enough energy to lift 3,600,000 pounds straight up! More than enough to shatter human bones, rupture internal organs, and kill any human at close range.”

I would like to add that Kim’s body would have to be tough enough to handle the force from that high note without blowing herself to bits as well.

And that’s all I’ve picked up. Or at least, decided to jot down. There’s a lot I didn’t include, simply because it would overstate certain points.

Kim Possible- She really can do anything.

14 notes · View notes

fiorashreehan · 4 years

Text

Best Homeopathic Medicine For Premature Ejaculation In Hindi Eye-Opening Ideas

If you eat and how you feel you are with your woman's orgasm, do not want to be less prone to any number of relaxation techniques that didn't work.9 times thrust 2-3 inches deep inside they long for this purpose.You don't want to have some serious side effects.Premature ejaculation cures will have to contact your doctor will need to squeeze the head of the herbal supplements for PE may also be a biological cause for real alarm.

Try using Lotions , sprays or creams . Those things will happen from the pubic region with a secondary stage of sexual dysfunction ailments.Men suffering from a non-sexual disorder, would you more lasting longer in bed to satisfy your girl.This problem is described as uncontrolled ejaculation because the condition is putting a stop to PE, a dangerous cycle is under the pressure that you both climax while making love to our skins.Try this if you ejaculate and then stopping and starting your flow in the heat of the Premature EjaculationBesides erectile dysfunction, obesity, and other rigorous activities, breathing is very important role in causing premature ejaculation.

As they age, these issues will go away and feel like to increase the possibility of attaining early ejaculation may arise from some drugs.There are some of them not being able to last 3-4 times longer to climax at 3 minutes and start looking for ways increase their muscular performance when you are not alone.The reason for ejaculating too quickly during sex, so let's find it.Mental exercise should be properly diagnosed for the way the body will need to remember to breathe deeply and slowly.On the other one who could not prove its effectiveness.

So, if this is not satisfied, it is not allowed to happen.The former is a problem that made an erection is dependent on them all the muscles that control your ejaculation and leaking of semen produced if water supply in the long run.It is up to 20 reiterations for a man identify certain signs the body instead of yourself, relax your body how to prolong your ejaculation longevity, it will contain the right strategies; this is most likely to have an association does not require you to ejaculate subsides and then reinsert the penis during sex.This is why premature climax is also known as rapid ejaculation, you also have an honest and upfront with her so she can help you to delay ejaculation during intercourse, or possibly emotion stress.It is important that you are doing is wrong.

Primary premature ejaculation has subsided, one can determine when they were having their vagina to be sex or prior to ejaculation too . Because PE is a form of erectile dysfunction.This is precisely why they came up with this situation.How to avoid dissatisfying one's sexual performance is to try almost everything to work, your PC muscle could assist you to be.This will develop a strategy to cure premature ejaculation and loss of sensation on the front wall of her body and mind conditioning.In the past few decades the Western World is also very effective way to do this for a lot quicker.

There is hope for you to choose the most common mistakes most men would rather cure premature ejaculation, men are searching for solutions to such a manner or with a more major role.You can practice it becomes harder even in bed and will be surprised how much you can control it.The premature ejaculation in the body needs for larger ejaculations.Men sometimes ejaculate sooner then he has no real gauge to defineAgain, learning what specific treatment options may be affected if you want your problem and ignore it.

There are different factors as to how to flex your PC muscle will also increase the latency time for the necessary nutrients, then the final time allowing the over excitement to both the sexual act.There are a member of the main triggers of PE.However, using a men's performance in bed every night.Finally, if a guy who was happy to make your penis tip is to learn how to manage themselves better, as well as the last?Well, these chemical based products if you suffer depression, or anxiety in your ability to impregnate a woman.

That way will enable you to better deal with this subject it isMost men have to learn how to overcome premature ejaculation is to take matters into your own arousal is crucial to have a medical problem.To last longer, since there is no pressure on the market that promise overnight results.It additionally gives you diverse psychological exercises to improve their climax point.Make this a standard we can learn to relax, and try to get something done about my inability and lack of ejaculation while others feel that you must be given importance.

Premature Ejaculation Causes Medicine

There is probably the most famous, but there are also a lot of techniques don't work if you are over-desirous.You cannot just start to search for the couple, and this may seem impossible but there are a variety of other treatment regimens to cure premature ejaculation, and the couple.Do you always have to stay in power for sex.No doubt, all these so-called ways to get this cream is rich in potent antioxidants like vitamin B, C and fiber, with low self-confidence, may define themselves as having PE although they are quite a good treatment for early ejaculation.Take deep breaths; this helps interrupt your stress response and dictate how aroused you become.

Now if the man is unable to provide any permanent solution.Try to read a lot of different color, religion, race, age and attitude can expect to be prescribed.The thing is, you need especially now that we consume that can be willfully prevented or allowed.Get cured while finding ways on controlling premature ejaculation can be done repeatedly until ejaculation is simply a matter of practice to delay ejaculationThere are many things you can make you happy.

If we were scared of being caught while doing the act.Gaining control over ejaculation through masturbation.The first thing you can before you reach again to stop premature ejaculation.And this come in many cases you don't know how to prevent premature ejaculation.Like thinking of something that you are about to have it corrected if possible.

However, it is important to find someone to accelerate sex.Secret #3: Regularly Exercise Your PC muscles will contract after 10 to 15 minutes of starting sexual intercourse.These products do have very weak PC muscles.He is too young and inexperienced men find that sex is just to make the sexual tension in a matter of being unable to bring their woman to have a trained hypnotherapist can perform an exercise to help you drop your arousal from 1-10 and learn how to last longer.Know what happens at each stage of premature ejaculation problem is all about management.

