#id literally hate my parents with a burning passion if that was my name | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xxcureangelxx · 3 years

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5, 9, 10, 13, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30-35, 38-42, 44-46, 50, 52, 54, 60-62, 66, 71-74, 86-91, 96, 100! 😊

okay I literally have no clue how old this is and if I'm even taking the questions from the right post but here goes I guess? 🙈

5. What is your favorite Color?

PURPLE

9. How tall are you?

about 1,70 meters or 5'7"

10. What shoe size are you?

size 40-41, I think that's about 8 in US sizes?

13. What talents do you have?

uhhh good question... not sure if it counts but I guess I'm quite good at a lot if things but can't do anything extraordinarily well?

20. Are you religious?

Absolutely not. Due to family history and a lot of other things I'm actually against it a lot but people can do whatever they feel like is right for them as long as they don't harm others with it.

21. Have you ever been to the hospital?

Yes, quite a lot actually. practically grew up in hospitals as a baby because of kidney issues, broke both my legs with 4 years old, had to revisit for tests a lot during my childhood because of the kidney issue. it calmed down afterwards until I was back in hospital last year because of my terrible mental health and I'm currently in a rehabilitation clinic for it as well.

24. Baths or showers?

Shower's because we don't have a bathtub

25. What color socks are you wearing?

currently none, I love going barefoot, but usually I wear white, gray or black. I know... I'm a bad gay.. no rainbow socks (;ŏ﹏ŏ)

28. What type of music do you like?

you know.... I hate this question with a passion even though I love music so I'll just throw in my yt-playlist here and everyone who's interested can look through it to get a picture xD not sorted in any way and not a conclusive list at all, I just add songs as I find them

30. How many pillows do you sleep with?

mostly just one at a time but I've got two different ones. one is the normal fluffy kinda pillow, the other is made of some kinda foam material and rather thin.

31. What position do you usually sleep in?

I'm always lying on the side! have been doing that since I was a baby too.

32. How big is your house?

compared to what? 🙈 I'd say decent size for 5 people to live in, would have space for 1-2 more if rooms were used differently but definitely not enough to comfortably live with 12 or even more people like my family used to. we've got like 3 proper sleeping rooms (one of which is the attic so not very nice in terms of heat and the staircase is smack in the middle of the room), a kitchen, a dining room, a big living room, a tiny bathroom that barely fits a toilet and shower, and the basement is a mix of storage, electrics and stuff, washing room/utility room and it's got another smaller room that's been turned back into a small workshop but used to be the room of my brother and later my grandmother.

33. What do you typically have for breakfast?

I guess this is where it shows that I'm german but we usually just eat bread (preferably whole grain) with cheese or slices of salami or ..meat sausage? is that a proper translation? 🤨 idk... it's rather simple really. on the weekend maybe buns and boiled eggs. on the occasion that I'm too tired for it or don't have enough time I eat cereals but it's not very common when I'm at work/school

34. Have you ever fired a gun?

No, and I don't want to

35. Have you ever tried archery?

Yes!! I did last year when I was in the hospital and it was super fun! was quite good at it as well, even for my first try 😤

38. What's the longest you've ever gone without sleep?

I think about 3 days? if we count "barely unconscious for a few hours" as sleep that is... otherwise no clue...my memory of the bad sleepless time is quite hazy lol

39. Do you have any scars?

yeah, quite a few tbh. got 2 huge ones from surgeries due to my kidney issues, well they look like 2 but it's actually multiple ones since they simply cut open party of the old ones again, tiny hooman apparently have very little skin. then I got some other ones here and there from accidents, general dumbness, etc, like when I cut through my sunday morning bun and almost cut half of the tip of my finger off because my mother sharpened the knife and didn't tell me or that time as a kid I couldn't wait for my ironing pearl pictures to be done and burned myself on the hot iron, mostly stuff like that.

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer?

I mean.. if they're a secret... how would I know? ;) not sure if it counts that it took me months to realize I had a crush on my best friend and the feelings were reciprocated and I was too blind to see the signs?

41. Are you a good liar?

Nope. People actually think I'm lying more often than I lie... so.... :/

42. Are you a good judge of character?

I'm.. honestly not sure what this one means? like, am I able to judge what kind of character a person has after barely meeting them or smth? if so, I'm terrible at it

44. Do you have a strong accent?

in german? nope. in english? hmm hard to judge since I rarely hear myself speak. I think the stuff I do know how to pronounce is mostly okay but since I learned it through reading I'm simply unsure of a lot of pronunciations. 'also'.... I can not for the life of me pronouns that word no matter how many times I hear it... it's kinda become a quirk after some classmates pointed it out to me and I'm incredibly aware how terrible I say the word but.... just can't get rid of it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

45. What is your favorite accent?

I.. actually really love the way my best friend talks? 👉👈 they're french btw. just... typical me for struggling to understand them though, already terrible at it in german too...

46. What is your personality type?

honestly, I don't think I can answer that. I'm big on self loathing and everything's pretty shitty so, no thanks

50. Left or right handed?

Right handed. but does it even count id I'm bad at doing things with that hand too? lol

52. Favorite food?

hmmmm tough question... not the biggest fan of food in general a lot of the time... probably Züricher Geschnetzeltes

54. Are you a clean or a messy person?

Definitely messy. my allergies did not like this post trying to clean and tidy up more often though. my depression does not like this post either

60. Do you talk to yourself?

sometimes. quite a bit when watching movies or if I mess stuff up

61. Do you sing to yourself?

barely. got a lot of bad experiences with that so i keep my singing to a minimum. my shower is a great listener though

62. Are you a good singer?

I was in a choir for a few years when I went to 'middle school' and I had like one solo part once but other than that I can't really say because I barely ever sing in front of people

66. Do you like long or shor hair?

this question is currently my absolute nemesis.. I've got suuuper duper long hair and have had it ever since elementary school and I used to be super happy with it and sometimes I still am happy with it but other days, depending on where I'm at genderwise, I absolutely hate it and I just want to take the closest scissors and cut it all off... currently haven't had the guts to look for new hair styles though... but in other people? or women more specifically? I love long hair 🥺

71. What makes you nervous?

Or the shorter question: what doesn't make me nervous... I'd say pretty much everything has got the potential to make me nervous. I'm an overthinker, anxiety is a big thing for me and ptsd makes me scared of almost everything. so.. yeah... sucks to be me sometimes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

72. Are you scared of the dark?

Yes, very

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?

I try not to but sadly I sometimes do, even if it's not my place to. I really don't like that part and hope I'll be able to learn not to sometime

74. Are you ticklish?

Yes and I hate it 😭

86. What are you allergic to?

again, easier question: what am I not allergic to... it's... a lot... like, really a lot. with the test on the skin of my arm I reacted to every single substance and the more thorough blood test lead to much of the same result. the absolute worst are birch trees (pitty, love those), then the usual pollen of pretty much every tree or flower, all animals with fur or feathers, dust and... yeah list goes on and on, you get the picture... :/

87. Do you keep a journal?

no.. have tried to multiple times in the past but never made it more than a week... too depressing to write and read... the therapist at the rehab clinic is currently forcing me to try a positivity diary for the millionths time, can't even get that done each day even though I'm doing it on my phone and get notifications to do it each evening...

88. What do your parents do?

making my life hell lol.. okay on a serious note, my father was a car electrician, he's retired by now, my mother is a housewife, she used to work different jobs before her first kid, later on she took care of my grandmother who was suffering from dementia, got some money and retirement points for that too.

89. Do you like your age?

I-... I don't know? it's weird because I both feel a lot younger and a lot older than I am rn....

90. What makes you angry?

another tough question... I actually have anger issues in that way that I'm barely capable of feeling anger... used to be worse but I already worked a lot on it in therapy so there's at least some there now... in the past I simply started to cry and felt overwhelmed by sadness whenever I was supposed to feel anger... so I can't tell very well what makes me angry because I first have to realize that I'm feeling anger or more like should be feeling it....

91. Do you like your own name?

Not really, no, but I guess I finally figured out some reasons why.. I've recently started going by a bit of a different name too but only my closest friends know so far and I'm not sure if I'll be using it irl at all..

