#t is also for teeth and tools coincidentally

[whump-side]

My piece for the ABCs of Whump zine @thewhumpyprintingpress My letter was T for Torture ! If you want to acquire this very whumpy zine, there are physical and digital copies still available. Make sure to visit The Whumpy Printing Press Tumblr for more informations

[joontier]

Subliminal in Scrubs | V2; report xiii

pairings: dr. jeon jungkook x female reader

chapter rating: NC-17 | genre: humor, workplace relationships

warnings: swearing 

word count: 1.8k

g/n: decided on a bit of a filler for this one as a sort of prelude to future scenes 👀👀 ((likewise manifesting my plan to post another chapter this week))

[taglist]:  @nottodayjjk @ditttiii @zeharilisharaban @btsbunny07 @turquoiseandplaidinautumn @aamxxrii @codeinebelle @btsmakesmehappy @stargukkie @moonchild1​

Subliminal in Scrubs (the records) |  navi. | m.list

Jungkook locks his apartment door behind him, jiggling the doorknob afterwards for ‘double security’ as one would usually call it. He grabs his backpack from the floor and places one of the straps on his shoulders and heads on his way. As he passes by two of his neighbors who live in the same floor, he nods at them, adding a brief hum in greeting. 

“Hey man!” One of the men, Jikwang (as what Jungkook believes this man’s name was), calls out just before Jungkook reaches the elevator. “There was this hot girl asking about you last night.” 

Jungkook raises a brow. He hadn’t really met anyone recently, besides that one cute law student who was looking for a new tenant - and eventually turned out to be your neighbor this whole time. She was cute and all, but she didn’t seem like the type that was ‘hot’ to these types of people. 

Jungkook racks his brain for anything, trying to remember the very few number of his one night stands.Surely,none of them would have gotten pregnant with protection on….surely? On top of that, he hadn’t really disclosed his address to a lot of people too, so there was no way someone would be looking for him, all the more a “hot” woman,as these two would claim. 

“Did she say what her name was?” 

The one beside Jikwang shakes his head, adjusting his beanie. He’d seen this dude a couple of times hanging around, but he never actually got his name.  “Nah bro, I don’t think you’re the commitment type of dude…” he comments, dark eyes looking at Jungkook from his head down to his toe. Who was this guy anyways and who was he to judge whether Jungkook was the type to enter a committed relationship or not? 

“She just...looked rich, rich. She had a driver... who helped her come down from a nice Benz.” 

Jungkook feels his heart drop to the ground. No way in hell. 

“I think her name was Hee something...Junghwa? I dunno man, I’m not good with names. But it sounds similar to that…” 

“Was it Junghee?” 

“Yeah I think that’s it…” bonnet-dude replies, tapping a finger against his chin as he approaches Jungkook. “You think maybe you can set me up? With you know…” 

Jikwang knocks the back of bonnet-man’s head. “I got dibs first, shithead. “If she’s not already yours though,” he adds, delivering a wink aimed at Jungkook. “Her friends will do.” 

Jungkook squints his eyes at the duo. “No. She’s my sister. And she doesn’t have any friends.” A chill courses through his spine as he replies, wondering how she managed to find out where he lived, and why would she even reach out? Why now, when she had so many years to do so? 

Beanie guy simply laughs at him - if it was even considered laughing, when he was practically splitting his sides with laughter - like the thought of having a sister was hilarious to him. “You’re real funny, man. There is no...way...in hell… that that lady was your sister.” 

Ah yes, this man is a health vice personified. Jungkook notes the discoloration of his teeth, the god-awful odor coming from his mouth, and they both reek of alcohol and drugs combined. From a safe distance, Jungkook watches their amusement over the subject that is his sister, thinking about why he even indulged these two in the first place. For all he knows, they might have been shitting on him the whole time. 

“Sorry man. I mean...she’s rich and hot… and you?” Jikwang shrugs his shoulders. 

‘And he?’ What about him? 

What the hell was that supposed to mean? 

Jungkook clicks his tongue silently, clearly taking full offense with Jikwang’s statement. Did they just imply he didn’t look rich and hot too? Well, compared to them though, they’ll obviously have way longer to go. 

Jungkook blinks before equally returning their level of disbelief. “For real, bro?” These men diss him, won’t believe he has a sister whose aura dwarfs his by a million percent, and now they want him to set up a date with her? He shakes his head. Only crooks like these would say insane shit like this. 

If only this wasn’t the cheapest and most convenient apartment he could find to accommodate his daily hustle, Jungkook would have moved out of this crap excuse of an apartment building a long time ago. 

“Keep dreaming man.” 

“Hey, this is what I get for selling you my bike for a good price?” Jikwang eyes Jungkook, taunting him. 

“I owe you nothing. I paid for it ages ago.” Jungkook turns on his heel, leaving the two in the crusty ass corridor of their apartment building. He needs to get a new place. Quickly. 

With a sigh, he pulls on his down jacket, keeping himself warm as he walks to the garage. 

‘King Auto’ 

There’s a certain warmth that envelops Jungkook whenever he sees the garage, a place he’d rather call home than his terrible apartment building. It sits right at the corner of two busy streets, just six blocks away from his apartment. 

Funnily enough, it wasn’t him who first found out about the garage but the other way around. Well, technically, the owner did. Lee Dongmin, owner and manager of ‘King Auto’ repairs and restores almost all types of cars and bikes alike, occasionally servicing high-end cars on lucky days. 