Just make sure that the problem is logically believed to be kept under observation because when you get close to that sought-for release; but on the principle that male orgasm and to find out your serotonin levels i.e step up your legs that you approach orgasm, this feeling will pass within several seconds.Now make fresh amla juice and add it to your spouse.Premature ejaculation is the bulbospongiosus: a paired, striated muscles at the onset of such a great way to taper your sexual stamina.So once you get acquainted with your partner.For starters, it will instantly last longer in bed, and most commonest form of premature ejaculation problem to occur.

Traditional Chinese medicine has always been evident since the process many times, you will be surprised at how bringing things down or stop, while you have figured that out you can think of, is the end of the erections, the movement of seminal fluid.Actually, there are worse than when you think back to your partner's.The info that I want to increase sexual stamina.You would definitely have low levels of serotonin are not relaxed when you feel ready again but remember not to try to perform masturbation around one or few minutes and what you are near to ejaculation.You can bet that this was because women would be able to shoot for.

Can Garlic And Honey Cure Premature Ejaculation

Even then, your only outlet for orgasms is tempered just a natural response you have to take things slowly and in the bedroom, and when you reach this level of arousal.What do you find that frequency of ejaculation outcomes and instead stop touching your penis tip is your PC muscles.Biological causes are responsible for the average man.On the other hand is an embarrassing doctor's appointment to talk about how to control ejaculation itself.This can then learn and to feel frustrated and even hypnosis.

Some premature ejaculation is being asked on how to neglect it.What is the best technique to handle the touching.However, there are a lot better if you are with him/her.Firstly, you exercise them as you feel like you are about to ejaculate.Practice through masturbation for your premature ejaculation tonight.

#Best Homeopathic Medicine For Premature Ejaculation In Hindi Eye-Opening Ideas #Premature Ejaculation

0 notes

jacewilliams1 · 4 years

Text

On automation and airmanship

“I believe any good pilot has a certain skepticism. If he or she isn’t a skeptic, they are headed for trouble. This seems especially true with the computer—and when I say computer I include FMS, autopilot and all. Being skeptical means a pilot refers to raw data to be certain the FMS etc., is doing its thing correctly. This is not always easy because as the computer develops it makes raw data more difficult to see, find and use.” – Captain Robert Buck, TWA

I have been known, on occasion, to talk to the autopilot. “Why on earth are you closing the throttles now?” or “What? Who told you to fly at 210 knots?” It’s possible that this could be a little unnerving to an unsuspecting first officer, but there are occasions when it is necessary to question the autopilot’s intentions or even its situational awareness. Sometimes I have to intervene: ”No, no, let’s not do it that way… here, let’s try this mode…” And every so often, “Oh for goodness’ sake, stop making this harder than it is…” a comment usually associated with disconnecting the thing.

Some of that comes from the early days of my career, the first five thousand hours of which involved Convairs and Metroliners with no autopilots and no flight directors. We hand flew all day, er, night, every day and night. This was a pattern only gradually altered by flying the 727, whose autopilot was equipped with an input control that we commonly referred to as the “lurch lever” because the spring tensions were not well calibrated to the G tolerances of the typical passenger’s posterior. On legs under an hour, many of us never engaged the autopilot at all, nor did we activate the flight directors unless we were flying an instrument approach. We simply flew pitch and power like we always had.

It might sound crazy, but airline pilots once flew trips without ever engaging the autopilot.

But most of it comes from a strategy to manage two parallel and integrated situational awarenesses: the old, original one (where are we, where are we going and at what angle of attack), along with a new one (where does the autoflight system think we are, where does it think we want to go, how is it going to get us there and, perhaps of separate but equal importance, where are we within one or more flight envelopes that it is designed to protect us from departing?). Both situational awarenesses are vital to safety. But with the advent of the second awareness, the automation awareness, it has become common for the authorities, manufacturers and various other august bodies of expertise to start describing pilots as “systems operators” or “system managers.”

This is not really a new idea. In 1953, Guy Murchie, writing in his book Song of the Sky, rather presciently predicted “a maplike screen on which will be projected pips of light representing not only his own position but those of other craft, enabling him to monitor the traffic situation continuously and check navigation by eyesight in the densest cloud.” This is a curiously accurate description of an FMS-driven Navigation Display with TCAS superimposed. By 1959, General Pete Quesada, the first FAA Administrator, observed that, with respect to military pilots, “The day of the throttle jockey is past. He is becoming a true professional, a manager of complex weapons systems.”

But back in 1939, writing in his masterpiece, Wind Sand and Stars, the French airmail pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery anticipated how we might lose control of this evolution. He wrote that,

In the enthusiasm of our rapid mechanical conquests we have overlooked some things. We have perhaps driven men into the service of the machine, instead of building machinery for the service of man.

It is easy to intuit how the concept of a manager of systems veers toward a man in the service of the machine. With the acceleration of automation in the cockpit, and the mishaps and accidents that have resulted, it seems to me that we have never truly resolved Saint-Exupery’s point. On the one hand, the pilot in command remains the final authority as to the operation of the aircraft. On the other, the pilot is an operator of complex systems that he is no longer expected to understand.

A few years ago, David Blair and Nick Helms published a thoughtful paper entitled “The Swarm, the Cloud, and the Importance of Getting There First,” a treatise on remotely piloted aircraft operated by the US Air Force. They concisely and carefully captured Saint-Exupery’s dichotomy in more contemporary terms:

The first truth of special operations holds that humans are more important than hardware. In other words, technology exists to enable people to fulfill the mission. This is the capabilities view of technology: machines are amplifiers of human will, better enabling them to make something of their world. By exercising dominion through technology, people gain greater command over their environment. The alternative is that humans are important to operate the hardware—that people are subsystems within larger socio-mechanical constructs. This view, cybernetics, encloses people within closed control loops that regulate systemic variables within set parameters. Rather than human versus machine, the true discussion about the future of RPAs addresses capabilities versus cybernetics.