96. How did you get your name?

I'm still trying to get my mother to admit that she named me after this song but she keeps denying it.. she's a fan of this band so it would have fit.. but she keeps saying she just liked the name, no long thought process behind it..

my chosen name is a bit of a different story. an ex friend I got to know through yt gave me that nickname almost 10 years ago after I complained that you can't make a shorter nickname out of my birthname and it's also the name of s character I like, especially his voice, and... idk it just feels more gender neutral and I simply feel comfortable with it. it just fit.

100. Color of your room?

same as question 5: Purple 🥰 or... well half the walls are purple, the other half is white

phew... can't believe I made it through all of these....

in case people haven't noticed yet, I'm currently kinda getting back into tumblr? I think I've already stayed a lot longer than any times I tried getting back before. it mostly started because we've got super bad wifi at the clinc I'm at rn and reddit takes up waaayy too much mobile data and... idk, I guess I just missed the vibe of tumblr

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stick around but we'll see

#ask game #answered #I really really do not have any clue how long this has been sitting in my inbox...#the og post was somewhere around december if I saw that correctly (๑•﹏•)#oopsie...#just hope posting goes through snd my 3 hours of hard work weren't for nothing....#edit; posting worked but tumblr messed up the formating...#I'm not gonna bother fixing that because it's late and I need sleep 😭

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the-sanders-sides · 6 years

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inidan american (desi) logan

a sequel to this post because people asked for more and i decided that they shall receive (and also i love writing these)

fair warning, logans a bitter kid, and this isnt as positive and happy as romans post. ive experienced two different ways of being desi, one where i lived in fully asian and indian community and didnt even think id ever feel alone, and another where i moved to a place where i havent met another desi in like 7 years of living here in a 3 hour driving radius. in romans post i played into my first experience and how at home i felt. in the second experience, the one im in right now, i am much more bitter about who i am and not really knowing anyone who gets it anymore. so i play into that A LOT in this. so keep that in mind. (and he will get happier in a future part. m planning on making this into a series)

ok so first off. his name is logan sanders. people (mostly other indians) dont believe him when he tells them. he tells them they dont know indian history. they say they do. he tells them that the british fucked around (quite literally) in india for four centuries so of course english names would stick with that precise wording

sometimes when he’s annoyed enough and doesnt want to explain this for the millionth he defends himself with this russel peters skit (watch it, it’s hilarious) because it describes his family. to a T.

he grew up in a community with not very many asians, and knew no indians outside his family so he felt a sort of disconnect to his culture

while his grandparents and parents would teach him about indian culture, he felt so distant from it since he knew no one outside his family who was indian, and since he didnt have any siblings or any nearby cousins to hang around with

he had visited india once but he was too young to remember it properly or too remember his cousins

the closest mandir was an hour away so that also limited the amount of indian kids/people he knew

he barely knew hindi because everyone in his family spoke english, especially in public

he felt guilty over the disconnect he felt and would always try to bridge it but would never accomplish this because it he kept losing passion since he rarely saw other people like him in the real world and in the media and he didnt see the point of trying

this all changed in eight grade when he moved next door to the Kumar family in a north indian street of some south asian blocks in an asian community

when his family first moved, the Kumar family invited the Sanders over to welcome them

it turns out the Kumar’s had a son who was the same age as logan

“hi logan! im rohan kumar! but i like going by roman instead of rohan!”

this introduction pissed logan off

he was seething because why would this kid who got to have an indian first AND last name change his name to an english one! why didnt he see the value of his name!

he knew right away that such a difference meant they could never be friends

“im logan sanders, but thats all youll get to know about me because i see no use associating myself with someone as... well, ignorant, as you”

roman decides to whip out one of the swears his cousins taught him and whisper shouts “who are you calling ignorant, bhenchod?”

it became clear to him that this was new turf, and people on this new turf must be speaking hindi. and that he was the ignorant one if he couldnt talk in hindi. he made a vow to learn it as fast as he could to make sure this roman kid wasnt better than him

but, logan grits his teeth and says “you, and i know it must be true because you were too dumb to understand me the first time”

this evidently struck a sore spot in roman because he didnt fight back but just stalked away. logan smiled slightly, happy to have won that argument

logan asks his grandpa to teach him hindi and his grandpa gets super excited

they start lessons immediately and despite barely hearing it growing up, it’s as if his brain was made for this because he picks the language up amazingly fast and in a months time, while not able to speak back yet, he can understand most casual conversation

his first diwali in basically little india is the most magical thing ever

diwali at his old home was very quiet because there wasnt anyone around to celebrate with

everyone is so happy in this new home however. everyone is dressed up and all the houses are lit up and there are diyas everywhere and he doesnt want to admit it but the kumar’s have the best rangoli on the street and it’s because of roman and he knows roman did it because sometimes he’d stare out of his bedroom window while doing homework and have a perfect view of roman delicately working on it for two weeks

(the kumar’s front porch had been covered with tarp waiting for diwali to make sure romans precious rangoli wasnt stepped on or ruined. when it’s finally let up, everywhere where there could be art, there is. it’s insane how good at colors roman is, logan thinks)

diwali morning:

he fights his parents because he doesnt want to miss school for diwali because americans dont have a day off for it. his parents set the clocks in the house ahead to make him think he overslept so he would skip school. (logan didnt know that his parents had submitted an excused absence form for religious reasons and that the school was very understanding. he thought it would be like his old school where he wouldnteven bother trying since he wasnt christain and the school was lkinda discriminatory)

they spend the morning in mandir and it’s nice. for once he doesnt feel different from his peers because he goes to mandir and not church or synagogue. he feels at home.

diwali afternoon:

the afternoon is spent with frantic cleaning and cooking and digging around for the diya’s that were still in boxes, packed away from when they moved

logan offered to find them all to continue with a diya science experiment he started two years prior. his theory was that the diya’s were multiplying and there were more each year despite no one buying anymore

this held true, because even though he could only find half of their diya collection, it was somehow more than the entire diya collection of two years prior.

diwali evening:

theres a big potluck and everyone in the neighborhood is out talking to each other, looking at the decorations at everyones houses, eating samosas, and playing with sparklers.

logan feels content

he makes a new resolve to learn more about hinduism. if this is what ti was supposed to be, then he never wanted to be away from hinduism.

he looked at the metaphors and symbolism in everything and finally understood what his dad meant he told logan that hinduism is just science written in poetry and that string theory is written in the ancient texts

middle school in this new town is so much better than middle school in his old home. why?

a. doesnt get bullied for being a nerd

b. doesnt get called gay slurs

c. the classes are harder

d. much less racism

e. all of the above

soon enough, logans asking his grandpa to teach him how to cook Indian food

Logan spends the day burning dosas and making lopsided rotis

(eventually he gets the hang of it, and a he'll be cooking food for an infuriating Indian boy ;) ;) psst it's roman)

Speaking of boys

Coming out isn't an option for logan

He knows that his parents arent really religious enough to really look into hinduism and see that no, gays are not bad

But they are traditional and conservative enough to be homophobic

not homophobic as in spewing hate with the westboro baptist church at a pride parade

But homophobic as in "the gays are fine as long as they don't do it in front of me" kinda thing

So Logan stays quiet

the closet kinda sucks but i mean what can he do

it’s safer inside, and he as illogical as wishing is, he wishes that people would use their brains and realize there’s nothing wrong with gay

anyway

in school logan makes his first desi friend, who was dubbed as anxiety years ago and cant seem to get rid of the nickname and now has a whole complex about his name so logan doesnt know his name

logan and anxiety meet in the school library: logan studying and anxiety hiding

people dont like anxiety

especially non-indian kids

surprise surprise it’s an old buddy called racism, but anxiety’s story is for another time

(but even though no one really likes anxiety, whenever racist shit goes down, it has to go through roman)

so logan and anxiety become fast friends

and they make fun of roman (a+ bonding)

logan claims that roman is a hypocrite for changing his name to an english one while being so immersed in indian culture

anxiety doesnt dispute this, but says he has a past with roman

a past that involved getting stuck with the name anxiety

again, another story for another time

one day, when logan and anxiety are eating lunch they see roman destroy some homophobes who throw around the word f*g and keep calling caitlyn jenner, bruce jenner

logans chest surges

he’s all like “what?? emotions?? pride at roman?? is he better than me for being so open and standing up for what he believes in??”

gay panic basically

but logan masked it well and pushed it away

the next day roman comes to school with a pride patch on his jean jacket

logan feels like he cant breathe

logan is supremely jealous of roman.

he can be gay in peace

he can pretend not to be indian in a way that benefits him

and he’s not affected by stereotypes in the same way?? like what does this kid not have

and by stereotypes i mean

roman is the complete opposite of all indian and desi stereotypes: loud, flamboyant, theatrical

logan’s personality is exactly how the stereotypes are. he’s nerdy and likes science and math and it seems like he cant escape the stereotypes. they follow him. and he feels guilty that he likes science and math and is nerdy.

as illogical as it is, he wishes he was different from how he is

but logan later learns that there are more than just his perspective on being desi and that every desi kid growing up faces challenges about it that are different than his, causing them to experience being desi differently

and logan will accept that, in another story at another time

for now, he’s just bitter. and as illogical as it is, he wishes the world was better

and now, i shall tag some people who asked to be tagged and some other desi’s who loved this because i feel like you guys might appreciate this too. also i love u. desi famders squad up.