Dongmin would usually see Jungkook pass by the garage in the morning on his way to the university or his part-time job.Well, being located at a busy street in the city of Seoul, there would normally be a lot of passersby but Dongmin knew these people either worked or lived around the area; Jungkook, however, always lingered when he walks past the garage. 

It had come to Dongmin’s knowledge a few months later that Jungkook purposefully used a longer route on his way, walking two extra blocks just so that he could pass by the garage. Dongmin hadn’t initially done anything about it, as he thought Jungkook simply took interest in cars - especially when the shop had its fair share of servicing cars from the western market. 

There was this particular day though one summer, that their paths would finally cross. Jungkook’s bike, the same bike he bought from sketchy Jikwang, broke down. Coincidentally just in front of King Auto too. Funnily enough, no one in the garage was familiar with fixing up bikes, but Jungkook simply asked if he could borrow a few tools and he’d fix his bike himself. 

Ultimately, Jungkook became part of the King Auto family. He’d spend his spare time in the garage when he’s not busy with his part-time jobs and on occasion, Jungkook gets to keep a tiny commission whenever he helps out with the repairs. 

Jungkook goes through the front door greeting the new receptionist, Clark, a good morning before heading straight to the garage. Jungkook spots a familiar shade of blue peeking through the scissor lifts, just by the end row. He practically dashes to the car in excitement, too thrilled to greet his favorite car he had worked on previously. 

“My baby!” The boy exclaims as he rests his chin on the Porsche Panamera’s roof. “Kook! Get your hands off that! I just had it cleaned!” gruffs Mansik from the other side of the car, flinging his towel at Jungkook who mumbles a sorry but continues to cradle the car, a little more gently this time. 

“If you continue doing that, you know a towel isn’t the only thing Mansik is going to throw at you.” Lee Dongmin’s voice is low, careful that the man he’s referring to won’t hear his words. “I’m glad he hasn’t resorted to tools yet...just a couple of smelly socks and a t-shirt that smells like it hasn’t been washed for months... “ 

“Fuckers.” True to Jungkook’s foreboding, Mansik does throw a sock ball from out of nowhere, one which barely misses Jungkook’s face. Dongmin simply shakes his head at his workers, who he has considered family at this point, Jungkook included. “I’m just glad none of that fell into my first coffee of the day.” Dongmin observes, drawing himself father from the Porsche and any flying objects later on. 

“By the way, the owner is actually here to pick up the car. I may or may not have mentioned your infatuation with it.” 

Jungkook almost instantly jumps to his feet, searching for the owner inside the garage, but disappointingly ending up with all the familiar faces at the garage. “Chill, kid. He just grabbed some coffee down the street,” Dongmin mentions as he takes a sip of his own. “Ah, speaking of the devil,” the latter states, nodding his head towards someone behind Jungkook. 

“Seokjin-sunbaenim?” 

“Oh hey! Wasn’t expecting to see you here...Jungkook, right?” 

“Yes sir!” Jungkook’s pupils shake, animatedly looking back and forth between the garage owner and his upper-level resident. “So...you’re the one who owns this Porsche?” Seokjin raises his cup, adding a small nod in Jungkook’s direction. He internalizes his excitement, before confessing his love for Seokjin’s Panamera. 

“And so, Dongmin here mentioned. Also said you were the one who fixed her up. Thanks man!” 

Dongmin looks at the two of them, eyebrows creased in the middle. “You two know each other?” 

“Seokjin-sunbaenim is a senior of mine at Woocheon.” Seemingly shellshocked at the new piece of information, Dongmin turns to Seokjin, “You’re a doctor?” The owner of the Porsche rolls his eyes fondly, “Yes, Dongmin. We can have lives outside the hospital too, you know.” 

“Anyways, ‘Mera’s ready to go yeah?” 

“Of course. Kook fixed it up just fine.” 

“Alright. Got a shift today man? Need a ride to the hospital?” 

Jungkook is tempted to give in, but merely fixing Seokjin’s car is enough honor for him and he can’t take advantage of his generosity. “No thank you, sunbae. I’ve already got a ride to work today.” Jungkook points to his bike on the other side of the garage. 

Seokjin tuts his disbelief. “You’re kidding me right? In this weather?” The older doctor points outside, then rubs his palm against his down coat. “No way in hell, kid. Get in the car.” 

“Really?” Jungkook mumbles, dimple on display as his lips form a thin line. Seokjin makes a hum of approval as he takes off his jacket while Jungkook dashes back to where he’d left his backpack. “He’s a good kid, Jungkook. Can be a bit of a delinquent sometimes, but he’s good. Take care of him, yeah?” 

“Huh,” Seokjin smirks, “this handsome face got nothing he can’t handle.” Dongmin rolls his eyes this time, “Seriously doubt we’re the same age honestly.” 

Jungkook returns to where the Porsche is parked, and Seokjin gets a spur-of-the-moment idea. The surgical resident throws his keys to Jungkook before settling inside the passenger seat. Jungkook, surprised as ever, simply stands there in surprise. “Well?” Seokjin asks, ducking towards the dashboard so he could take a look at Jungkook, “We’re gonna be late!” 