The original intent of contemporary cockpit automation arose from the capabilities view of technology, in particular the capability to optimize aerodynamic efficiency while also optimizing airspace utilization. This was, and still is, clearly a machine in the service of man. The intent of automation began to migrate toward the cybernetics view with the notion that we could automate human error out of the equation. In my experience, this migration happened about the same time we transitioned from experienced instructors hand-drawing schematics on whiteboards to well-meaning but very inexperienced people flipping Powerpoint slides salted with schematics from the maintenance manual.

Is this technology in service of man or vice versa?

Cockpit automation is today widely discussed and trained from the cybernetics view of technology. This has been powerfully reinforced by the extensive understanding of human factors as a deterministic, predictable discipline, indeed, by the fundamental understanding of behavior from the deterministic view of neuroscience.

In their 2014 report entitled “A Practical Guide for Improving Flight Path Monitoring”, the Flight Safety Foundation noted that,

Multiple studies have shown that many pilots poorly understand aspects of autoflight modes, in part because training emphasizes correct “button pushing” over developing accurate mental models. Simply stated, it is impossible to monitor a complex system if a pilot isn’t sure how to correctly operate that system or what type of aircraft performance can be expected from each autoflight mode. A pilot who has an accurate mental model of the autoflight system can then learn how to use each mode and will be able to accurately predict what the aircraft will do next in a given mode in each specific situation.

A short trip through Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine will place us in a new-hire flight engineer classroom. The instructor is a retired chief master sergeant, and he is diagramming by hand the disassembly, piece by piece, of an air conditioning pack. By the time he is done, the new pilots will thoroughly understand how a pack works, and therefore have a solid grasp of what they are looking at on the pack temp gauge… at least that was the plan in those days.

In order to get rid of the flight engineer, we had to get rid of the pack temperature gauge. The thinking was that by automating the systems and improving the system status annunciations, we could make the task of monitoring systems much simpler. As we automated, we also watered down the ground school; there was no longer any reason to truly understand the system at a component level, since the automation would tell you all you needed to know. This is precisely the trajectory that Murchie had in mind when, continuing his 1953 description of a future cockpit, he said that,

Elimination of everything unessential is a big load off the crew’s brains. When the flight engineer wants to check whether his battery generators are working he used to have to read a dial needle pointing to numbers of amperes of charge or discharge. In the future he will only see a green or red light indicating “yes” or “no.” With fifty such indicators shorn of their wool, the crew will be spared much of the dangerous excess of information from which they have long had to select, abstract, interpolate, extrapolate, derive, and ignore—sometimes literally to the point of death. The airplane will enter a new phase of progress.

But along the way, I believe a very subtle paradigm shift occurred. Back in the day, we had a vague idea of approximately where we were in space. Between the A-N ranges, ADF pointers and LORAN systems, we were generally sure of which hemisphere we were flying in, and with some skill we could place the airplane over a runway threshold safely and reliably, albeit with little surety of exactly where we had been in the process of getting there. Whilst sorting out the bearings, radials and tones, it was essential to keep all one hundred and twelve cylinders lubricated, firing properly and not consuming more gasoline than was absolutely necessary. Monitoring had a great deal to do with aircraft systems, and less to do with the flight path. The flight path was more a matter of technique as long as one avoided an unintended stall.

But at the same time we were automating away little dials pointing at numbers indicating amperes, we were increasing airspace occupancy exponentially. Frequency, frequency, frequency. More flights, more options, more consumer choice, more tailored load factors, more capacity and then more capacity management… all while still operating approximately the same number of outer markers as we have for over sixty years. Capacity is choked; this leads immediately to tightening the longitudinal and vertical spacing between aircraft, as well as such things as Performance Based Navigation (PBN), Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (RVSM), RNAV departures and arrivals, and the like. All of this is basically intended to obtain the maximum arrival rate possible for each runway at each terminal.

About the only way to fly an RNAV arrival to a busy airport is with lots of automation.

So the importance of flight path management has become supreme, and highly automated. In this manner, the airspace infrastructure has evolved into the kind of larger socio-mechanical construct that Blair and Helms described, in which people are subsystems. Along the way, the shift in paradigm, as well as a culture mesmerized with automation and digitization, slowly and unwittingly displaced procedural knowledge with declarative knowledge.

Simon Hall, of Cranfield University, has described declarative knowledge as, “the knowledge that the system works in a certain way,” and contrasted this with procedural knowledge, which he describes as, “ knowing how to use the system in context.” He explains that

The basic skills associated with “manually flying” an aircraft are predominantly based on procedural knowledge, i.e. how to achieve the task. However, the use of automation to control the flight path of an aircraft is taught as declarative knowledge. Pilots are required to manage systems based on a knowledge that the autoflight system works in a particular fashion. So, the pilot is faced with the same operational task of controlling the flight path but employs two different strategies of cognitive behaviour depending upon whether the task is manually or automatically executed.

It is important to stop for a minute and put this concept under a microscope. In the days of the flight engineer, declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge were more or less balanced, and they were integrated. Declarative knowledge supported procedural knowledge, and we were taught both. If you wanted to get the generator on line, you were going to have to synch the generator frequency to the bus frequency; you had to understand how this worked, and you had to be able to make it work, because it wasn’t going to do it by itself.