@sssixeyedrunt @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @caterpiller-tea @xxxbladeangelxxx @snufflesthegrim227 @cloudchaser7 @thelowlysatsuma

#logan sanders #logince #virgil sanders #roman sanders #desi #desi headcanons #sanders sides #mine #please love this #r #l #v

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redgillan · 7 years

Text

Breaking the Rules - part 4

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Modern!AU You hate James Barnes with a burning passion and the feeling is entirely mutual. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, you are tricked into attending his sister’s wedding as his girlfriend. Stuck with a bunch of strangers, you come up with a set of rules that are not going to last long.

Word Count:1,835

Warnings: the usual more or less

A/N: Fluff! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter :)

Breaking the Rules - Masterpage

You closed the bedroom door behind you, your eyes roaming the room for your bag. Once you saw it, you made a beeline for the small walk-in wardrobe near the window and squatted down. You fished down at the bottom of your bag and pulled out Bucky’s book. Skimming through the pages, you found the page where he mentioned Dot.

I met Dot in high school. We broke up six years ago.

“Okay, not helpful,” you mumbled to yourself.

Huffing out a frustrated breath, you put the book back in your bag when voices caught your attention. The window was slightly open and you could hear Bucky and Henry talking in the garden. When you heard your name, you tried to peek through the window.

As you did, you noticed a telescope mounted on a tripod in the corner of the room. You briefly wondered if he ever used it to spy on his neighbours. You dragged it to the window and aimed the telescope at Bucky.

It took you a moment to adjust the focus to your eyesight, but it was worth the wait. You had a great view of Bucky’s muscular back. Sweat glistened on his sun-kissed skin and you audibly gasped. You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you were unable to look away.

You nearly screamed when your phone vibrated in your back pocket. You dug it out of your pocket and looked at the caller ID before you put it to your ear.

“You scared the crap outta me,” you told her in a hushed whisper.

“Why?”

“Never mind. How are you?”

“I’m okay. How are things between you and Bucky?”

“Um, okay, I guess. We’ve argued, but we haven’t yelled at each other,” you replied while shamelessly gawking at Bucky’s clenching abs.

You paid no attention to Natasha as she went on with her stories. At first, you made some humming noises over the phone, pretending to listen, but after a while you stopped. Bucky, with his broad shoulders and strong thighs, was a sight to behold.

Natasha’s worried voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

“What?” you asked, frustration lacing your voice.

“Why are you breathing so hard?”

“I wasn’t,” you quickly moved away from the telescope as if someone had caught you staring at Bucky.

“Yes, you were. What are you doing?”

“Nothing!”

You tried to keep your cool, but Natasha was a human lie detector. You sat at Bucky’s desk and tried to change the subject because Natasha wasn't going to let the subject drop, as least not until she'd got an answer.

“Do you want to hear something weird? Bucky’s a nerd,” you said, without waiting for her response. “There’s a star chart hung above his bed. A star chart, Nat!”

You smiled as you spun around in the swivel chair. Bucky’s history books were lined up on a shelf above the desk and his board games were collecting dust on top of the dresser.

“You call him by his first name? That’s new.”

“It’s easier. I’m not going to call him Barnes in front of everyone.”

“Huh-uh,” she replied, not convinced. You didn’t want to keep talking about Bucky, you didn’t even want to think about him.

“Anyway, I gotta go, bye!” You hurriedly ended the call.

You didn’t like her tone. Yes, you called Bucky by his first name, but that didn’t mean you suddenly liked him. That didn’t mean anything. Yes, you had observed him from his bedroom window, but you were not checking him out.

Okay, maybe a little.

You threw yourself face down on the bed and groaned. What was going on? Why did you feel so warm and fuzzy inside? You were getting sick, yeah, that was the only rational explanation. You had a stomach bug.

“Why are you groaning?”

Bucky’s voice startled you and you ended up rolling out of bed. You landed on the floor with a loud thump and whined softly. Bucky rushed to your side and snickered when he saw that you were not hurt.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” he said, squatting down next to you. “My dad ordered pizza, try to save me a slice or two.”

He reached down and wrapped his arm around your waist as he helped you to your feet. You mumbled a quiet ‘thank you’ and you both pulled away. You stared at each other in uncomfortable silence until you left the room.

When he came downstairs after his shower, Bucky searched through the pizza boxes, but they were completely empty. Laughter filled his ears and his body tensed when he recognized your laugh.

A strange tingly sensation took root in his belly. It wasn’t a fake laugh, it was a full-out belly laugh. He knew it because he often heard you laughing with Natasha in the kitchen.

You were having fun with his parents and sisters. It surprised him a little, but not as much as the flutter in his chest. Dot never got along with his family and every time she laughed it felt forced, fake.

“Is that Bucky?”

His brows furrowed when he heard you choke back a laugh. He turned around and saw everyone gathered around the sofas. Mary was munching on a slice of pizza, laughing heartily as Becca passed her a photo album.

His eyes widened in horror and he rushed toward his mother, who was sitting beside you.

“I think he was seven. He still took his teddy bear with him everywhere he went,” Winnie answered your question, then turned to her youngest. “Don’t touch the photos with your dirty fingers!”

“Oh, look! The science fair!” Lizzie gave you a picture of a thirteen-year old Bucky holding a blue ribbon with a proud smile.

He was really cute, a little chubbier with slightly crooked teeth and long, dangly limbs. He smiled in every picture; when he won the fifth grade spelling bee, when he stood next to a much smaller Steve, when he took whom you could only assume was Dot to prom –her face had been neatly cut out of the photo.

“What the hell are you doing?” He snatched the album from your hands.

“Taking a walk down memory lane,” Becca replied. “Cheer up, it was mom’s idea. She did it to Henry the first time I brought him here. It’s cute.”

“It’s embarrassing!” Bucky complained.

You awed at loud when Mary handed you a picture of a three-year old Bucky striking a pose, butt naked. Bucky’s neck and ears turned a dark reddish colour. He complained to his mother, but she was having the time of her life.

“Here,” you said, handing him a plate with three slices of pizza you had kept for him. “Eat something.”

He took the plate and stared at you with a disbelieving look. You rolled your eyes, a smile tugging at your lips as you turned your attention to his sisters. Grinning, he stuffed a slice of pizza in his mouth and let out a content groan.

“Woah, guys! Look!” Mary turned a photo toward the crowd. “I got Bucky’s first full-frontal picture!”

He nearly spat out his mouthful and threw himself towards her, trying to snatch the photo from her hand. Lizzie cheered for her sister while you doubled over with peals of laughter.

“I was a child!” Bucky shouted. “Mom! Make them stop!”

His sisters repeated his words in a funny, whiny voice. He finally took the photo and pressed it against his chest. He straightened himself, his chest rising and falling with gasping breaths.

“You all suck!” he said before he bolted out of the room.

Later, when his father went to bed and everyone had calmed down, you were worried that you had angered him. No one knew where he was, but they didn’t seem worried. Winnie guessed he was sulking somewhere.

You found him outside, sitting on the porch swing. He quickly hid his hand, then relaxed when he saw you. You walked over and took a seat beside him.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Don’t tell my mom,” he panicked.

You rolled your eyes. “We’re not children, Bucky. I’m not going to say anything.”