© joontier 2021

[sheikah]

Hello I don’t if you have been asked before but is there any evidence in the books to actually back up Jonsa? There’s plenty of foreshadowing for Jonerys but any about Jonsa? Or does it all come from the show.

Well, it’s subjective, and that’s the problem. There are things in the books that some J0nsa fans point to as proof of J0nsa that I don’t personally interpret as proof of J0nsa, but in the interest of answering this anyway, I’ll lay them out below.

When Jon is young he enjoys learning about and even pretending to be the Targaryens. His particular favorite seems to be Daeron The Young Dragon, who conquered Dorne at only fourteen.

But in ASOS Jon XIII he recalls playing with Robb and pretending to be Aemon the Dragonknight: “They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. “I’m Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,” Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, “Well, I’m Florian the Fool.“ 

J0nsa fans say this foreshadows J0nsa because Sansa later thinks about her relationship with Joffrey in a romanticized light, as if she is Naerys and he is Aemon.

We can see this in AGOT Sansa III: “I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian.”

But do you notice anything else? She also thinks of Florian and Jonquil, and in the passage from Jon’s POV that they often refer to, Robb is Florian. By this logic, it would also be foreshadowing Sansa/Robb. So I don’t really agree with this book evidence.To me the mentions of these historic/legendary couples are more a characterization choice and a coincidence. A coincidence because it is coincidental that Jon once pretended to be Aemon during play, and a characterization tool because it shows Sansa’s youthful naivety and that she, like many teenaged girls, romanticizes things and wants everything to be like the Westerosi equivalent of a rom com–”like the songs.” And I say that because later, it is Margaery using this analogy and Sansa, having grown up some and suffered, warning Margaery that she is wrong and that Joffrey is cruel.

In Sansa’s POV II in ASOS, Margaery says this to reassure her after Sansa warns her of Joffrey’s true nature: “I shall have the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms protecting me night and day, as Prince Aemon protected Naerys.”

But Sansa doubts this and worries for Margaery. So while Sansa was once young, innocent, and fanciful, she is more grounded in realism and ready to question analogies to the songs when real life doesn’t work that way in her experience. 

Another commonly referenced book quote for J0nsa fans comes from Sansa’s Alayne II POV in AFFC: “She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still … with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again. But of course that could never be. Alayne Stone had no brothers, baseborn or otherwise.”

Again, I don’t see this as romantic or even foreshadowing of anything other than the fact that they eventually will meet again. I do expect them to meet again in book!canon. I do expect it to be “sweet.” But here she reflects on him as the last of her family, not as someone she is in love with or pining for. She feels low, a “bastard,” and that reminds her of Jon–this new similarity of class status as a “Stone.” It isn’t connected to feelings of fondness, but loneliness. 

In that same chapter, Alayne II in AFFC Sansa also has this thought about the sound of the wind: “[T]he wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghostwolf, big as mountains.”

Again, I don’t see this as a connection to Jon. This chapter has featured Sansa reflecting on how alone she is and how little of her family she has left. Remember that although Jon’s wolf is called Ghost, Sansa had a wolf, too. And Lady, being deceased, could easily be a “ghost,” a part of Sansa’s past, a loss that still haunts her. 

Another frequently mentioned quote is in ADWD Jon XIII: “He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself.”

Here we can see that Jon did think of Sansa. But I do not feel this is a romantic or longing thought. He is thinking about his siblings back in Winterfell when they were younger. Right after this he goes on to think of Arya as well. 

I’ve also seen people point to the passage from Jon I in AGOT when he is sizing up the Baratheon family at Winterfell for the first time. He describes Sansa as “radiant”–”Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.”

To me he is simply stating the obvious–everyone who gets the chance to calls or thinks of Sansa as a beautiful girl in ASOIAF. This isn’t unique to Jon -- not that conventional beauty has ever been important to him anyway? Remember that he’s always held a soft spot for Arya, who is constantly contrasted with Sansa’s beauty. Remember that he fell in love with Ygritte, who he loved for her spirit, not her looks. She is described with crooked teeth and gangly legs. So again, I think Jon was just thinking on something quite normal–Sansa looked nice, and looked happy, “radiant” even, in contrast to Joffrey’s sulking. 

Lastly, in AGOT Sansa III, after her outburst about loving Joffrey, Ned says this: “When you’re old enough, I will make you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.”

J0nsa fans say that Jon is the brave, gentle, strong man being foreshadowed here, especially since he is a secret Targaryen royal with a name like Aemon’s. But again, I just don’t see this. There are many brave, gentle, strong people, and Jon was not named Aemon after all. 

Anyway, I hope this answers your question. All in all, I can see where J0nsa fans are coming from with some of these. The problem for me is that instead of calmly laying these out as possibilities, or as the reason why many of them believed post season 6 that J0nsa would be canon, they aggressively insist that these somewhat reaching passages are ironclad, irrefutable proof–that J0nsa is canon, undercover Jon is a thing, and anyone who disagrees is a delusional person who expects a Disney ending. But as you say, there is far more book foreshadowing + parallels for Jonerys, not to mention the fact that Jonerys have followed those and become canon in the show with only 6 episodes left to go and several arcs to close and tidy up. 

GRRM’s work is very rich and we could find “evidence” for almost any crack theory if we mine his words deeply enough.