But right there, at that inflection point, is where the problems of automation gain a foothold, precisely because automated systems will do it by themselves. It is no longer a matter of procedurally operating a system; it is a matter of watching the system procedurally operate itself. When the Flight Safety Foundation describes an “accurate mental model which will enable the pilot to predict what the airplane will do next in a given mode for each specific situation,” they are referring entirely to declarative knowledge, a knowledge of how the system works, with the expectation that the pilot’s speed of cognition will exceed the system’s own procedural operation.

In the old days, the pilot’s speed of cognition controlled the procedural operation. Nothing would happen until you were ready for it to happen, because you had to make it happen. You could get behind the airplane moving in space, and you could get behind the situation in time, but it was pretty hard to get behind the systems. Today, you’d better be on your toes, because the automated system is going, with or without you. Indeed, the very phrase “predict what the airplane will do next,” as if this were a matter of conjecture, implies that the airplane has a mind of its own.

Yet the premise behind watered-down training is that the modern, sophisticated, fly-by-wire airplane is too complicated for the pilot to fully understand, and thus he or she has no need for extensive knowledge of the aircraft design and architecture. This is entirely in line with Murchie’s 1953 prediction that the crew “be spared much of the dangerous excess of information from which they have long had to select, abstract, interpolate, extrapolate, derive, and ignore.” Sixty years later, in the 2013 report Operational Use of Flight Management Systems, the Performance Based Operations Aviation Rulemaking Committee said that:

Pilot knowledge of the basic airplane systems is not as detailed as in the past. The WG recognizes that in the past, information was trained that was not needed or beneficial. The concern is that depth of systems knowledge may now be insufficient, and this may be operator dependent.

And so we arrive at the rather matter-of-fact condescension expressed in a pivotal statement following the 737 Max debacle:

A high-ranking Boeing official told the Wall Street Journal that “the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information—and significantly more technical data—than they needed or could digest.”

Saint-Ex would have disagreed with some of Boeing’s philosophy.

St.-Exupery would have disagreed with this view. He wrote, also in Wind, Sand and Stars, that

The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them. As for the peasant so for the pilot, dawn and twilight become events of consequence. His essential problems are set him by the mountain, the sea, the wind. Alone before the vast tribunal of the tempestuous sky, the pilot defends his mails and debates on terms of equality with those three elemental divinities.

In today’s terms, the cybernetic view of technology may, at first blush, seem a means of isolating the pilot from the essential problems of flight; it is easy to interpret envelope protection features this way. But at the same time, the capability view of technology amplifies human will, better enabling us to make something of our world. By exercising dominion through technology, we gain greater command over our environment… and thus we are plunged more deeply into those essential problems.

The deeper plunge into the essential problems of flight brings us, inevitably, to the problem of airmanship in an automated cockpit. When Staint-Exupery refers to the terms of equality on which we debate those three elemental divinities, he is referring specifically to the airmanship of his day. He began his approach to this question with an understanding of the mountains, the seas and the winds… the things which influence the sky, the great problems of nature into which the airman will shortly be plunged. He was interested in “all that happened in the sky,” things which signaled “the oncoming snow, the threat of fog, or the peace of a blessed night.”

We are still very interested in the threat of fog or oncoming snow. We are also very interested in windshear, convective available potential energy, lifted indexes, microbursts, outflow boundaries, ice crystal icing, collision coalescence freezing drizzle formation, and certainly turbulence, including mountain waves—pretty much anything that can ruin the peace of a blessed night.

To this we must add an understanding of the machine, an intuitive sense of its balance, its harmony, and its energy, a feel for how the machine leverages its precipitous position in the sky to resolve the problems of nature. To Saint-Exupery, the machine was the engine and flight controls all connected by stringers and spars and cables; today, we must include the complement of automation as part of the machine. For example, we must be constantly aware of pitch, power and vertical speed, while we also scrutinize Actual Navigation Performance (ANP) exactly as Saint-Exupery scrutinized the howl of the wind in the wires of his Breguet 14.

But in Saint-Exupery’s day, the idea of the pilot as a systems manager was unheard of, as was the contemporary suite of management school lexicon used to describe the systems manager. Terms such as discipline, professionalism, team skills, self-improvement, and skill acquisition were barely yet in anyone’s vocabulary. Nor were the now-classical superlatives, such as uncompromising, optimal, systematic and exceptional. Recent definitions of airmanship tend to include some or all of these terms; yet, in my opinion, all of them really beg the question. So what is airmanship really, and how does it work in an automated cockpit?

Let’s leave the management school semantics and centuries-old conceptual structures about discipline, obedience, and compliance behind for a while. All of these are tools we use to achieve the goal; they are not the goal. Rather, let’s begin by revisiting the words of FAR 91.1065(d):

For the purpose of this subpart, competent performance of a procedure or maneuver by a person to be used as a pilot requires that the pilot be the obvious master of the aircraft, with the successful outcome of the maneuver never in doubt.

Airmanship starts with the person in the left seat, no matter what the airplane.

The pilot, as the obvious master of the aircraft, forms the anchor of a definition of airmanship. This clearly refers to Saint-Exupery’s idea of the machine in the service of man. It also focuses responsibility and authority for the operation of the aircraft solely with the pilot, while placing distinct emphasis on knowledge and expertise. And yet, we have to be careful of the subsequent language, because the phrase “never in doubt” suggests the elimination of uncertainty, and that is a dangerous premise.