“Thanks.” He took a long, slow drag on his cigarette.

You would never admit it, not even under torture, but it made him look good. The way his long, slender fingers held the cigarette. The way the planes of his jaw and cheekbones seemed sharp enough to cut through skin.

“I quit three years ago. I found these in an old hiding place, they’re stale, but...” He finished with a casual shrug.

“It’s bad for you.”

“Thanks, doctor, you’re very wise.”

That made you laugh and he seemed a little surprised. “You’re dumb,” you replied, a smile on your lips.

He looked at you for a moment and you pretended not to notice the way his eyes were lingering. “Yes, I am.”

He put out his cigarette and an awkward silence settled between you. Bucky pushed his feet against the wooden porch floor, moving the swing slowly.

“I’ll do my best tomorrow,” you broke the silence. “Your sisters told me what Dot did to you.”

Bucky sighed, annoyed.

“They meant well,” you cut him off before he could say anything. “And you literally wrote nothing about Dot in your book. You did, however, wrote five pages about pizza.”

“What can I say? I love pizza.”

“Dork.”

There was another beat of silence, not that awkward this time.

“Thank you,” Bucky said. He sounded a bit weird, as if he was trying to sound sincere, but didn’t know how to do it without embarrassing himself. “I know you had better things to do this weekend and being stuck with me is a nightmare, but I appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Natasha kinda forced me, but I’m having fun. It’s nice to get out of the city. I haven’t seen a tree in a while,” you joked, then softened your voice. “It’s going to be okay. We can do this.”

You held out your closed fist and waited for Bucky’s bigger one to bump it. He did it and shook his head at your antics.

“Okay, I’m gonna go to bed. I need my beauty sleep.”

You glared at him when he opened his mouth, most likely to throw another clever comeback at you. You gave a satisfied nod when he pretended to zip his mouth shut.

“You coming?”

“Not yet.”

You twisted your mouth into a small pout. “I thought I had managed to cheer you up.”

“I’m okay,” he assured you. “It’s just... I don’t want to run into my mom, I smell like smoke.”

You laughed. “Good luck, then.”

You were fast asleep when Bucky returned to his bedroom. He lay down on his sleeping bag and tried to get some sleep. He couldn’t, he was twitchy. All night long his mind had raced with a flood of memories of his relationship with Dot.

He wasn’t ready.

Part 5

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes imagines #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader #marvel imagine #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky fic #bucky fanfic #bucky fanfiction #redgillan #redgillanwrites #breaking the rules

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izanyas · 7 years

Text

Build Upon The Ruins (4)

More Pacific Rim Soukoku fic! (Unbeta’d this time, sorry for the probable typos and mistakes.)

Rating: M Words: 8,000 Warnings: vomiting, very vague mention of pedophilia, murder by strangulation.

[Read from Chapter 1]

Build Upon The Ruins Chapter 4

Chuuya was sixteen years old when every government in the world made drift-testing mandatory.

It shouldn't have changed anything for him at all. He was two years too young to test, far enough from the watchful eye of the law that no one cared to make sure he did, and those who could drift at all were rare. Zero point zero one percent of the population. By all logic nothing should have changed. He should have kept living alongside his organization and watched from afar as men and women from all over the world piloted giant robots to fight giant aliens. He should have stayed part of the ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent.

It shouldn't have affected him at all, except that when Ozaki Kouyou tested, it turned out she could drift.

Chuuya had never had any family before meeting her. He hadn't had any parent or sibling to smile with. The law didn't allow forceful enlistment into jaeger programs, but Kouyou was a criminal; she was given the choice of either joining in or being put in jail, and Chuuya was left alone either way.

He was furious.

Other than the fact that his sister found herself dragged halfway across the world to undergo a training she didn't want, there was the fact that, in her absence, Ace became the boss of him.

Chuuya hated the obsequious bastard with a burning passion. Ace hated him about as much. He found himself tasked with the lowest and most dangerous jobs of his organization, many of which he thought Ace meant to end with his murder. Chuuya stayed alive mostly out of spite between the calls Kouyou was allowed to give him.

He was seventeen when he decided to get the tattoos, and he didn't have his group in mind when he picked blue hydrangea for the design; only the blurred memory of Kouyou's face, his own restless anger, and how much heavier the perspective of the world's end felt with no family to die with.

Chuuya tested three months after his eighteenth birthday. A year and a half after Kouyou's departure. He queued alongside bright-eyed high schoolers who each bragged about knowing a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a pilot, who muttered about telekinesis and mind control, who spoke of conspiracies. Chuuya waited for his turn inside the white stall in the city hall's meeting room and let rage consume him, breath after breath, blink after blink. Until every drop of his blood was molten with it.

A woman dressed in pink took his outdated ID with disdain. A man dressed in white sat him down inside a plastic chair before rubbing cold gel over his forehead. Chuuya was still when the glinting device was put onto his head.

"Try to make that arm move," the man said in complete boredom.

He pointed toward a metallic appendage on the table next to them, plugged all the way through with various cables, linked to the thing Chuuya wore almost as a hat.

Chuuya didn't know how he was supposed to. He lifted his own arm.

Nothing happened.

The man wrote something down on his pad with absolute lack of surprise on his face. He said, "Thank you for coming," with the air of someone who would have forgotten so much as Chuuya's existence in this life by the time he would walk out of the door, and all the soft air in Chuuya's lungs sizzled and burned.

He threw his fist forward. The metallic arm sitting two feet away from him flew up and broke the man's nose.

They didn't have to threaten him to get him to enlist. He knew getting into the program was his only chance of seeing Kouyou again. Chuuya was driven from Tokyo to Yokohama that same night, and he withstood training for months in the wide black hangar there, talking to no one, not even any of the men and women training alongside him. The few who tried to approach him—most notably a girl named Sasaki who wanted to talk drift psychology with him, of all things—he ignored.

Luckily, he was good at the training.

He got used to the feeling of solo drifts, just him and the simulation cockpit. He got used to letting his mind escape through cables and meeting the cold unfeeling presence of a machine at the other end. He killed fake kaiju on a wide screen with vicious ferocity. He kept up his own personal training until all who sparred with him got too scared to do it again. He walked along Yokohama's jaeger dock with his arms bare so that they could either admire the lacework of blue flowers running along his skin or fear it.

His life stayed like this until the six month mark: train, ignore people, obey instructions, train, call Kouyou in America, train. Ignore people.

And then—

"This is wrong," he told his simulation instructor, Natsume.

He was maybe the only person here whom Chuuya mostly tolerated. Chuuya could obey orders regardless of his personal feelings—Ace had driven him into the ground and left him there to bleed, and Chuuya had never once rebelled against him, after all—but it was always easier when someone was agreeable.

Natsume looked at the charts Chuuya was pointing to with thoughtful eyes. "I don't see how, Nakahara-kun."

The -kun was part of the reason Chuuya liked Natsume so much. He was too often referred to simply by his last name—a name he had long stopped using for himself. He wished Natsume would just call him Chuuya.

"It says I'm second in simulation scores. I'm never second in simulation scores."

"Well," Natsume replied, and he looked amused. "It seems this time you were."

Chuuya frowned. "Bullshit," he declared. "I still hold the overall record. Who the fuck did better than me this week?"

"You know I'm not allowed to give you the other trainees' personal results—"

"That would be me," someone said into his ear.

Chuuya turned on his heels with his fist raised—and it was caught promptly, easily, by the boy standing behind him.

The boy took a second to stare at the tattoos with curiosity. This in itself was nothing new. His grip tightened when Chuuya tried to pull away, though, making the already simmering irritation in Chuuya build up into a boil.

"Who the fuck are you?" he growled, though he knew who the boy was. He had seen him training just as he did. He was one of the precious few who could drift, just like Chuuya.

The boy's thumb stroked over the inside of his wrist lightly, right above the last of the heart-shaped petals. Right above his pulse.

"My name is Dazai," he replied, dropping Chuuya's arm at last. Chuuya didn't acknowledge the goosebumps that the his fingers had left over his skin. "And you are the one who's been hogging the best simulation scores for the past few months. It was a pain to beat you, you know."

"That's the point, you moron."

Dazai smiled coldly.

"If you're quite done," Natsume said—Chuuya almost jumped, having forgotten all about his presence. "I need to go talk with the big boss."