[thatgirlonstage]

Summary: Lance wakes up in a hospital on Earth to discover he has been missing for four months, with no memory of Voltron or the Galra. Drawn inexplicably to the desert where they found him, he discovers a hut full of research and notes that may provide the key to his missing memories. With secrets and conspiracies surrounding him, and the Garrison potentially hiding far more than he could ever have imagined, Lance grows to trust the notes in the desert - but he may not believe the person who claims he wrote them.

Chapter Four:

The first thing Lance saw was paper.

           There were reams of it scattered across the room, stacked high against the wall, books piled haphazardly in corners and toppling onto each other on shelves, posters covering the peeling wallpaper, rolled up maps and star charts shoved into cardboard boxes, newspaper clippings with headlines circled in red pen, colored Post-It notes stuck on everything, all of them scrawled over with the same messy, spiky handwriting.

           The second thing he noticed was the conspiracy board.

           A massive corkboard covered most of the wall to his right, beside a single narrow door that presumably led to the rest of the hut. Lance gaped at it: it looked like it had fallen out of every crime thriller ever, complete with color-coded string connecting the dots from dirty pencil sketches to photographs to a map that sat dead center, with a giant black circle around the words ENERGY SOURCE and several X’s marking out a triangle.

           The third thing he noticed was how much dust he had kicked up by opening the door, as he went into a coughing fit.

           When he had cleared his lungs and wiped the tears from his eyes, he took a few hesitant, stumbling steps closer to the conspiracy board. Pictures of lions dominated, some photographs of what looked like cave drawings, others messy sketches that had clearly been rubbed out over and over by an increasingly dirty eraser, creased and torn along the edges. For some reason, the sight of the lions made Lance’s heart jump into his throat, although he couldn’t recall ever seeing something like it before. Annotations in the same spiky handwriting covered them, but none of them made any sense. What did “NAs around?? WHO LIVED HERE?” have to do with what looked like a mathematical calculation? Why was there a yellow Post-It that just said, “changing art styles” with three arrows pointing to different photographs on it? Why was there a photograph of nothing but a cave entrance? Why was there also a world map with the constellations charted across it, showing where they were visible?

           “Does that guy with the telescope live here?” he wondered aloud, and then winced, wondering if he might have alerted anyone else in the house to his presence, but as much as he strained his ears, everything remained silent. “Only if he’s been sleeping in that park for a few months straight, judging by the dust,” he muttered to himself. He turned and surveyed the room.

           He didn’t think he’d ever seen so much paper in his life. If he thought Cal kept an impressive number of physical books even though digital copies were less than a quarter of the price, it was nothing compared to whatever the person who lived here had. They were piled everywhere: on the shelves against the back wall, on the desk and shelves on either side of the front door, underneath the wooden slab sitting on top of some concrete bricks that Lance thought was supposed to pass for a table (helping to hold it up, by the looks of it), even stuck on top of the tower of what looked like Garrison reject tech. Lance frowned, moving closer, and his eyes went wide. This was Garrison reject tech. The two back-to-front G’s that made up their logo were pasted onto the corners, although at least one looked like it had been scratched off. “What the…?” he murmured. The Garrison was dedicated to keeping their technology scarily modern, so it wasn’t unusual for them to donate outdated but still perfectly serviceable technology to the electrojunk yards in the city where people could go scavenge them. Most people in the city probably owned a printer that had been thrown away by the Garrison at some point. This was different, though. For one thing, some of this was a lot more sophisticated than a printer – Lance thought he recognized a machine Hunk had told him could be adjusted to scan for, record, and convert almost any frequency to levels that could be heard by human ears – and he doubted it would get tossed in with the Garrison’s normal electrojunk. For another, some of it wasn’t just old, by technology standards it was ancient. The holoscreen projector looked like it was decades old, probably older than Lance himself, and had clearly been repaired and retrofitted over the years. He ran a hesitant finger along the top of the frequency scanner and it came away coated in dust.

           Rubbing his hand against his pants, he took a few slow steps over to the table. There was an empty water bottle and an open, empty black can that according to the label had once contained beans but now had nothing but some nasty congealed juice at the bottom of it sitting on top of a few sheets of paper. One of them had something written in all caps and red across it, and Lance carefully, with one finger, shoved the bean can aside to get a look. It said: DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. There was a date written underneath and circled four times.

           Lance’s throat constricted and he wondered if he was going to start coughing again. He stared at the paper until he thought he might burn a hole right through it. The world seemed to tumble into chaos around him. He clenched his fists, trying to hold onto reality with brute force. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears.

           The date written on the sheet of the paper was the night Lance had gone missing.

           He didn’t know how long he stood there staring at this sheet of paper with its frighteningly coincidental date before he reached a shaking hand into his pocket and pulled out the new phone he’d finally bought. He was halfway through typing in Detective Hopkins’s contact before he paused.

           “What would I even say…?” he asked his phone. “Detective Hopkins” sat at the top of his screen, waiting to be pressed, an alert to the police two taps of a finger away, but instead he deleted the letters of his contact search one by one and slowly put the phone back into his pocket. “Not yet,” he muttered. “I need something more than a piece of paper if I’m going to explain why I’m out here at all. Plus, walking into this hut probably counts as breaking and entering, doesn’t it? Oh, shit, am I breaking the law?” He shifted from foot to foot, suddenly paranoid that Detective Hopkins was tailing him and was about to burst through the door and arrest him. Making a split-second decision, he walked over to the door on the right wall and twisted the knob.