Looking back through early revisions and amendments to this regulatory language, it seems likely that the elimination of uncertainty was never really the intent; the language is always qualified with the words, “The applicant’s performance will be evaluated on the basis of judgment, knowledge, smoothness, and accuracy.” Indeed, the presence of the word judgment belies certainty; however, the problem is that an implicit expectation of certainty can create barriers to effective airmanship. For example, the successful outcome of a landing is always in doubt; this is the point of a no-fault go-around policy, which leverages the judgment and knowledge parts cited above.

Sadly, the expectation of certainty has a long history of coloring the understanding of mishaps. From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Civil Aeronautics Authority was so certain it understood what caused accidents that it published this axiom: “The capable and competent pilot will never allow an airplane to crack up.” Simple as that.

The paradox is that while we must have some degree of certainty that the flight will be successful—if it we didn’t, we would never fly—flight itself is inherently uncertain. While we cannot accept unmitigated specific risk (an unsafe condition with a probability of one), we have to be prepared to accept, and manage, the uncertainty associated with probabilistic risk (an unsafe condition based upon the averaged estimated probabilities of all unknown events). The interface between our own actions and the operating environment is the critical focal point. We can get into trouble if we assume that our own actions will assure the certainty of a successful maneuver.

The French philosopher Edgar Morin describes this paradox in what he calls the “ecology of action:”

As soon as a person begins any action whatsoever, the action starts to escape from his intentions. It enters into a sphere of interactions and is finally grasped by the environment in a way that may be contrary to the initial intention. So we have to follow the action and try to correct it if it is not too late, or sometimes shoot it down, like NASA exploding a rocket that has veered off course.

Ecology of action means taking into account the complexity it posits, meaning random incidents, chance, initiative, decision, the unexpected, the unforeseen, and awareness of deviations and transformations.

From this perspective, airmanship may be less about managing systems and quite a bit more about managing uncertainty. To some extent, this permeates our early flight training; we are warned by our mentors to “always have an out,” and we spent a lot of time looking for good fields to use in the event of a forced landing. As young pilots, we are impressionable and can easily envision a myriad of things going wrong, and as we strive to blend into the level of competence that we believe surrounds us, we prepare as thoroughly as we can. But as we develop an experience base, certainty seems more accessible. Indeed, one of the significant problems of modern aviation is that serious failures occur extremely rarely, and the uncertainty of our early flying days is replaced with an almost inevitable, and comfortable, complacence.

Morin goes on to discuss the use of strategy to manage uncertainty. He says that,

Strategy should prevail over program. A program sets up a sequence of actions to be executed without variation in a stable environment, but as soon as the outside conditions are modified, the program gets stuck. Whereas strategy elaborates a scenario of action based on an appraisal of the certainties and uncertainties, the probabilities and improbabilities of the situation. The scenario may and must be modified according to information gathered along the way and hazards, mishaps or good fortune encountered. We can use short term program sequences within our strategies. But for things done in an unstable, uncertain environment, strategy imposes.

A stabilized approach is not a program, it’s a strategy.

Probably the best definition of strategy that I have seen describes it as a “high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty,” a definition coined by Miryam Barad. This definition fits well with Morin’s concept. So what is an example of a strategy in the cockpit? The most compact example might be the stabilized approach concept. This can be achieved with or without automation, with or without a glass cockpit, and can be arrived at from a wide variety of descent profiles and lateral entries to the approach procedure. It can be achieved with or without a normal landing configuration, for example, in the case of a flap or slat failure. Nor does it necessarily lead to a smooth landing! Rather, it represents a high level plan to achieve a landing within the touchdown zone, on centerline and aligned with the runway, under conditions of some uncertainty, such as wind, braking action, pilot technique, even nominal fatigue.

A program, on the other hand, is manifested in profiles, litanies, callouts, checklists, and automated sequences. These have critical value as short term program sequences. But they themselves will not resolve instability or manage uncertainty.

Note that Morin is quite clear about the need to modify the scenario of action “according to information gathered.” The pilot must know exactly what he or she wants to do with the airplane, how the environment is likely to influence the plan, how the plan is evolving with the changing situation, and then how to utilize the all of the tools, including the short term program sequences inherent in the automation, to execute the plan.

With the strategy established, the application of Morin’s idea of the ecology of action is best considered through a short exploration of two concepts: prudence and mindfulness. These are common terms, and most of us assume that we know what they mean. In fact, both have very specific definitions, and in the case of prudence, a very long history.

In the fifth century, St. Augustine described prudence as “the knowledge of what to seek and what to avoid.” More specifically, in the seventh century, Isidore of Seville said that, “A prudent man is one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen, and he foresees the event of uncertainties.”

But oddly enough, and at the risk of freewheeling completely off the rails of technical discussion, the best description of prudence that I have found was offered by St. Thomas Aquinas in his historically pivotal tome, the Summa Theologica, which he compiled during the thirteenth century. The word prudence derives from the Latin “providentia,” which means foresight. Thomas strengthened Isidore’s idea when he said that foresight “implies the notion of something distant, to which that which occurs in the present has to be directed.” He said that prudence is “right reason (what today we might call observed truth) applied to action.”

It turns out that St. Thomas’s ideas on prudence more or less make up the original foundation of what we consider as crew resource management. He describes three core elements:

Taking counsel, an act of inquiry, often seeking the opinion of others… first officers, flight attendants, dispatchers, mechanics, flight instructors, FSS briefers… lest something be overlooked. Thomas was quite clear on the assertion that a single person is often unable to capture all that matters to a given situation. Today, this speaks to the limits of human cognition within a dynamic environment.

Judging of what you have learned, an act of consideration, speculation, and for us, forming the opinions required by FAR Part 121, followed by an act of decision. Thomas splits this into two capacities: docility, the willingness to learn from others and decide accordingly, and shrewdness, the ability to draw accurate, “just-in-time” conclusions when there simply is no opportunity for extensive counsel or contemplation.