He left them like this, staring at each other, Chuuya's weekly results strewn over the table between them.

Dazai didn't seem to mind that they were confidential. His eyes roamed over the numbers, his mouth twitching once he reached the lines detailing Chuuya's strategy training. Then he looked at Chuuya again.

And he said, "I didn't know they made kid-sized stations. It's a wonder your legs even reach the footholds."

"Fuck off," Chuuya snapped, advancing toward Dazai with a look he knew could make grown men cower. "Get out of my face before I punch you out of it."

Dazai didn't move an inch. He smirked down at him with the same dead-eyed hollowness.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Chuuya," Chuuya said between his teeth.

"No last name?"

"You didn't give me one."

"Dazai is my last name." Dazai's grin grew. Chuuya's lower back shuddered with revulsion. "Fine then. Chuuya. Let's see if you can grab back that title of yours, yeah?"

His name had stretched into Dazai's mouth like pulled candy, sweet and tooth-rotting.

Chuuya sealed the deal by showing Dazai exactly how far his legs could reach when he kicked hard enough.

He barely lived through the month that followed, pushing himself even harder than before. Climbing back to top simulation scores only satisfied him until Dazai literally destroyed his record, so Chuuya focused on strategy hard enough to finally reach the same digits that the other flew by. There was no need to ask for names for the anonymous numbers on Natsume's charts. Chuuya knew who the only one who to ever top his was.

It could've gone on for a longer time. Maybe even the full year until the batch of newly-made jaegers that they were supposed to try out were ready. They could've kept souring their rivalry into something darker, into true and virulent hatred. Chuuya had enough anger stored in him then to last him millennia.

Instead, by coincidence or fate, several things tipped the scale.

First, Kouyou came to Yokohama. Chuuya was there to meet her the moment her car parked in front of the building, walking steadily toward her and crushing her into a hug under his instructors' bewildered staring and the heavier weight of Dazai's unreadable eyes; she hugged right back, her face shoved into his hair and her shoulders shaking under his hands.

She was already a pilot. He had known that. He had seen her exploits in the news, had spied on communications every time she was deployed—Dazai had sat next to him in silence the last time he did, because they had been in the middle of arguing when the news of an attack had come. He had followed Chuuya into the hub and not said a word until the kaiju fell and Chuuya's shoulders dropped, at last.

The second and more important thing was that, not even two weeks after that attack, another happened. In Yokohama.

Chuuya wasn't supposed to pilot yet. He wasn't even supposed to test pilot yet, not this soon into training. But one member of the duo that were supposed to break in the brand new black jaeger stored in the dock's depths had fallen down stairs and broken his wrist, and so the giant stood unused.

Kouyou and her partner were overwhelmed.

It was a terrifying thing, that kaiju. One of the lightest but one of the tallest. Nicknamed Hayate, it stood like a flightless bat, electric blue eyes gleaming in the dead of the night, steaming saliva dripping between its giant teeth. The membrane linking its fore and hind legs moved the air to record speed, causing damage not unlike hurricanes.

Chuuya didn't know what to do when he was requisitioned to step into the jaeger except obey. He stood unseeing, almost unbreathing, as they dressed him all in black, the suit ill-fitted but all that they had on hand. He let himself be led into the cockpit and strapped down at the right side of it. The side he would control, he was told. And he said nothing.

He said nothing, until he found out that Dazai was the one being strapped at his left.

"Wait," he breathed out. The man securing his feet didn't answer, and Chuuya spoke louder, "Wait. Hang on. I'm not drift compatible with him."

"You're both the best we have on hand. He's your most likely match in the system," the man replied tensely.

"No. What the—no way." Chuuya shook in the harnesses, but he couldn't free himself, not alone. Dazai wasn't saying anything. "Oh come on," Chuuya said to him, terror driving his voice to a shout, "you can't be fucking serious. Find someone else, we're not going to make this thing move, we don't have time, Kouyou—"

The last of the clasps shut harshly against his back, making him wheeze.

Then everyone left. The cockpit closed. It was just Chuuya and Dazai in the jaeger's body. Chuuya heaved through the panic unfurling in his guts, barely managing to hold his breath as the drift gel washed over his face from inside the sleek helmet he wore. He sputtered as soon as the liquid ran below his mouth.

"Initiating neural handshake in twenty seconds," a voice said in his ear.

Chuuya struggled against his bonds. It changed nothing except for the loud noises of it, echoing back against the metal lining of the jaeger's head.

"Come on!" he roared. "You're wasting your time!"

"Fifteen seconds—"

"Fucking—Dazai, I swear to God, help me get out of—"

"Don't you have faith in me, shorty?" Dazai said. Those were the first words he had spoken since stepping into the machine.

"You're a genius, you fucking tell me!" Chuuya yelled at him. "It'll take hours to reset the drift once this fucking joke fails, and Kouyou—" he choked, eyes burning, all air gone.

Kouyou wouldn't last hours. Her jaeger, Golden Man, was already badly damaged. No other machine was on hand.

"Ten seconds."

"Who is she anyway?" Dazai asked. He sounded somber in a different way than usual—almost as if he were wary. "Who is she to you?"

"She's," Chuuya tried.

The words clogged in his throat. Tears spilled out of his eyes.

"Seven seconds."

"She's my sister," he rasped out. "She's my friend. She's the only family I have."

Dazai looked at him with no cruel laughter in his brown eyes. No smarting comment whipping off of his tongue.

"Three seconds."

"Then," he said quietly. "Let's make this work, Chuuya."

"Neural handshake initiated."

Chuuya was thrown out of his own mind, out of his own body; but this time it wasn't cold unfeeling metal waiting for him at the other end.

It was the shiver of a breath in his ear and the stroke of fingertips at his wrist.

Distantly, he was aware that the speed at which the connection took on was abnormal, but he couldn't care. Not when he felt Dazai's lungs expand every time he took in a breath; not when he felt Dazai's own surprise and wonder match his like a mirror. Chuuya closed his eyes to focus on the flickering images unfolding through their shared mind and grabbed greedily at the ones he knew weren't his—except they were, now. They were his.

It would be a long time before he was able to put words onto what exactly shifted in his very essence the moment he felt the first brush of Dazai's mind against his. His entire life felt insignificant in the face of Dazai's heart and memories; he felt Dazai feel the same about him, felt him plunge into his mind to relive pain and love and loss alike and soak himself with them until his soul was gorged.

Chuuya had no conscience of physicality anymore. He didn't see, didn't taste, didn't touch; Dazai gasped, and it was Chuuya gasping. When he blinked, Dazai blinked. His grief became Dazai's, Dazai's anger his own.

All the lonely, wounded rage he had accumulated through his life flickered out and healed.

He would learn, later, that the drift stabilized near-instantly. So fast that at first the people monitoring them thought it hadn't worked at all.

Chuuya saw Dazai's life unfold in flashes and knowledge burn itself into his brain as if he had lived through all that Dazai lived. He saw himself run away from an unloving home and into the streets of Yokohama, saw himself meet the man who helped around an orphans' home, saw himself con people out of their money for amusement and need alike. He saw himself smile at a girl and then fall into bed with her for the first time. He saw himself meet the man who had threatened to close the orphanage and looked at Odasaku's children with unspeakable vice in his eyes—saw himself murder him before he could lay a finger on them. Felt his hands squeeze the breath out of Mori Ougai until he was blue and cold. Chuuya rose above the dead body, burdened with no remorse; he was Dazai realizing, in that moment, how little he deserved to call himself human.

He was Dazai getting dragged away by the police. He was Dazai being put into a testing chair and offered the same ultimatum that Kouyou had been given. He was Dazai hacking into the jaeger dock's system to find the name of the one who kept beating him at the only thing he was allowed to do anymore. He was Dazai, meeting Chuuya's eyes for the first time and thinking, He's cute. Fleeting and innocent.

Chuuya breathed, and he was Dazai breathing, and these were the first breaths either of them had drawn.

"Can you move it, boys?" the faraway voice of Natsume came through their helmets, rough with excitement. "This is incredible—I've never seen a first drift like this—"

The thought that they couldn't never occurred to them at all.

They moved their right arm, and the jaeger moved with them.

They took Hayate down in an hour.