           The door opened onto a sparsely furnished kitchen, boasting nothing more than a single cupboard and a square of counter space, a rickety old gas stove, a rusty metal sink, a mismatched set of two chairs and a table, and a squat little fridge that was making a frightening rattling sound as it ran. At the opposite end of the room another door was cracked open to a tiny square of a bathroom, and a ladder led up to some kind of attic. Lance, still slightly paranoid that the owner of the hut was going to appear in front of him and shoot him for trespassing, walked over to the fridge. Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand hesitantly on the handle, and yanked it open. He slammed it shut again as fast as possible, his free hand coming up to cover his nose. Unless the mold in there mutated and came to life and tried to kill him, he was happy to let whatever remnants of food there were rot in there for eternity. It settled one point for him though: he was certain now that no one had lived here for months. And, judging by the mess in their refrigerator, whoever used to be here had left unexpectedly.

           Just for good measure, he finished exploring the hut. The bathroom was miniscule but functional. The water ran brown with rust and sand for the first few minutes after Lance turned it on, but eventually cleared. He splashed his face clean of the dust, although he was careful not to swallow. The cracked ceramic floor was outlined in the sand that had gathered between the crevices. The sink had a glass with a toothbrush and almost empty tube of toothpaste sitting on it, and a comb with four of its teeth missing. The shower was marked only by its wide metal head and a flimsy, tattered curtain hanging off two metal rods; the drain was set into the floor. A few strands of black hair were curled over it.

           Up the ladder, there was an almost empty attic. The slanted ceiling was so low that Lance could only stand fully upright in the exact center. There was a mattress with crumpled sheets and a thin blanket thrown across it, and a cardboard box. A few scattered pairs of socks, boxer shorts, and a black t-shirt made a loose pile of dirty laundry next to the mattress, but otherwise the room was bare. Outside was also mostly uninteresting: a well for groundwater explained how the house had plumbing, and the concrete attachment to the house had a generator connected to a set of solar panels around the back of the hut, which explained how the fridge was still running, as well as containing a few rusty gardening tools, but that was it. Lance went back inside to the main room and stared at the date glaring at him from that sheet of paper again. He reached down, hesitated, and then reasoned that his fingerprints were already all over everything.

           “In for a penny, in for a pound,” he shrugged, and picked it up.

           Examining it gave him nothing new. There were fragments of printed text on the back, but he was pretty sure that was just because it was scrap paper. He sat down on the couch, turning the paper over and over in his hands. DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. The words mocked him.

           On a whim, he reached over and grabbed the nearest book off a shelf next to him, disturbing a cloud of dust as he did so. The spines of all the books were already thoroughly broken, so it fell open on his lap. It was a history of the region. A quick scan of the table of contents told him that it began more or less in the 1600s and worked its way up through the end of the last century. The earlier chapters in particular were stuck full of Post-It notes. He flipped through it slowly, seeing sections of the text underlined and circled, accompanied by exclamation points and question marks.

           The page it fell open to, the one where the reader’s annotation marks were so heavy they almost obscured the actual text, contained a picture similar to the ones on the conspiracy board and a single paragraph. Lance read.

           One peculiarity is the prevalence of cave drawings of what appears to be a female lion, which fill countless caves in one concentrated area (see Map 2.4). While the scholarly consensus is that they must actually be drawings of cougars, they bear an uncanny resemblance to a female African lion in the proportion of the head and their build. As of yet there are no authoritative studies on these drawings since access has always posed a problem – first because of the terrain and climate, and in more recent years because of Galaxy Garrison’s restrictions on people living or working in the area due to safety concerns over pilot training and weapons testing. The little research that has been done found several patterns that repeat across most of the drawings with slight alterations, suggesting an evolving mythos.14 However, the story depicted does not appear to be tied to any other myths or folktales from the region. Even stranger, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the very oldest of these drawings might date to roughly 8000 BCE, around 4000 years older than any other cave drawings found in North America, while the newest ones may even have appeared after colonial exploration and settlement began in the 19th century.15 This makes little to no sense given what we know of the movements of Native American populations through this region (see Chapter 3). The working theory among scholars is that the various tribes present at different points in history each discovered these cave drawings, interpreted them, reinvented them to fit their own myths, and then redrew their version in a cave nearby. More in-depth interpretations of the story being told in these drawings, its significance to Native American culture, and the history of the region, will have to await further research.

           Scrawled in the top corner of the page was a handwritten annotation: “If completely fictional, why consistent patterns across tribes/time? What was start of myth?” Lance worried his bottom lip. He set the book down on the table and grabbed the next one without paying any attention. The cover was a startling green on black pattern, with the title written in such big font it almost completely obscured the design: ALIENS: The Secret History of Galaxy Garrison. He groaned, covering his face with his hands.

           “Nope. Okay, if this isn’t telescope man’s house, it’s the house of his even crazier cousin,” he said. “Nope, nope, nope, I’m done. I am… I am done with this. Time to go home.” He shoved the books back onto the shelf, stood up, and marched out the door. The sun was beginning to fall into the west, dipping below the mountains. Lance took a swig from his water bottle, swung himself onto the hoverbike, and took off towards town, refusing to look back as the strange little desert hut shrank into invisibility on the horizon behind him.