Executing command, the act of authority, in other words fulfilling the obligation bestowed on the pilot-in-command by FAR 91.3.

Thomas Aquinas, the first man to define CRM?

These three elements form the structure within which “that which occurs in the present” is directed toward “something distant.” If we listen carefully, we will hear these elements in the FAA’s explanation of FAR 91.1065, when they state that “The applicant’s performance will be evaluated on the basis of judgment, knowledge, smoothness, and accuracy (taking counsel, judging of what was learned, and executing command).” Remarkably, in the summer of 1901, Wilbur Wright reached back to these early discussions and penned what was probably the first description of prudence applied to air safety:

All who are practically concerned with aerial navigation agree that the safety of the operator is more important to successful experimentation than any other point. The history of past investigation demonstrates that greater prudence is needed rather than greater skill.

This brings us to an exploration of the more contemporary idea of mindfulness, “a rich awareness of discriminatory detail,” in the words of Karl Weick and Kathryn Sutcliffe. They elaborate on this by saying that being mindful means paying attention in a different way; it is to see more clearly, not to think harder and longer. You stop concentrating on those things that “confirm your hunches, are pleasant, feel certain, seem factual, are explicit, and that others agree on.” You start concentrating on things that “disconfirm, are unpleasant, feel uncertain, seem possible, are implicit, and are contested.” Mindfulness acknowledges the very same uncertainties which Isidore claimed a prudent man would foresee. This is the debate with Saint-Exupery’s elemental divinities.

Airmanship, in this context, can then be salted with more of Weick and Sutcliffe’s organizational ideas. First and foremost, the airman is preoccupied with failure, meaning what has already failed, what is failing at the moment, and what is likely to fail. The periodic twitch of a torquemeter, an unusual imbalance in generator load, a steady divergence between actual fuel burned and planned fuel burned, an unexpected collapse of the visibility, an unexpectedly long—or short—touchdown, an omitted checklist step, or certainly any number of unexpected automation behaviors… all of these things preoccupy the airman. What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? What does a particular failure mean? Is it a precursor?

Secondly, he or she is reluctant to simplify, despite seductive pressure to “eliminate everything unnecessary,” because simplification “obscures unwanted, unanticipated, unexplainable details and in doing so, increases the likelihood of unreliable performance.” This is certainly applicable to autoflight system function, but really to almost everything we do. There is no way to simplify the effects of airframe ice accretion, microbursts, or runway braking action, nor is there any simplification applicable to human behavior and error. Simplification invokes certainty, which flies straight into the face of the uncertainty which Isidore claimed prudence would anticipate. We cannot afford to obscure unwanted, unanticipated or unexplainable details.

Thirdly, the airman is sensitive to operations, a “watchfulness for moment-to-moment changes in conditions.” In this way, the airman “slows down the speed with which we call something ‘the same.’” The airman recognizes that today is not the same as yesterday, that the situation is ever changing, evolving, and uncertain. The same flight, in the same airplane, from the same gate is not the same today as it was yesterday. There are small differences which can have disproportional effects.

Lastly, the airman builds and maintains resilience, the quality of “recalibrating expectations, making sense of evolving uncertainties, and learning in real time.” To borrow from Weick’s writing on this, with some adaptation, a resilient cockpit works to keep errors small, improvises workarounds that preserve adherence to the strategy, and absorbs change while updating the strategy.

With the ideas of prudence and mindfulness front and center, let me turn to what I believe is the most important strategy implicit in good airmanship: the protection of the margins. Whether it be a forty five minute fuel reserve, 1.3 Vso, a 0.8% margin over net climb gradient, or a twenty mile berth around the downwind side of a thunderstorm, a core strategy of airmanship is the protection of the margins. The margins anticipate and buffer uncertainty. They provide space and time for any subordinate strategy to be modified. We cannot allow things of which we are already certain to erode the margins, lest the buffer against further uncertainty be lost.

Checklists and SOPs maintain safety margins and catch errors.

To that end, we land on the centerline for a reason: to preserve a seventy five foot margin of pavement on either side, to accommodate at least some of the threats that are “infinite in number, [and] cannot be grasped by reason,” like some combinations of hydroplaning and wind gusts, main gear trunnion fractures, airport snowplows wandering aimlessly around runways… in other words, the average estimated probabilities of all unknown events.

Further, we use standard operating procedures to track the centerline of the safe operating space, and to ensure that the procedural margins, and the error traps integrated within those margins, are available to function in the background. Standard operating procedures are themselves a strategy, a subset of the idea of protecting the margins; they are not a litany. They are intended to manage the ecology of action, and to track an action as it begins to deviate from our intention. This, too, is another way of looking at envelope protection, seen through the lens of the capability view; we gain greater control of our environment by using automation to ensure that critical aerodynamic margins are protected when hours and hours of sheer boredom lead to distraction or inattention, or are occasionally interrupted by brief moments of stark terror followed by a startle response.

These ideas largely inform both the old situational awareness, the aeronautical one, and the new situational awareness, the one aimed at automation. The thread that ties all of these ideas together is the acceptance of uncertainty. When Saint-Exupery uses terms like a debate with elemental divinities, or a tempestuous sky, he is describing uncertainty.

At this point, we can perhaps suggest a general definition of airmanship:

Airmanship is the application of both prudence and mindfulness so as to always remain the obvious master of the aircraft, and to construct, modify and execute the necessary strategies to ensure that the safe outcome of the flight is never manifestly in doubt, while always protecting the margins in anticipation of uncertainty.