Natsume led them to a single room with bunk beds once they came out of the medical ward. It was wider than the tiny quarters Chuuya and Dazai had occupied with the other trainees, with its own bathroom and kitchen.

"You're pilots now," Natsume said proudly. "Though you're not supposed to be until another year… well, anyway. You need to be ready quickly the next time we need you on the field—the alarm is really loud in here, you'll have to get used to waking up to it. I'll leave you to rest."

He patted their shoulders and left.

"I'm taking the top bed," Chuuya said immediately.

"By all means," Dazai replied—he sounded so smug that Chuuya thought he would have felt his lips twitch regardless of the awareness that still floated between them. "I don't want to end up like the last man you skewered."

"Shut it. I just don't want to hear the damn thing creak every time you wake up, you fucking insomniac."

Dazai turned his head to grin at him, and Chuuya had never seen him look like that, but he knew this smile all the same. It was the kind of smile Dazai reserved for only one other person.

Affection fit into the lines of Dazai's face like it was always meant to be there. In the low light of their room it was easier to see that his hair was brown instead of black, that it fell strikingly softly around his face despite the sweat and effort of the last hours. There was laughter to be found behind the stone-cold mask Dazai harbored around those who didn't know him. There was humanity, contrary to what Dazai thought.

This was the person who had witnessed Chuuya's life and felt only kinship. This was the the boy whose mind Chuuya had felt latch onto the drift with desperate abandon the second it was turned off, as if he never wanted Chuuya to leave again; who had felt Chuuya latch back in turn as if trying to reach through uncrossable distance and touch their fingers together for just one more second.

Chuuya let himself smile back, hesitant and thrilled, and Dazai's eyes lit with wonder.

He understood, right then, that he had never known anyone before. Not like this. He stood wordless in the only home he had a claim to, however reluctant a claim it was; and as he let the whispers of a connection that no two humans should ever share bleed out, he realized that he would never again know someone.

"Now," Dazai said, watching him greedily. "This is a sight for sore eyes."

Hello, Chuuya thought, heart shaking.

It was Dazai's voice he heard whispering back.

It's so good to meet you.

Nakahara hadn't smiled once since Double Black's test drift. Not even in that mean way of his that always made whoever it was directed to feel like the inside of a sewer. Kouyou stood between him and Yosano, and Nakahara didn't answer even her concerned glances, however tentative they were.

Yosano didn't think it was a good idea to take him with them to the labs, all things considered. But it was protocol that Kouyou's second be by her side for things like this, even if he hadn't been family to her; and Nakahara would demand an explanation if she did try to stop him, and end up unhappy anyway. Yosano could only think of one person whose conversation might be able to help with that, but Dazai had disappeared from everyone's vicinity the moment he had peeled off his suit.

The words she had said to Kunikida to try and soothe him still lingered in her head.

She felt a first tug of apprehension in her stomach when she approached the door to the labs, Kouyou beside her, Nakahara hanging slightly behind. The lights were dimmed despite the late hour. Kajii was always making some sort of noise inside that could be heard down the hallway, be it from moving around or listening to music loudly.

Yet now there was only silence.

Yosano opened the door carefully. The reason for the darkness was easily found—only the lamp sitting on Kajii's main desk was lit, its orange glow barely reaching through the entire width of the room, never mind the cabinets and tall piles of boxes that stood in its path.

"Kajii?" she called.

She saw Kouyou tense from the corner of her eyes when no one answered. It was enough to drag Nakahara out of his own thoughts and make him lift his head with a frown. He stepped ahead of them quickly, and that was when Yosano heard it, right as he started to walk around a tower of thick folders sitting on a low table—panting, quiet and hurried, like someone going through panic.

She felt her heartbeat spike the second Nakahara growled out, "Fuck," dropping his cane on the floor and limping into the shadows as fast as he could.

"Chuuya!" Kouyou gasped.

She ran after him—Yosano couldn't do anything but follow despite the well-known panic surrounding her, the one she thought she had mastered long ago, when the Double Black pilots' broken bodies had been dragged in front of her helpless hands.

Kajii was convulsing in a wooden chair next to the tall glass tube holding the kaiju's brain. She got there in time to see Nakahara rip the drift helmet off of his head and lift him out of his seat—it wasn't until he looked at her with fury and pain twisting his features and yelled, "Help me!" that she realized he was shaking too.

She ran the way between them to take the brunt of Kajii's weight out of his hands and help him down to the floor, mind protesting both the sight of Kajii's blood-stained face and that of Nakahara falling to his knees—God, the pain he must be in—

"He's seizing," Nakahara panted. "Shit—"

Kajii's limbs were flailing, his torso rising and falling abruptly. Nakahara reached over his body in front of Yosano's unresponsive hands to turn him to his side, one palm under Kajii's skull, the other resting over his shoulder carefully as it jumped.

Yosano couldn't move. She knelt with her mouth open and her mind in a daze, fear battling away confusion to roam through her and lock everything down.

It was Kouyou who pushed her away to relieve Nakahara in making sure Kajii stayed on his side. Nakahara hunched forward immediately, catching himself on his hands, shaking through all of his body. He was white as a sheet.

"Chuuya," Kouyou said hurriedly, "you need to sit down. You need to get off your leg."

Nakahara was heaving now, still paralyzed in his kneeling position. "I can't," he let out—Yosano saw the panic settle onto his sweat-slick face like it had inside her chest, saw him realize that he feared the pain of moving more than he feared the agony of staying as he was.

She barely heard the sound of more footsteps hurrying toward them, didn't notice that someone had joined them at all until Dazai was dropping down next to Nakahara and grabbing him by the middle. Nakahara shouted when he was pulled sideways, the sound of his voice ripping through the room and pulsing through Yosano's chest.

He turned away from Dazai the second he was on his backside and retched bile and saliva until he was completely dry. Dazai was silent as he waited it out; he fitted his knees behind Nakahara's back, held his shoulders so he wouldn't fall into his own sick. When Nakahara was finally able to take in a breath without his stomach trying to turn itself inside out, Dazai guided him down and laid him flat onto the floor.

He was pale too.

"Yosano," he said evenly, still looking at Nakahara. Nakahara's eyes were closed now, his chest still shaking, sweat beading at his temples. "Kajii."

The name pierced through her like an arrow.

Kajii was almost done convulsing. She loosened his collar and belt with trembling hands, keeping an eye on his breathing and the way his eyes moved. The blood on his face seemed to have come out of his nose rather than anything more worrying—it was nothing she hadn't seen coming out of failed drifts. His eyes were red, but not leaking anything other than tears.

Finally, his shoulders sagged, and he stilled.

"Kajii," Kouyou said, probably understanding that Yosano couldn't speak yet. "Can you hear me?"

He hummed, mumbling something close enough to Boss to be satisfying.

Kouyou sighed in relief. "I'm going to ask you a few questions, okay? Just to see if everything's working right."

"M'kay."

Yosano blocked out the sounds of Kouyou's firm coaxing to redirect her focus onto Nakahara.

He was still laying flat onto the ground, though Dazai had apparently used the few moments she hadn't been looking to shove his jacket under his head as a makeshift pillow. His eyes were open now, his breathing still chaotic.

"How bad?" she made herself ask, crouching by his side.

Dazai had put a hand over his chest as if to keep him from rising. With how hesitant his hold was, it just looked as though he were trying to feel him breathe.

Nakahara took a long time to steady himself to speak. "It's fine," he said with effort. "The worst is over."

"Don't give me that crap, Nakahara—"

"If you wanted to help you shouldn't have fucking frozen up," he yelled.

Her throat tightened. Her mind was clear enough to feel guilt, now, and it settled like ice into her belly.

"Did you know he was gonna do this?" Nakahara pressed on, angry now instead of pained. "Did you allow this, Yosano?"

"He said he wouldn't do it on his own," was all she could reply.

He moaned, either from how badly his leg shook or from how horrified he was.

Eventually the noise died down. Kajii's voice turned to silence, his breathing evened out. Nakahara's did as well, and he tried to sit up—only to be stopped by Dazai's hand on his chest. He glared at him with his jaw clenched.

Whatever silent exchange happened between them then only lasted a second. Dazai's fingers shivered on the fabric of Nakahara's shirt before drifting away, and Nakahara pushed himself up with his left hand until he was sitting upright. At least he didn't try to stand; Yosano wasn't sure he even could, right now.