*

           Lance was singing, stirring peppers, onions, and snap peas together, when Cal walked in. He gave him a cheery wave, and reached back with to turn down the quick-paced Spanish music blasting from a speaker on the counter, continuing to dance side to side, swaying his hips along, as adjusted the heat on the stove.

           “And I’d never seen eyes like hers before,” he sang, imitating the singer’s vibrato on the last word. “Hey, how was school?”

           “You’re cooking?” Cal asked, dropping his backpack off his shoulder with a thunk. “What is that? It smells delicious.”

           “Nothing special,” he shrugged. “Just kind of a stir-fry, fast and easy. I was thinking of making fricasé de pollo one night if you’d like, I just need to leave it to marinate the night before.”

           “Since when do you cook?” Cal asked, bending over to untie his shoes.

           “Since Hunk.” With a quick twist of his wrist Lance shook some salt over the pan, keeping his hand high to avoid any drops of hot oil. “I had the worst crash in the flight simulator I’d ever had, my advisor told me I’d never get into the Garrison, I got back a theory test that I flat-out failed, hid in a bathroom in the basement for three hours before I limped my way back to the dorms during dinnertime in order to avoid running into anyone, and ten minutes later Hunk turned up with the most delicious black bean soup I’ve ever eaten in my life. Probably would have been even better if I didn’t keep crying into it. Hunk said he’d wanted to do something more traditionally Cuban, give me a taste of home and all, but this was the best he could manage since he wasn’t even really supposed to be in the kitchen in the first place and had to scrounge for ingredients. He kept apologizing, he was so anxious, meanwhile I couldn’t even keep my voice steady long enough to actually thank him for it.

           “So then like a week later, once I’d pulled myself together and convinced my teacher to let me retake the theory test, I was determined I was going to cook something for him, you know, to thank him. I managed to get into the kitchen by telling the chef I was Hunk’s friend – he worked there for some extra cash on weekends and one of his moms was a chef, he could cook better than anyone else in that kitchen – but I ended up with the saddest, driest, burnt-up fried plantains you’ve ever seen in your life. It was a total disaster. I wouldn’t have dared try to make him eat them, I just threw them away. But I must have had the most pitiful puppy-dog look on my face after that because Hunk knew something was wrong, and when I finally confessed what had happened he was so touched that he insisted he get to teach me to cook. We spent Sunday mornings in the kitchen since the simulators weren’t available until noon.”

           “Hunk was your roommate back in prep school, right?” Lance scraped the spoon slowly around the edge of the pan.

           “Yeah. Sweetest guy I’ve ever met,” he said. Cal tucked the laces inside his shoes and set them carefully in a boot tray.

           “I met his moms,” he said. Lance kept his eyes fixed on the pan. “They were lovely people. His brother too.” Lance stabbed a pepper with the fork and sampled it. Almost done, could use another couple minutes, he decided. “So, you planning to share that or what?” He sent Cal a relieved grin.

           “Patience, patience,” he admonished, waving a spoon at his brother. “It’s not done yet.” Cal slid onto a chair and crossed an ankle over his knee, watching expectantly.

           “Cooking, speaking English in the morning, you really have changed a lot,” he mused. Lance shrugged.

           “None of this is recent,” he said.

           “Guess we don’t see each other all that often anymore.” There was a moment of quiet, the Spanish singer still crooning gently from the speaker. Lance murmured the lyrics under his breath, swaying almost imperceptibly. He felt Cal’s eyes on the back of his neck but didn’t turn around. Another few stirs around with his spoon and he stepped back, satisfied.

           “There’s rice in the pot,” he gestured. Cal grabbed a plate and helped himself. The two of them moved around one another in sync, navigating the compressed little apartment kitchen to set out silverware and water, Lance dropping a used cutting board and knife into the sink to be washed later. They ate in comfortable silence, the muted sound of a guitar from the speaker and the indistinct noises of people having their own dinners in the apartments above and below providing a soundtrack to their quiet company. Only after both their plates were scraped clean did Lance sit back, crossing his ankle across his knee to match Cal, and ask if he had any critiques.

           “Not a one. You know I’m terrible at cooking, why didn’t you do this before now?” Lance shrugged, throwing his arms over the back of the chair.

           “I was recovering from being an invalid. Show some consideration to your little brother.” Cal rolled his eyes.

           “Right. Well, you’re cooking dinner from now on. You want to stay in this apartment, you’re going to earn your keep.”

           “Hey! That wasn’t in my contract!”

           “I’m changing the terms of our agreement. Older sibling privileges.” Lance could have sworn the glint in Cal’s eyes was almost mischievous.

           “You are the most— the most insufferable— you dirty little f—”

           “Lance,” Cal gasped in mock horror. “Language, please.”

           “I’ll language you!” Lance growled. He launched himself at Cal, trying to yank him off the chair, but couldn’t make him budge.

           “Please, Lance, you know you could never win when we fought.”

           “Maybe not. Buuuuuuut… I do know your weak spot,” Lance gave Cal the evilest grin he could and Cal met him with a glare.

           “You wouldn’t dare,” he said suspiciously, slowly placing his foot on the floor.

           “Oh I would,” Lance said. He went to his knees, grabbed Cal’s foot, and tickled the bottom. Cal shrieked, kicking at him, but Lance hung on grimly to his leg and continued to tickle. Cal was somewhere between screaming and laughing, trying to shove Lance away, but his position from the chair was too awkward and he couldn’t get to his feet with Lance hanging on to his leg.