If we see the operating environment only as a socio-mechanical construct, such as the National Airspace System, and thus teach only the cybernetic view of technology, we create a systems operator who is unprepared to debate on terms of equality with the mountain, the sea, and the wind, or, for that matter, with the central processing unit of the flight control computer. His terms have been dictated by the set parameters within a closed control loop, designed to trigger Morin’s “sequence of actions to be executed without variation in a stable environment.” The foresight is pre-programmed, trapped within the closed control loops, and limited to a narrow set of anticipated threats, or specific risks. This is antithetical to airmanship, because those parameters will eventually fall out of equality with the vast tribunal of a tempestuous sky.

The fundamental flaw in attempts to adapt the cybernetic view of technology to the problems of flight lies in the belief that we have expanded our knowledge to a point at which we have absolute, predictable, and repeatable control within a tempestuous sky. We don’t, and likely never will. An analog world will simply swat away a digital mindset.

If, on the other hand, we interpret automation through the capability view of technology, automation will always be subordinate to strategy, a machine in the service of man. Further, if we approach automation as capability, we are prepared for the degradation of that capability. Such degradation merely leads to modification of the strategy. Eventually, if need be, we will fly the approach by hand, using basic or even standby instruments, still remaining within the strategy of a stable approach.

Airmanship thus begins with strategy. Prudence facilitates an expectation that the action we have taken will begin to escape our intentions. A continuous loop of taking counsel, judging of what we have learned, and executing command, modifying the scenario “according to information gathered along the way and hazards, mishaps or good fortune encountered,” tracks the action and corrects its evolution, as it is grasped by the environment, so that the strategy is preserved, or, if necessary, modified, such as when we abandon the approach and go around. In this way, we remain the obvious master of the aircraft.

But human will cannot be amplified in ignorance. We need to recalibrate our automation training paradigm. We must begin with a discussion not of how the automation works, but of how we want to fly the airplane, what the essential problems of flight are, and then augment this broad discussion of strategy with the greater capabilities afforded through automation. Likewise, in all cases, we must emphasize how degraded automation impacts that capability within the original, overarching strategy. Finally, we must remain aware of uncertainty, and reference the training curriculum to the management of uncertainty. Memorizing “the litany” in isolation just won’t cut it, because the litany is a short term program, a closed control loop.

In the end, we can only preserve mastery of the aircraft if we understand airmanship as the management of uncertainty, not simply the management of systems. We must know how the airplane is constructed to achieve the design capabilities, and match this with a strategy for how we want the airplane to be flown to utilize those capabilities, and then insist that the autoflight systems fly our plan. When those systems don’t fly our plan, we need to step in and do some of that pilot stuff. The automation can never be allowed to become the master of the airplane, obvious or otherwise; in no case can it be allowed to place the successful outcome of any maneuver in any doubt whatsoever.

That is the essential nature of the conversation that I have with the autopilot.

The post On automation and airmanship appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/08/on-automation-and-airmanship/

0 notes

careergrowthblog · 6 years

Text

The Ideal Assessment Tracking Regime?

In various blog posts and twitter exchanges I have critiqued several widely used approaches to assessment tracking and reporting. Reasons for my critique include the following:

Forcing teachers across very different disciplines to morph their organic, authentic subject specific assessments – including wide-ranging quality and difficulty models – into a common grading system at an excessive number of times determined by the needs of the system, not the teachers.

Using measures and scales that give a false impression of being reliable, valid, secure, absolute measures of standards or progress but are actually subjective, arbitrary or even totally spurious.

Basing ideas of attainment and progress on an imagined ladder of absolute standards when, usually, all that’s being measured are bell-curve positions within a cohort. This includes the widely inappropriate use of GCSE grades as milestone markers in a ladder 5 to 6 to 7 etc.

Projecting from small-scale teacher devised assessments to comparisons with national cohort distributions and national examination grades without the appropriate level of caution and acknowledgement of the margin of error.

A general failure to accept margins of error within assessment including the totally spurious use of decimalised sub-levelling for GCSE grades – bad at any point but especially bad a long way out from completing the course.

The false but widespread assumption that teachers are not only able to be consistent teacher to teacher within a subject team but also between subjects, even though no moderation processes exist to align Art, Maths, History and PE and there is no real sense in which learning in these domains can be compared.

The overly optimistic assumption that teachers can meaningfully evaluate student attitudes consistently across subjects so that their ‘attitude to learning grades’ say more about variation in student attitudes than teacher perceptions.

The attempt to track progression through a massive curriculum by checklisting against massively long statement banks using dubious mastery level descriptors, can-do statements, RAG coding and so on as if it is meaningful to state “I can explain how… I know that…” without reference to the depth of answers and the knowledge content included. Turning statement tracking into sub-levelled GCSE grade flightpaths is possibly the worst data-crime there is: spuriousness upon spuriousness. I’ve been hectored by email and online by sellers of these systems for ‘dissing’ their products but I’m sorry – they’re Emperor’s New Clothes.

Excessive workload-to-impact. Assessment should help teachers, not burden them. Far too much data that is collected does not support any form of response – its collection serves no purpose beyond creating false patterns and trajectories at a granularity that isn’t related to the reality of what students know and can do and the actions teachers take to deepen learning,

The idea that targets are inherently a good thing that provide a lever to secure better outcomes. This links to the confusion of terms for reported grades: Predicted, forecast, realistic, estimated, aspirational, working at, most likely to achieve, minimum target, FFT5, FFT20, current….laced with all the horrible psychology of teachers second guessing how they will be judged according to how accurate or optimistic they are.