Kajii had rolled over to his back despite Kouyou's obvious disapproval. He looked giddy.

"I did it," he breathed. "I did it."

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Nakahara spat out immediately—Kajii flinched, but Nakahara either didn't care or was too tired to show it. "What in the world gave you the idea of drifting with a—a kaiju brain?"

"Oh God," Kajii said, eyes snapping wide open. "I need to write everything down."

He was jumping to his feet next—Yosano almost shouted at him to stop, and Kouyou as well, but he merely wavered in place for a moment before running to his desk.

The next minute was spent in utter silence aside from the scratching of Kajii's pens and papers. Dazai shifted from his knees to his backside on the floor, still close enough to Nakahara that he would catch him if he fell. Nakahara wasn't looking at him, though; he was staring at the floor, face white, biting his lips.

Kajii straightened from his lean over the desk and announced, "I need to do it again."

"No," Nakahara replied.

"I'd also advise against it," Dazai said almost in the same breath.

"You don't understand," Kajii continued, febrile. "This is so—this is so—"

He was waving his papers around, and his nose was bleeding again—Yosano pushed herself to her feet and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, pushing him down into a chair. She pulled his head back and said, "Hold your damn nose, Kajii."

"Listen," he spoke, though he obeyed the order and pinched the bridge of his nose while Yosano went to fetch her bag for some cotton. "We were right—the kaiju, they're not real aliens. They're almost like machines."

"What do you mean?" Kouyou murmured.

"Ane-san," Nakahara said sharply.

She and Kajii both ignored him. "The ones creating them… they know exactly what they're doing. This isn't just a random bunch of attacks from creatures who happen to stumble into our world—they're waging war on us. They're colonizers." Kajii took in a deep breath, choking a little when Yosano shoved cotton up his nose but thankfully not complaining. She didn't feel sturdy enough to deal with complaints. "They hop from planet to planet once they've exhausted the resources. They were already here once as a test run—dinosaurs!" he yelled, making all of them jump. "That was them!"

"You got all of that from drifting with a war machine?" Nakahara questioned, bitter.

"Their minds are all connected," Kajii replied dreamily. "I went so far back… everything's already slipping away, drifting is so inconvenient."

Yosano saw all three of them flinch at the same time—Kouyou, Nakahara, Dazai. She said nothing.

"Oh. Oh, shit," Kajii said. He massaged his forehead, breath coming in quicker once more. "The kaiju they've been sending so far were just small fry. Boss," he added, turning toward where Kouyou sat, "they're planning double and triple events like I thought, and they're planning them soon. Category four kaiju and higher."

"They're done playing with us," Kouyou muttered. She rose to her feet as well. "What about the breach? Did you find out anything—"

"Enough," Yosano cut in, eyeing the way Kajii's eyelids drooped. "He just had a damn seizure, Kouyou."

"The breach will stabilize," Kajii replied regardless. "I was right about that too. But there was… there was something…" He clenched his teeth against the headache that had no doubt been ringing through his temple all this time. "I need a new kaiju brain. I need to drift with it again and make sure—"

"I'm done listening to this shit," Nakahara said.

They all turned to look at him.

He had dragged his left knee back toward his chest. Dazai was rising as well, and in the few seconds it took Yosano to understand what was going on, he had crossed the distance to where Nakahara has dropped his cane and then come back. Her protest died on her lips at the look Nakahara gave her. He allowed Dazai to help him up and then pushed him away, leaning on the cane with all the strength left in him.

"I don't need to hear this," he repeated, voice strained. "Do whatever the fuck you want if it'll help us win, but I never want to hear about it again, Kouyou. Not a word."

"I understand," Kouyou said sadly.

Nakahara lifted his right hand to his face and rubbed the back of it against his lips shakily. "Drifting with a kaiju," he muttered. "I can't believe anyone would—"

He stopped, sucking in another heaving breath, as if he were about to hunch over and retch again. Dazai stood still and silent by his side, but Yosano thought she could read the same nausea on his features anyway. The same bone-deep horror.

They left without another word, Nakahara limping badly, Dazai shadowing him without touching him.

"Well," Yosano said, throat tight. "That could've gone better."

Kajii emitted a deep snore behind her. When she turned around to look at him, he had fallen asleep as he was, head craned back as far as it would go.

Kouyou rubbed her face with one hand as she approached. The other came to rest above the quickly-scribbled notes that Kajii had taken, and she eyed them thoughtfully.

Yosano very much wanted to hold her.

As if reading her thoughts, she asked, "Are you all right?"

Yosano sat on the very edge of the desk, feet still touching the floor. "I'm fine," she replied.

"You looked…"

"Yeah." She swallowed painfully. "I, I'm so sorry, I don't know what—"

"Akiko."

Yosano's eyes burned. She shoved her fingers under her glasses to catch the wetness before it could roll down her face.

"Oh, darling," Kouyou whispered. There was a shuffle of feet against the dusty floor, and then warmth, the soft of Kouyou's arm wrapping around Yosano's frame to hold her as she tried to bite back sobs, as she gasped into her palms. "It's okay. Nothing bad happened."

Yosano breathed, "I don't know why I…" She couldn't finish, but it didn't matter; her lips dug into the curve of Kouyou's neck, her arms coming up to hold her back as she breathed into her skin.

"You've gone through great lengths to make sure you would never be faced with surprise emergencies again," Kouyou said against her temple. "And you snapped out of it quickly enough. You have nothing to blame yourself for."

Nakahara's accusations echoed through Yosano's head—the sight of him panting on the floor, wrecked with pain, pale and shaking. "He was so angry," she let out.

"He was in pain." Kouyou's fingers ran through her hair gently. "Chuuya doesn't blame you. He'll apologize to you as soon as he's calmed down."

They didn't stay like this for long. Yosano was never much of a crier; her eyes had dried almost as soon as they had wetted, and her breath was settling down, matching Kouyou's against her chest. Kouyou took her hands back, and Yosano let go of her so she could step away.

For a second longer they both breathed in the stale air and thought.

"Kajii said something about the breach," Yosano said at last.

Kouyou nodded, looking at the man himself, still asleep in his chair. "We can't afford to let that slide," she replied.

"So you'll let him do it again."

She made a face, about as disgusted as Nakahara's had been. In that moment they truly looked the part of siblings. "I don't want to," she admitted. "The thought of using the drift to connect with a kaiju is…"

Her sentence trailed off without an end.

Kouyou was not as silent as Dazai and Nakahara were about her memories as a pilot. Yosano could recall countless nights spent talking about it; countless times being woken up by the way Kouyou's lungs stilled in the nightmare-memory of her once-partner's death. She didn't talk about Fukuzawa easily—she had never shared with Kouyou what she had glimpsed of the mysterious man's life.

But she talked about what it had felt like to share thoughts with him. She had spoken of their quiet friendship, born out of her loneliness and out of his compassion, with a smile on her face. She still mourned him now, five years after his death. Yosano knew she would always mourn him.

She had loved him deeply.

"We can't let this slide now that we know something might prevent us from attacking," Kouyou said softly. "We only have one shot at this."

"The brain is fried, though," Yosano replied, gesturing to the tall glass tube. The thing in it that hadn't stopped squirming earlier during the day now rested at the bottom, still as stone. Its color had gone from white to grey. "How are we gonna get our hands on a live kaiju brain? It's a miracle Kajii got one at all. These things never survive out of the body for long."

Kouyou was silent for a moment, looking thoughtful. This close to the orange glow of the desk lamp her hair and lips almost glowed, stark against the pallor of her skin. In the end she sighed and took something out of her breast pocket, handing it over.

It was a card. At first Yosano thought it blank, but then the light shifted on it—a motif appeared in a light shade of green. Crossed guns in a circle.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Something I've been meaning not to use," Kouyou replied wryly. "You know there's a black market for all sorts of kaiju parts, don't you?"

"Yeah. They sell fifty grams of useless bone powder for about five thousand dollars."

"Profit never stops, not even in the face of certain doom." Kouyou gave a chuckle at that. "Well, there's a man here, Fitzgerald, who has his hands into all sorts of pockets. If anyone can get us a kaiju brain, it's him."

"That doesn't sound very legal," Yosano said, looking up from the card.