           “You absolute ass,” he cried. “Two can play at this game, you know.”

           “No!” Lance shrieked as Cal bent over and reached for his ribs. He let go of his grip on Cal’s leg to knock away his hands. “Sorry, sorry, truce!”

           “Not a chance,” Cal said, jumping to his feet. Lance crab-walked backward until he managed to flip over, trip up to his feet, and attempt to sprint away. Cal caught him and knocked them both onto the air mattress, his fingers tickling agony into his sides.

           “Let goooooooo,” he groaned through involuntary laughter, slapping ineffectually at his brother’s arms. “You’re an adult, you’re supposed to be too old for this.” He squirmed, trying to wiggle his way out of Cal’s grasp, but he had Lance pinned down, still digging his fingers mercilessly into his ribs. “Calixto Sanchez, if you don’t stop I am going to burn every single one of those dinners you want me to cook for you.” Cal paused, squinting at him, his knees digging into Lance’s hips.

           “You wouldn’t eat burnt food for the next two months just to spite me.”

           “Try me,” Lance dared. Cal stared him down a moment longer, then flipped off of him. Lance sighed in relief, gave it a single beat, and dove for Cal’s feet, throwing his torso across Cal’s legs to keep them in place.

           “You CHEAT!” Cal shouted, trying to shove him off. Lance couldn’t hold his position long before Cal managed to pull him away and they devolved into wrestling. Lance discovered there was a lot more of him since the last time they did this: his limbs had stretched long and he was all angles now, all elbows and knees and bony shoulders that he could shove up against the block of muscle that was his brother to try and push him off the mattress. They were almost evenly matched for a few minutes, but Cal eventually managed to shove Lance onto his stomach and pull his arms behind him. Lance kicked ineffectually for a few seconds, like he was swimming, but Cal was sitting on his back and he couldn’t reach him.

           “Okay, okay, you win, you always win, I’ll cook nice things for you,” Lance groaned, and buried his face into the air mattress. Cal didn’t say anything, only released his grip, but Lance could feel the smugness rolling off him in waves. “No need to be so damn proud of yourself.”

           “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cal said in a tone that told Lance he knew exactly what he was talking about.

           “Suuuuuuure,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. He flipped himself over onto his back. “You wanna watch a movie tonight?” he asked. Cal shook his head.

           “Some of us have homework to do. On Saturday maybe. Oh, speaking of which, Louisa’s said she’s going to come visit on Saturday. Midterms were this week so she can take a bit of a break.”

           “Sweet,” Lance said, spotting the pot of rice still sitting on the stove and remembering he still had dishes to do. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet, and ambled back over to the kitchen. He pushed the volume on the speaker back up, rolled up his sleeves, and turned on the sink, running the water over his fingers until it got hot. “You know, it’s a pretty dumb idea to build a school out in the desert,” he reflected. “The town has the lake, I know, but the Garrison’s far enough out that it can’t be easy to cart all the water they need all the way out there.” He said nothing about the strange little hut with its personal well that seemed so wildly impractical, so far from everything.

           “Well they needed a big open space that no one else wanted so they could just claim it as theirs and then they wouldn’t ever have to worry about flight regulations or anything,” Cal said offhandedly, opening up his computer. Lance paused, hands submerged in sudsy water.

           “Wait, so, how much of the desert is the Garrison’s private property?” he asked. Cal frowned at him.

           “I don’t know exactly but it goes on for miles. I mean, that’s how they keep the town from expanding out in that direction, they own all the land.” Lance felt his breath hitch but tried to keep his voice calm.

           “So… If someone were… living out in the desert…” Cal shook his head.

           “They couldn’t be. Well, not legally anyway. But like you said, why would anyone want to live out in the desert anyway? There’s nothing out there.”

           “Right,” Lance muttered, scrubbing oil residue forcefully off a pan. “Nothing but a whole lot of sand.”

*

           He spent almost ten minutes standing on the porch without quite managing to grab the doorknob. He very nearly convinced himself to turn around and go back to the city. This was almost definitely the worst idea he’d ever had. The knowledge that he was now trespassing not just on the abandoned house of some weirdo but also technically on Garrison property, in a house they couldn’t possibly know about because Lance was sure they would flip their shit if they did, full of what might, he was realizing, be stolen Garrison tech, and books all about how the Garrison was really an alien cover-up organization or something of the kind, made his heart pound painfully against his ribs every time he started to move toward the door. He paced on the porch, muttering to himself.

           “Maybe someone built this house before the Garrison even got here? And then just… refused to leave? Because clearly someone’s been living here within the last year even if they’ve been gone for a few months at this point. But how did the Garrison not notice it ever? We are pretty far out, so I get why they might not have noticed it since they arrived, but they must have, have surveyed the property or whatever you call it when they first bought it, right? Okay, so if the house wasn’t here when the Garrison arrived, who built a house in the middle of the desert on government property? Who does that?” He turned back and caught sight of the broken-down fence, partially buried in sand, that marked out what he thought must have once been a garden. “Some, some weird… hermit… farmer… obsessed with aliens… Okay, Clark Kent or whoever the fuck…” He turned, faced the door, and before he could think any more about it, shoved it open.