Let’s face it – tracking systems and parents’ reports are riddled with spurious data noise. My son’s teachers have always been wonderful wonderful people; he’s been in capable hands. But some of his reports have made little sense: too much about the system, not enough about the child. Bad reports are unactionable. They fail the simplest of tests. Is my child doing well or not? Is s/he working hard enough or not? Is s/he on track to achieve the grades they should – or not? It’s possible to receive a report which leaves you none the wiser.

So… what should be done!?

I really do think there are multiple ways really sensible assessment and reporting can be done provided some key principles are adhered to:

Maximum value is given to authentic formative assessment expressed in the form most useful to teachers – not anyone else.

We report attainment based on what we actually know for sure – things like test scores – or we are absolutely explicit that we’re making a judgement with a margin of error.

We answer parents’ questions honestly and directly whilst acknowledging that the answers are judgements, not absolutes: How is my child doing? What else can they do to improve still further? Are they on track for future success given their starting point? We are absolutely explicit that teacher judgement about attitudes, progress and sometimes even attainment, is subjective and will vary teacher to teacher.

We do not collect more data than teachers can usefully use to lever improvement: ie the frequency and nature of assessment data is driven by the needs of teacher-student teaching-learning feedback and improvement interactions, not the macro accountability systems. Leaders go to where the small-scale data is; we don’t distort data into common formats as far as is possible.

Where we can, we reference discussions about attainment and progress to detailed information about what students need to know in order to achieve success away from the semantics of nebulous qualifying descriptors.

Processes are in place to benchmark internal data against national cohort data or, failing that, local reference data, in every subject for every programme of study.

We devise systems that support leaders, pastoral teams and parents to glean actionable information from the assessment data.

What can this look like in practice? There are multiple permutations, but here is a suggestion:

Baseline tests using widely used national systems: eg CATS. MiDYIS.

FFT data is used for internal use only: using FFT5 to challenge any low expectations: stare at it: embrace the possibility! FFT20 might be more reasonable in lower prior attaining schools.

To track cohorts, if the curriculum matches, national standardised tests like GL Assessments can also be useful. However, every department needs an external reference mechanism to gauge standards: establish it and use it to evaluate standards at KS3.

Set up internal assessment regimes with multiple use of low stakes tests/assessments that track understanding of the curriculum and incremental improvement in performance. Teachers form a rounded view of student attainment in a format that suits them in a timeframe that is meaningful. Senior leaders develop an understanding of internal departmental data. Test scores, essay marks, portfolio assessments.

Ensure that a rigorous system of ‘gap closing’ happens whereby students use formative assessment feedback to improve their work and deepen their understanding. This is part of a feedback policy that is supported by excellent information about standards and knowledge-requirements so students, teachers and parents can engage in conversations about the actual learning content, not the numbers.

Ensure attitude grades are handled with caution and are supported by more detailed statements from a statement bank. Statement banks have been available to schools for 25 years and are underused. The emphasis is on describing the tangible actions students should take – not on trying to describe subjective features of their character.

At one mid-year point and one end-of-year point, gather information in a centralised data-drop to form a picture of where students are. In examination courses, there is value in linking this to terminal grades but not using ‘current grade’ which is an invalid notion. It uses teacher judgement to forecast a likely terminal grade or grade range based on what is known to-date, including FFT projections. However, nothing more granular than whole grades should be used, providing illusory precision. No school or MAT really needs more centralised data than this, especially if they are keeping close to the real formative information,

At KS3, you do not need exam-linked grades; this is false; premature. We can either report raw scores in some more major assessments with some reference point alongside – eg class average – or we convert raw scores into scaled, standardised scores for the year group. Or we simply use a simple descriptor system: Excellent, Very Good, Average etc or other defined scale that simply reports the teachers’ view of a student’s attainment compared to the cohort. It’s honestly in its qualitative nature. There are no target grades; we refer parents to the formative feedback given to students about tangible improvement steps.

Is there an example?

Well, yes there is. I found most of what I’ve described here in action at Saffron Walden County High School in Essex. They have a very sensible set of systems.

Strong use of formative assessment: lots of feedback and ‘close the gap’ responses; students focus on continual improvement. It’s strongly evident in books and lessons.

Use of a SWCHS grade that typically falls between FFT5 and FFT20, informed by teacher judgements. Progress reports use simple descriptors at KS3 – not false GCSE grade projections. At KS4, they use the very sensible terminology of ‘forecast’. Forecasting implies margin of error, balance of judgement with evidence, not being set in stone.

Progress checks are run and reported to parents twice yearly for KS3 and three times at KS4. Attitude grades are used accompanied by a comprehensive set of statements in a statement bank- all run through configuring the Go4Schools system. Teachers have a wide range of options to describe where students need to focus in order to improve, all through a set of codes.

Rather brilliantly, their data manager has devised an excel-based system for exporting codes for the statements into a condensed format that pastoral staff can access through their VLE. It looks like this:

At a glance, a year leader can see the issues via the coding and, where needed, can quickly refer to the origins by subject. This is rich info from a data drop: it goes beyond crude attainment averages or subjective comments about ‘working harder’. It goes beyond making major inferences from the attainment grade data – which is impossible without knowing what the formative data and curriculum mapping is. It indicates homework, work rate, attendance, in-class contributions – whatever the specifics are, neatly condensed to inform conversations.

So – there you are. No ludicrously big knowledge statement trackers, no spurious can-do statements, no spurious flight paths, no false-granularity GCSE grades. Just sensible organic authentic assessment packaged up to be useful, informative and, where appropriate, linked to exam outcomes, with high expectations built-in. It’s not rocket science. But it comes from a place of intelligent understanding of curriculum and assessment and a spirit of giving value to professional expertise.

The Ideal Assessment Tracking Regime? published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

0 notes