"It's not," Kouyou replied. "But it's not like we're being funded by legal means anymore."

Yosano stepped away from the desk and pocketed the card. "Will he agree to help us?" she asked.

"He owes me one, but he's not trustworthy."

She made her way to where Kouyou stood, glancing briefly at Kajii to make sure he was still dead to the world. Once she reached her she slipped a hand behind her nape, pulling her head down until the few inches of difference between their heights was no more.

Kouyou kissed her warmly, dry lips to dry lips, her fingers coming to stroke against Yosano's cheek as if the world wasn't ending around them. As if they could ever afford to have a love like this.

It was the only thing they both tempted fate with.

Yosano's face was flushed when she pulled away, her mouth tingling, but she felt calmer than she had in hours. "I'll go," she whispered against Kouyou's chin. "As soon as I'm done making sure this idiot didn't give himself brain damage."

Kouyou nodded, cheeks dimpling around her smile. "Be careful," she replied.

Chuuya wanted nothing more when he finally reached his quarters than to let himself fall onto the bed and pass out.

The mere thought of the pain that the impact on his mattress would cause almost made tears build into his eyes, though; so instead he reached down with his weak hand to support his weight, regardless of the phantom aches coming alive in his back and shoulders, and let himself sit carefully. He didn't think he would even be able to undress for the night.

Dazai closed the door behind them and made his way to Chuuya's desk in silence. He turned the chair around and sat down, facing him, half of his face drowned in shadow. Neither of them had thought to turn on the lights.

"How do you feel?" he asked conversationally.

"Why are you even here?" Chuuya said instead of answering.

His right leg burned from ankle to knee. His thigh shook even as it was, resting atop the bed, and his temple was flaring with remembered pain. So was the rest of his body, truth be told.

His morning exercises were going to be a blast.

"I was brooding in the storage room. Heard you yelling." Dazai didn't even have the decency to look ashamed about it. "I'm glad I picked this hiding spot instead of the one on the tenth floor."

"I'd be glad if you stopped acting like a child," Chuuya said between his teeth.

The jab was cheap, and Dazai didn't laugh at it. He just leaned back into the chair and glanced at the locked drawer of Chuuya's desk for a second too long.

Chuuya looked away. His rooms were some of the best situated in the base; Yokohama's harbor unfolded under its window and gave out to the endless sea. It had thrived, once, with ships from all over the world. Now at least the sound of the waves remained.

The last few minutes came back to him in a rush.

"Fuck," Chuuya breathed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "I yelled at Yosano."

"She kind of deserved it."

"No, she didn't." He inhaled slowly. "It's not her fault she panics with stuff like this. And it's not her fault Kajii decided to go ahead and—"

He couldn't finish. The thought alone, the idea itself of using the drift with a kaiju felt like heresy. It felt like violation. Nausea crawled up Chuuya's neck until he thought he would puke again—knew he would have if his stomach weren't already empty, his mind too bruised and exhausted from the events of the day to be horrified any more.

He really hadn't been as prepared as he had thought to witness Dazai open his mind to someone else.

Chuuya swallowed, breathing deeply to calm his nerves. Then he asked: "What the hell happened during the test?"

Dazai didn't answer.

Chuuya looked back at him and found him reclining as far as he would go, expression bored with the sort of emptiness he hadn't worn in years.

"Dazai," he said.

"Nothing especially surprising," Dazai cut in. He was staring at the darkened ceiling. "The usual sort of rookie mistake. We got it under control before anything happened, so it's no big deal."

"Don't give me that crap," Chuuya replied, irritation and something else he refused to give name to catching on his voice—ugly, burning, restless. "You were the one chasing the RABBIT at the end. You've never done that before."

"There's a first time for everything. It won't happen again."

"I want to know why it happened at all."

Dazai lowered his head, and Chuuya didn't need light to know that their eyes were meeting across the ever-growing space between them.

"I guess I'm just not used to it anymore," he lied.

Chuuya's fingers dug into the fabric of his bedspread until the pressure was uncomfortable, tugging harshly at his nails, and still the crushing pain in his leg didn't abate. "You were holding back," he accused, voice low.

"You know that's not possible."

"Do I?" Now his palm hurt, too, and Chuuya took it off of the mattress before he ripped holes into the sheets. "It's the only reason I can think of. You were resisting the drift. It shouldn't have taken ten seconds for you and Kunikida to stabilize, not with how compatible you are."

Dazai was silent for a long time, long enough that Chuuya was about to drag up more of his anger and speak again, but then he said: "I thought it might be easier for him."

All of the fight in him loosened at once. Exhaustion crashed into him like a sledgehammer. Chuuya blinked slowly, looking down at the carpeted floor, and let it run its course until even his damaged nerves felt too tired to hurt.

"You have too much experience to let your copilot slip like this," he said. "You can't just… Fucking hell, Dazai. We don't have time for holding back."

"Think of it that way, Chuuya," Dazai replied mildly. "Kunikida-kun knows what to expect, now. It's better to chase the RABBIT during a test than during a fight. He'll know how to get himself out of it if it happens again."

"Have you even talked to him about it?" Dazai's silence was all the answer he needed. "Dazai," he sighed. He almost swallowed before speaking again, almost let the words die on his tongue from lack of a resolve. "Whatever it is that's you don't… want him to see, or I don't know. Whatever it is you're struggling with." He made himself meet Dazai's eyes despite the heavy weight of his heart. "You need to let it go. You need to be able to pilot with him."

Dazai's suspended breath rang through the padded silence. It dug deep into the longing that Chuuya carried around like a second skin, into the cloud-like words he never quite knew how to say.

"We can pilot," Dazai replied at last. "The drift was strong enough."

"It could be stronger."

Dazai exhaled loudly. He ran a hand through his hair in a way Chuuya knew, deeply, that he only did when he was truly shaken—and the sight stabbed into his ribs, folded around his heart, made every wound crawl back to life.

"What do you want from me, Chuuya?" Dazai muttered, looking at his knees. "Did you expect me to be happy about…"

No. Chuuya hadn't expected him to. He hadn't wanted him to. Even though he had no right to such selfishness.

"You told them yourself," he said. "You can't expect to drift and keep any part of you private. You won't be able to pilot with him if you keep trying to hide things. You need to let him see what matters."

"Oh, trust me," Dazai laughed without any humor, "he saw everything that mattered."

He glanced at Chuuya, eyes soft and fond, and Chuuya couldn't breathe through it at all.

He let himself fall back onto the bed to escape it. His chest tensed upon touching the mattress, now matter how minimal the impact was; it took a second for him to be able to relax, and even then he didn't yet try to crawl backward and properly lay down. That would take very incremental moves, considering the pain in his leg.

Silence unfolded through the room. The walls were too thick to hear from the outside, built to withstand kaiju attacks as well as humanity could; still Chuuya looked at the starlit sky and imagined the spread of the sea under it, gleaming and peaceful. He turned to his knowledge of it until he could hear the waves' whisper against his skin.

The sound Dazai made as he stood from the chair was muffled by the drowsiness of it. "Just let it go," he said to himself, echoing Chuuya's words.

He stepped toward the bed, stopping beside where Chuuya lay. Chuuya didn't look up at him as he mumbled, "Go talk to your partner."

"I am."

Dazai's hand hovered by Chuuya's arm, not tensed but not relaxed, fingers curved into the shape of a hold. It was the same hand that had rested on his chest earlier as he heaved through the pain. Chuuya had only had that to latch onto and avoid losing consciousness; he had focused on the weight and feeling of it until he thought he felt Dazai's fingers directly against his heart.

Do it, Chuuya thought in his weakness, in the deepest, most cowardly corners of his mind. Touch me. Don't wait for me to hurt this time.

Dazai slid his hand into his pocket. "Good night, Chuuya," he said.

The light of the hallway shone for a second too long onto the ridges of the room, drawing sharp, long shadows out of all furniture. The imprint of it stayed behind Chuuya's eyelids long after he closed the door.

He fell asleep to the imagined lull of the sea, letting his mind fill with it until it muffled all other noise. Only moonlight shone anymore. It lit the keyhole of the drawer where he kept the broken remains of his pilot helmet.

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#bsd #bungou stray dogs #soukoku #nakahara chuuya #dazai osamu #fic: build upon the ruins

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