           He half expected to see some wild man with long wiry hair asleep on the couch, or Garrison lieutenants waiting to arrest him, but it looked exactly the way he had left it yesterday. He picked his way gingerly across the room to the stacks of paper against the back wall. Brushing away the dust, he grabbed a handful of pages off of the first stack, settled on the couch, and started to read.

           The same date that he had gone missing, that was written on that “Don’t forget” paper, was written in bold across the top of the first page and circled. There were a series of calculations written out, all in that same spiky handwriting. At one point, the writer seemed to have made an error or a series of errors, because the math got so crossed-out and scribbled over that it became nearly illegible. Lance, glancing around, spotted a pencil lying on one of the bookshelves, seized it, and finished out the calculation in the margin so he could read the whole thing. It took him a couple pages to figure out exactly what he was calculating: this guy was, for some reason, tracking the movement of stars by hand, calculating, if Lance had to guess, how they would appear in the sky on that particular date. Hit by a thought, he jumped to his feet and walked over to the star chart superimposed on a map of the world pinned up on the conspiracy board. The star chart hadn’t been printed off the internet, he could see now, it had been rendered and printed off on this guy’s own computer, from his own calculations. Lance whistled.

           “Wow, okay Kent, can I call you Kent? I’m going to call you Kent, it sounds better than ‘freaky conspiracy guy.’ You really do not trust the Garrison, or… anyone, do you? How long did this take you?” he wondered, looking at the sheaf of papers in his hand. True, it wasn’t like he had tried to chart every single star in the sky, mostly just the big constellations and the planets, but it would still have been painstaking to finish – and clearly, judging from Kent’s endless errors and redo’s, math was not his greatest strength. One margin next to a particularly blacked out scribble had “WHY THE FUCK CAN’T I DO MATH” written next to it.

           “Okay, so, you plotted the stars on this date. Whoop-de-do. What of it?” Lance chewed his lip, looking at the map that took up the center of the conspiracy board. He touched it lightly with the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I should…” He let the thought trail away. Taking off on his rental hoverbike into the middle of the desert, again, without a clue what he was looking for or if there even was something to look for, on the basis of a map in the abandoned shack of a crazy person, seemed like seriously pushing his luck. “Save it until I’ve worked out what Kent here was up to,” he decided, and then turned back to survey the chaotic room with its piles upon piles of paper in dismay. “…If I can,” he muttered.

           He plopped back down on the sofa, setting the star chart calculation sheets aside on the table, and reached for another handful of paper. This one was topped with the question “What does ‘arrival’ mean?” and that same date. Underneath, there were bullet points brainstorming an answer.

The lion?

ALIENS?

(The lion could be an alien???)

A message?

A disease?

A meteor / some other kind of disaster?

Some kind of ‘chosen one’ bullshit?

People?

People returning to the caves?

           The bullet points went on, each straying further into desperate imagination than the last. Lance flipped the page, and found a grocery list scrawled on the back:

—ramen

—jerky

—batteries

—frozen pizza

—mac & cheese

—potato chips

—eggs if they’re cheap

—toothpaste

           Lance raised his eyebrows, spinning the pencil between his fingers, and after a moment’s hesitation, set it against the page and wrote in small, neat letters, “Your insides are rotting, Kent.” He shook his head, setting the sheet of paper aside, and picked up the next one, turning it horizontal to read it. This one had “THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING” written in the center, and “PROPHECY” written at the top, surrounded by question marks. There was a dotted line drawn between them. Next to it were various thoughts: “If you had the ToE you could predict the future,” “Is a partial ToE possible?” “We can predict the movements of the stars, stands to reason there are other steps between that and a complete ToE that would allow you to predict other things,” “Attractions like gravity? Forces in the universe with predictable patterns we just haven’t documented/understood yet?” and then, in the corner, in very small letters, Kent had written, “Maybe it’s just magic.”

           Lance sighed, setting the paper down. “I could spend months trying to pick apart this guy’s mind,” he said to himself. “Kent, what the hell were you trying to figure out? What do you mean by prophecy and arrival?” He stared forward, zoning out, when the corner of a newspaper peeking out from under a photograph on the conspiracy board caught his eye. Curious, he pushed himself to his feet, and pulled up the picture of the mountains to find himself confronted with the sober face of Takashi Shirogane, staring out from over the top of his obituary. Although the picture had been left untouched, the writing was scrawled over in red Sharpie. Kent had written himself a reminder in huge, bold strokes: “REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES.” Lance caught his breath. No one had quite believed it when the Kerberos mission had been reported to have crashed. No one could believe that Shiro, first in his class and the best pilot the Garrison had seen in a decade, would make a ‘pilot error’ that would get himself and his whole crew killed. It simply didn’t make any sense. It sounded crazy, it sounded like a conspiracy theory, and they would never have really questioned whether the Garrison was telling them the truth, but the doubt lingered in people’s voices when they talked about it, in people’s eyes when they glanced at each other as they heard the news.

           Had Kent discovered something? Did he know something, have some concrete evidence that the rest of them didn’t know about? Almost everything else in this shack was covered in question marks, confusion and uncertainty bleeding out of every line of writing. There was absolutely no doubt in the bright red Sharpie. Shiro’s picture watched him, his young face serious and proud. REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES. Lance touched the newspaper clipping lightly with the tips of his fingers.

           “Okay, Kent,” he said softly. “I’m listening.”